SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #924 (92), Tuesday, December 2, 2003
**************************************************************************


TITLE: Liberal Candidates Suffer 'Administrative' Pressures
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Irina Khakamada, Union of Right Forces co-leader and a candidate in the St. Petersburg electoral district No. 209, and Anatoly Golov, Yabloko's candidate in the No. 210 district, on Monday complained they face serious administrative pressure in the election campaign.
 
Speaking at a news conference at the ABN news agency, Golov and Khakamada urged St. Petersburg residents to vote Sunday to assist society in getting rid of the so-called "administrative resource," saying that the success of the economically liberal and pro-civil rights parties depends directly on how big the turnout is.
 Opinion polls have predicted the city will have one of the lowest turnouts in the country.
 "We are not able to place [campaign materials] in any organizations with budgetary financing," Golov said. "They have orders from authorities not to accept advertisements except those from candidates running with the United Russia party."
 Golov quoted a report written Nov. 28 by his campaign assistants, who were refused permission to place advertisements in Primorsky District school No. 41 located at 1/3 Ulitsa Marshala Novikova.
 "The school No. 41 director explained her refusal to place campaign materials by the fact that she, along with directors of other schools, had signed a document [issued by] Primorsky District Education Ministry Department that obliges schools' directors to place campaigning information only for the State Duma candidate Shevelyov, Alexander Vladimirovich," said an official report signed by Irina Pakoshova and Mikhail Deryabin, who visited the school Friday.
 Shevelyov is the United Russia candidate in District No. 210.
 Neither the school nor the District Education Department could be reached for comment Monday.
 "A significant number of our citizens are not going to vote, making it possible for minority to decide everything and his minority is targeted by the authorities," Golov said Monday.
 "There is open interference by use of administrative resources in district No. 210," he said. "All the schools and polyclinics are covered with campaign materials in Shevelyov's favor."
 Khakamada was similarly critical of unequal treatment by organizations under state control.
 "I faced gibberish of some sort the other day when [state-owned television channel] Rossia broadcast a report of [State Duma Speaker Gennady] Seleznyov [candidate in the district No. 209] licking a machine tool when visiting some factory," she said. "The workers and directors were saying how good he is."
 "If I were to want to visit a factory, I would be lucky if they even let me in, not to mention meeting any directors; they would all be hiding," she said.
 Khakamada said she had tried several times to set up debates with Seleznyov, but he was repeatedly unavailable and could not be even reached personally to hear her proposal.
 The City Court declined Khakamada's appeal to strike Seleznyov's registration as a candidates on grounds that he had abused administrative resources, Interfax reported Monday.
 During the current election campaign, the court has heard three complaints in total but ruled that only one candidate is to be struck from the list of city candidates, Interfax quoted Dmitry Krasnyansky, deputy head of the City Election Commission, as saying Friday.
 "The court made its ruling only for Irina Rodnina's complaint to remove the registration of Alexander Morozov, [a candidate in District No. 207]," Krasnyansky said. "Competitors appeals to remove current deputies Oksana Dmitriyeva [from District No. 213] and Yuly Rybakov [of District No. 206] failed.".
 The campaign looked "flabby," he added, and expressed his hope that "it would be given a dynamic of some sort a few days before the voting."
 Monday was the last day a candidate could be taken off the list by court decision, according to the federal election law.
 The media is not allowed to publish any poll ratings or surveys starting Tuesday, five days before the election day, Sunday Nov. 7.
 Khakamada complained her campaigners had been physically attacked. One of her assistants was severely beaten up on the street and all her campaign materials stolen, she said.
 "The woman received concussion and her cell phone was broken apart by two guys who were screaming that she should get out of there with 'her Khakamada,'" she said, pointing out that her opponents often stress that she is of part-Japanese origin and does not live in St. Petersburg.
 Khakamada also said Seleznyov has little chance of continuing as speaker.
 "It was always the case that the speaker was representative of a majority or a candidate approved by the party of power," Khakamada said. "That was true with [Ivan] Rybkin or Seleznyov. As for now, I hope Sergei Shoigu will not leave his post as Emergency Minister ... that leaves [Boris] Gryzlov to be the speaker, and if he is, we'll be expecting a new person to be appointed Interior Minister."


TITLE: St. Petersburg Has One of Highest HIV Infection Rates
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Four hundred out of every 100,000 St. Petersburg residents are HIV-positive, says Aza Rakhmanova, head of St. Petersburg center for HIV-positive mothers and children.
 
This puts St. Petersburg into the five administrative regions with the gloomiest statistics, Interfax reported her saying Monday.
 According to the latest data of St. Petersburg AIDS Prevention Center, the city has recorded 20,873 cases of HIV since 1987. 
 "Most of the infected are young people," Rakhvanova said.
 More than half of those infected are aged 20 to 40, with one fifth of those infected aged from 15 to 18.
 Until 1999 St. Petersburg registered about 100 new cases of HIV-positive people every year, most of who were infected through sexual contact. In 1999 the city registered only 440 new cases.
 However, in 2000 the city's infection rate grew by seven times due to the increased of abuse of drugs in the city, and made 5,417 new cases. In 2001 the number of new cases was 22 times that of 1999 to 10,119 people.
 However, last year the number of new cases nearly halved to 5,037 and the trend for a lower number of new cases has continued this year with only 1,949 recorded in the firsts nine months. 
 However, a worrying tendency is that heterosexual transmission is accounting for an ever greater number of new cases. Last year heterosexual transmission accounted for only 5 percent of new cases but they accounted for 11.7 percent of new cases in the first six months of this year.
 While much of the initial spread was confined to intravenous drug users sharing infected equipment; these people are relatively isolated from the majority of the population. Heterosexual transmission on the other hand, especially if sex workers are infected, can expose more of the population to HIV risks. 
 Rakhmanova said St. Petersburg is characterized by a big number of HIV-positive pregnant women.
 Within the whole period of registration more than 1,000 children were born from HIV-positive mothers, she said.
 "Of course, not all of those children will be infected, only a third of them," Rakhmanova said.
 Meanwhile, a recent UNAIDS report on Russia put the country high in the list of AIDS spreading next to Central Asia and some other countries of Eastern Europe.
 HIV infections continue to rise in the Baltic States, Russia and Ukraine. In Central Asia, the epidemic is expanding rapidly, the report said.
 These are the worst-affected areas, but HIV continues to spread in Belarus, Moldova and Kazakhstan, while more recent epidemics are now evident in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. 
 It is now estimated that around 1 million people aged 15-49 are living with HIV in Russia (although various estimates put the figure at between 600,000 and 1.5 million), according to the World Health Organization.
 One survey in Russia found fewer than half of teenagers aged 16 to 20 use condoms when having sex with casual partners. The percentage of sex workers reporting consistent condom use has seldom topped 50 percent, while, among injecting drug users, fewer than 20 percent on average report consistent condom use.
 By some estimates, there could be as many as 3 million injecting drug users in Russia. 
 Most of these drug users are male and many are very young in St. Petersburg, studies found that 30 percent of them were under 19 years of age, while, in Ukraine, 20 percent were still in their teens. A survey of Moscow youth aged 15-18 found that 12 percent of males had injected drugs.
 By the end of 2002, a cumulative total of 229,000 people had been officially diagnosed with HIV. Almost a quarter (50,400) of that total was added in 2002 alone, indicating that the epidemic is growing quickly. 
 These reported cases almost certainly grossly underestimate the number of people living with HIV, the UNAIDS report said.
 
 


TITLE: Police Shun Raped Foreigner
AUTHOR: By Alina Ledovaya
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A foreign woman who was raped in St. Petersburg says going to the local police for help was a humiliating ordeal and only added insult to injury.
 
Sasha, who was willing to be identified, but whose name has been changed on the advice of her lawyer, said that at the beginning of November after a night out with friends a man attacked her on the staircase to her St. Petersburg apartment. He threatened to disfigure her if she resisted or made any sound, and then had sex with her.
 After the attack, she ran downstairs and called for help. The neighbors caught her alleged attacker almost immediately and called the police.
 "When the police had him in their custody I thought that everything was over, that he would be punished," said Sasha, a citizen of a European Union member country, who has lived in the city for 2 1/2 years and speaks good Russian. Some other matters relevant to her case have not been mentioned in this report on the advice of her lawyer.
 However, despite all the evidence - the alleged attacker, his victim, witnesses and fresh evidence of the assault - it was not enough for the police.
 The police press service denied all Sasha's allegations, saying they could not be true. The service said Sasha had been in a state of shock when she had contacted police and that this could mean she had mixed up her facts. 
 The service specifically denied one of Sasha's allegations, that a policeman had been drunk on duty, saying this was impossible. 
 The service also said that her alleged attacker would not have been released if there were reasons to suspect he was guilty - in fact, Sasha had been acquainted with her attacker before the incident.
 Sasha says she had never met the man before.
 Sasha said that while she was stating her evidence at a police station, one policeman, who was drunk, made jokes about her. He said she was unattractive and that Russian girls were much more beautiful than she was. 
 In the morning an investigator told Sasha that her story sounded very "romantic," she said.
 "They treated me as if I were lying," Sasha said in an interview, "and repeatedly asked me if I was sure that I wanted to open a criminal case." 
 A Russian friend, who came to help Sasha as soon as she found out what happened, corroborates Sasha's account.
 Investigators asked lots of questions about Sasha's sex life and accused her of behaving badly, the women say.
 "They suggested to me that it wouldn't have happened to me if I had come home earlier, as if in this country there is a time when everything is permitted; as if after 11 p.m. rapists and murderers can commit crimes and go unpunished," Sasha said. 
 The investigator also hinted that Sasha had shady friends, such as artists, musicians and journalists, and that she was leading an abnormal life, the women said.
 After the humiliating questioning, Sasha was taken to hospital, where she had to wait 1 1/2 hours for tests, she said. The police officers hadn't given her the special medical form that was necessary for the examination, so the doctor had problems registering the case. 
 He refused to examine her mouth - the rapist had forced Sasha to have oral sex - saying the hospital does not perform such tests. Sasha believes an examination could have produced crucial evidence in the case. 
 Meanwhile, her alleged attacker gave his version to the police of what had happened, saying the sex was consensual. He was let go.
 Only at 8 a.m., when Sasha called her lawyer and asked her employer for help, was she given detailed instructions on what she should do. 
 A week later, on the advice of her lawyer, Sasha went to the Official Examination Laboratory on Yekaterinsky Prospekt, where she was given an official medical report; meanwhile, prosecutors opened a criminal case.
 Sasha is also gathering evidence and waiting for the court hearings, but says she lacks evidence.
 "If I had done everything right from the very beginning, if I known what to do, I might now be able to prove that this young man is guilty."
 Sasha said she wants the man to be imprisoned and cured, as he is a danger to society. He likely has some mental disorder, she said. 
 The police press service said that this year 153 reports of rape were registered with city police and 92 criminal cases have been opened. 
 The Women's Crisis Center says Sasha's experience is all too familiar, and that it is one of several hundred that occur in the city each year. 
 In 2003, 60 cases were reported to the center, but staff say the figure is incomplete; far from all assaulted women seek help there.
 Most rapes in Russia never lead to convictions because women do not know what to do, the center says. 
 "Their first human reaction is to wash themselves and throw away the clothes and everything that reminds them of rape, thus they annihilate the evidence," said Anna, a staff psychologist.
 "And besides, the system doesn't work in our country," she added.
 "When a raped woman goes to a hospital, a doctor can refuse to record her injures just because he doesn't have special application forms or because he doesn't want to get involved [since the doctor could be required to give evidence later in court]," she said.
 There is only one Official Examination Laboratory in the city and it works weekdays only until 3 p.m. If women are attacked on Friday evening, there is therefore little chance that an authoritative medical examination will be conducted.
 The Women's Crisis Center offers victims psychological, legal and medical aid. The service is free and the center gives advice on what to do if raped.
 According to their advice, if a rape is committed, the woman should:
 - immediately call her closest friend or relative, or call the Women's Crisis Center confidential number, 327-30-00 (English is spoken), or the city's psychological service, 427-71-04
 - take someone with her to the police station to avoid any psychological pressure (if the victim is a foreigner, it is important to talk to police officers only through an interpreter)
 - file a written declaration that details exactly what happened and describes the attacker thoroughly. Ask for a copy of this declaration.
 - ask for a medical examination (do not wash; give clothing to the examiner) at the Official Examination Laboratory (Yekaterinensky Prospekt, 10 tel. 544-80-34) or go to the nearest hospital.
 - hire a lawyer and get psychological help, or go to the Women's Crisis Center.
 - if the victim is a foreigner, she should contact her consulate as soon as possible.
 In many cases, women are so psychologically depressed that they believe the rape was their own fault and often do not even try to call the police, psychologist Anna said.
 Those who do contact the police are often treated badly, and afterward decline to open a criminal case, so rapists feel that they can commit crimes with impunity, she added.
 "We - doctors, police and women's crisis centers - should work together, very closely and professionally," Anna said. "Only in this way will we be strong enough to prevent violence."
 


TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Peacekeepers to Liberia
 

MOSCOW (AP) - President Vladimir Putin has ordered 40 military officers to be sent to Liberia to serve in the United Nations' peacekeeping mission, the Kremlin said Monday. 
 Putin's order, which was released by the presidential press service, said the officers would serve in the mission's headquarters and also work as liaison officers and military observers. 
 The United Nations has deployed peacekeepers to help the West African country recover from a four-year civil war after an August cease-fire was agreed between rebels and the government. The peacekeeping contingent is slated to grow to 15,000. 
 
 
Grenade Blast
 

VLADIKAVKAZ, North Ossetia (AP) - One boy was killed and four others were injured in southern Russia when a hand grenade they were playing with exploded, emergency officials said Monday. 
 Two of the boys were in grave condition following the blast Sunday in the town of Bolta, 10 kilometers south of the regional capital Vladikavkaz, said Sergei Schchetinin of the North Ossetia branch of the Emergency Situations Ministry. 
 The explosion occurred when the boys, all aged 13 or younger, were trying to open the grenade with a rock, Schchetinin said. 
 
 
Pavlovsky Must Pay
 

MOSCOW (SPT) - Moscow's Solntsevsky district court ruled that political analyst Gleb Pavlovsky should pay 30 million rubles ($1 million) in damages to Mezhprombank founder Sergei Pugachyov, Vedomosti reported Monday.
 The court supported the libel action brought by Pugachyov against Pavlovsky, and a number of printing and electronic media outlets, for publishing a report accusing the former banker of being behind a power grab.
 Pavlovsky, regarded as one of Moscow's most influential political spin doctors, accused a group led by Pugachyov and Kremlin officials Igor Sechin and Victor Ivanov of mounting "a creeping coup" and creating a "parallel center of power," the paper reported.
 Pavlovsky called the amount of damages awarded "absurd" and said he plans to appeal.
 
 
Candidates Struck Off 
 

MOSCOW (SPT) - Courts disbarred two opposition candidates from the State Duma elections over the weekend. 
 Yury Shefler, an exiled vodka tycoon, was struck off the Union of Right Forces' party list, while Anatoly Bykov, a former chairman of the Krasnoyarsk Aluminum plant, was barred from standing as a Communist Party candidate for the Achinsk single-mandate district.
 The Central Elections Commission requested the cancellation of Shefler's candidacy last week.
 The court ruled that, based on FSB investigators' findings, Shefler had not signed his application in person, thus violating election procedures.
 Shelfer, who has lived outside Russia since the government wrested the country rights to Stolichnaya and other popular vodka brands from him last year, has said he will appeal the decision. In the course of the fight over the vodka brands, prosecutors accused Shelfer of threatening to kill a former deputy agriculture minister.
 
 
 and 6,000 rubles ($100-$200).
 
 
 <b>Multiplex Mania
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The St. Petersburg Banking House announced plans to invest $45 million over 1.5 years in developing a chain of nine multiplex movie theaters in St. Petersburg, Interfax reported Epos company general director Eduard Pichugin as saying Monday.
 The first multiplex, the 940-seat Kronverk Cinema, was opened Nov. 27 at the Zanevsky Kaskad shopping center. The completed chain will offer 11,000 seats and 57 screens in shopping centers throughout the city. Four theaters are slated to open in 2004.
 
 
<b>$71M Housing Order
 </b>

HELSINKI (Bloomberg) - YIT Oyj, the Finnish construction company that bought ABB Ltd.'s Nordic building-systems unit, said it won a 60 million-euro ($71.6 million) order to build four apartment blocks in the former Russian capital of St. Petersburg.
 YIT will sell the 1,318 apartments after their completion by the end of 2005, the Helsinki-based company said in a Hugin statement.
 
 
<b>$60M Terminal 
 </b>

ST.PETERSBURG (Prime-Tass) - St. Petersburg's leading boat excursion operator Arctur Travel plans to build a sea passenger and cargo terminal worth $60 million in St.Petersburg by 2005, Nikolai Khvoschchinsky, director of the state company in charge of governmental sea transportation orders, said Friday. 
 The construction project is expected to be ready in the first quarter of 2004, when the company will start building, he said. 
 
 
<b>City Clean Up
 </b>
<style text>ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Most factories will be moved from St. Petersburg's center over the next five to six years, Governor Valentina Matviyenko told a gathering of builders Wednesday, Interfax reported. Matviyenko pointed to 200 factories in the city that, in addition to being an eyesore, "break environmental, fire protection and other norms."
 Matviyenko jealously protects industry itself and was quoted as saying that "we shouldn't let the income from the city's factories go to another region," meaning that relocation does not mean banishment from St. Petersburg. <b>RusAl Buys Into Rival
 </b>

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's top aluminum producer, Russian Aluminum (RusAl), said on Friday it had bought at an auction a 14-percent government stake in Metallurg firm controlled by the rival No. 2 aluminum company, SUAL. 
 "We confirm the acquisition of the Metallurg stake," a RusAl spokeswoman said. She declined further comment. 
 Metallurg includes Russia's smallest aluminum smelter, Volkhov, and the Pikalyovo alumina refinery, located in northwestern Russia. 
 In November 2002, RusAl bought a 32 percent stake in Nadvoitsy aluminum smelter, also controlled by SUAL, but later sold it to the rival company. 
 
 
<b>Oil Tariffs Raised
 </b>

MOSCOW (Bloomberg) - Transneft, Russia's crude-oil pipeline monopoly, will increase oil shipment charges 8.62 percent from Jan. 1 after the government agreed to raise tariffs, Interfax reported, citing a Federal Energy Commission decision.
 State-run Transneft, which ships most of Russia's oil, had asked for a 10 percent increase, Semyon Vainshtock, the company's chief executive, said last week.
 Russia, the world's No. 2 oil supplier after Saudi Arabia, should increase crude extraction to about 420 million tons of oil next year, from an estimated 412 million tons in 2003, Vainshtock said.
 
 
<b>PM Sees 4% Growth
 </b>

MOSCOW (Bloomberg) - Russia's economy may grow between 4 percent and 4.5 percent next year, Interfax quoted Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov as saying Friday.
 "There are reasons to believe that we have already guaranteed a 4 percent rise in GDP, irrespective of the price of oil and other commodities," Kasyanov said, according to Interfax. "One can in fact expect an increase of 4 percent to 4.5 percent."
 Russia is forecasting growth of 6.6 percent this year, a fifth year of growth. Gross domestic product grew 4.3 percent in 2002, 5 percent in 2001, 10 percent in 2000 and 6.4 percent in 1999, a year after the government's default on $40 billion of domestic bonds and the ruble's devaluation left the economy in near-collapse. <b>'Ongoing' Restoration
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The Culture Ministry will not cut the level of funding for the restoration of historic monuments in St. Petersburg, Interfax quoted Culture Minister Mikhail Shvydkoi as saying on Monday.
 "The attention to the city will be no less than it was for the [300-year anniversary] festivities," he said. "I always said that the city would not stop with the anniversary. I hope that it will live to all eternity."
 The ministry's funding is part of a federal program that covers more than 600 historical sites. The program is due to run until 2010.
 
 
<b>Radioactive Car
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - A train car traveling between Riga and Moscow that was found to have above-normal levels of radioactivity was returned to Latvia, Interfax reported on Monday.
 The radioactivity was noticed during a customs inspection at the Sebezh station in the Pskov region, the news agency said, citing the press service of the Northwest regional arm of the Emergencies Ministry.
 Passengers on the car were transfered to another car and continued on to Moscow, the report said.
 
 
<b>New Appointments
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The St. Petersburg city administration has named Anna Mityanina head of its legal committee, Interfax reported on Monday.
 Mityanina was formerly acting head of the committee, the report said.
 Other appointments include Nina Shubina, who was made head of the committee for working with executive organs, and Konstantin Kondakov, who was made first deputy head of the administration.
 Mikhail Brodsky was also named the governor's representative to the Legislative Assembly while Vitaly Azarov, formerly St. Petersburg's representative in Moscow, was named the first deputy chief of administration. 
 
 
<b>Official Charged
 </b>
<style text>ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The former head of the Kirovsky district of St. Petersburg was charged with taking bribes, Interfax reported on Monday.
 The St. Petersburg prosecutor's office opened a criminal case against Vladimir Yarmin on Nov. 20. 
 A spokeswoman for the prosecutor's office was quoted as saying that the case would go to court in two months, once the victim and suspect have familiarized themselves with the case.
 Yarmin stands accused of taking 160,000 rubles and no less than $100,000 from a construction company "in exchange for being able to engage in business without hindrance," the prosecutor's office said.
 
 
<b>Drug Arrest
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Pulkovo airport customs officials detained a tax inspector from the Kalininsky district of St. Petersburg on Friday as she attempted to smuggle 49 tablets (13.5 grams) of the drug MDMA in luggage stashed in a suitcase, Interfax reported.
 Law enforcement agents immediately began tracing the source of the drug, stating that the suspect was "an active member of a local criminal group."
 The suspect reportedly attempted to board an airplane bound for Magadan when her luggage was inspected. <b>Sniper To Testify
 </b>

CHESAPEAKE, Virginia (AP) - Attorneys for sniper suspect Lee Boyd Malvo have subpoenaed convicted mastermind John Allen Muhammad to testify, raising the possibility that Muhammad could speak on the younger man's behalf.
 Muhammad, whose trial ended last week with a Virginia Beach jury recommending the death sentence, still faces prosecution in several other states.
 His attorneys don't want to do anything to aid those prosecutions, in the hope they can get the Virginia death sentence overturned on appeal or reduced by the trial judge when Muhammad is formally sentenced in February.
 Last Tuesday, Malvo prosecutor Robert Horan Jr. said the chance that Muhammad will take the stand in the Malvo case is "zero." But Cooley said he has not received any notification from Muhammad's lawyers that they will try to quash the subpoena.
 
 
<b>Mussolini To Form Party
 </b>

ROME (Reuters) - Alessandra Mussolini says she will form her own political party, after quitting the right-wing National Alliance this week when its leader publicly condemned her grandfather Benito, Italy's Fascist former dictator. 
 The once-aspiring actress and model has long been at odds with party leader and Deputy Prime Minister Gianfranco Fini, who shifted the National Alliance more to the centre and this week visited Israel to symbolically cut the party's ties to fascism. Mussolini has often said she is fiercely proud of her grandfather and during her 1992 election campaign many Italians flocked to her, bearing dog-eared pictures of "Il Duce" and giving her the Roman salute, one of Benito's trademarks.
 
 
<b>Taliban Frees Prisoner
 </b>

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - Taliban insurgents freed a Turkish road engineer who was kidnapped a month ago in southern Afghanistan, officials said Sunday. 
 Hasan Onal was returned in good health to the Turkish Embassy in Kabul on Sunday, after he was handed over by Taliban to tribal elders in a southern province, then passed to government officials and flown to the capital. 
 Onal, an employee of the Turkish company Gulsan-Cukurova, was abducted Oct. 30 along with his Afghan driver while returning by car to a camp for construction workers repairing the Kabul-Kandahar highway.
 
 
<b>Pakistan Allows Flights
 </b>

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) - Pakistan will allow Indian airlines to resume flights in its airspace, President Pervez Musharraf said Sunday - the latest sign of improving relations between the South Asian nuclear rivals.
 The neighbors severed air service and road and railway links last year amid tensions that led them to the brink of war. The last flights were on Jan. 1, 2002. 
 Since India called in April for a resumption of dialogue between the two countries, relations have improved. They have restored some bus links, and on Wednesday began a cease-fire on the military line that divides the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir.
 
 
<b>Japan Destroys Rocket
 </b>

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan destroyed a rocket carrying two spy satellites for monitoring secretive neighbor North Korea minutes after launching it on Saturday, echoing failures that dogged its space program in the late 1990s. 
 North Korea is believed to be developing nuclear weapons, and the satellites, along with two others launched in March, had been promoted as a significant boost to Japanese intelligence gathering. 
 The failure is an extreme embarrassment for Japan just weeks after neighboring China put a man into space. There was no immediate word on the cost of the launch. A spokesman for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said that part of a booster rocket had not separated as expected. 


TITLE: Matviyenko Asks Putin for More Funding
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko has asked President Vladimir Putin for additional funding so that big city projects can proceed at pace.
 
She asked the president for additional federal funding of 200 million rubles ($6.7 millon) for the next year. She believes that the 108 million rubles already earmarked is far short of what the city needs. 
 In 2003, St. Petersburg received 370 million rubles from the federal government. 
 Matviyenko said she wanted to accelerate work on the city's ongoing ring road project and keep on restoring works in the historical center of St. Petersburg.
 &quot;To keep up the current pace of restoration, the city needs 300 million rubles from the state per year,&quot; Interfax quoted Matviyenko as saying. 
 The governor also expressed her concern with lack of funding for the repairs to the city metro, but she promised that the connection between Lesnaya and Ploshchad Muzhestva stations will be fully restored next year. 
 &quot;On May 27, we will organize a test train ride, and we are planning to fully resume the operations by June 30, 2004,&quot; Matviyenko said.
 Putin asked for the ring road to be finished by the end of 2007. The scheduled finish date for the much-delayed project of 2008 is too long to wait, he said.
 &quot;We mustn't slow down and lose the tempo we have reached during the preparations for the St. Petersburg's 300th anniversary,&quot; Interfax quoted Putin as saying. 
 Putin was in St. Petersburg for a series of meetings with Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Madgyessy, Armenian president Robert Kocharian and Matviyenko.
 At a news conference after the talks with Madgyessy on Saturday, Putin said the two leaders discussed the consequences of Hungary joining the European Union.
 &quot;We are very happy for Hungary that the country will shortly join the EU but we have some reservations as well because when the country joins the European Union, it will have to adjust its trade with Russia to the existing EU restrictions,&quot; Putin said. &quot;We must do whatever possible for the positive process of EU enlargement not to damage the Russian-Hungarian relations.&quot; 
 Sergei Prikhodko, deputy head of presidential administration, said Saturday that the two presidents have agreed to work on the visa regime between their countries.
 Also Saturday, Putin laid wreaths to the graves of slain democrat politician Galina Starovoitova and the late mayor of St. Petersburg Anatoly Sobchak, who introduced Putin to politics. 
 The same day, Dmitry Medvedev, head of presidential adiministration attended the opening of the Anatoly Sobchak Memorial Museum at the Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace on Nevsky Prospekt. 
 &quot;In the photographs at this museum we see the people who were among the founders of democracy in Russia,&quot; Medvedev said at the opening ceremony. &quot;There are quite a few things that we don't regret we have parted with but there is also a lot to feel nostalgic for.&quot;
 Matviyenko told Putin that she has finished forming her new administration. 
 &quot;Heading all leading committees - construction, economics, finance and energetics - will be young top managers aged in their 30s and 40s with experience in business,&quot; Matviyenko said Saturday. 
 Putin encouraged the new governor: &quot;As the new government has been formed, it is the very time to start fulfilling the promises given during the election campaign,&quot; Putin said.
 On Saturday night, he attended the President's Cup judo tournament. 
 Interfax quoted Putin's former judo coach, Anatoly Rakhlin, as saying that having a sports background clearly helps the president to keep up with his high pressure work. 
 &quot;Of course, you wouldn't call the president a professional sportsman but Vladimir Putin swims, runs and goes skiing not because he is president of Russia but because he needs it and he is competitive,&quot; Rakhlin said.

TITLE: Fewer Visas Refused
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The refusal rate for applications for U.S. visas in St. Petersburg is falling, Interfax quoted Christopher Misciagno, consul at the U.S. Consulate General, as saying Friday.
 
In the financial year ending Sept. 30, 2002 only 17 percent of applications were refused compared to a 24-percent refusal rate during the previous financial year, Misciagno said.
 The figures contradict what St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko told U.S. Ambassador Alexander Vershbow during a visit to St. Petersburg last month.
 &quot;It has become more difficult to get a visa, and we get a lot of complaints from St. Petersburg residents,&quot; Interfax reported her as saying then.
 Vershbow had replied that despite new, stricter visa rules &quot;the number of denials did not change and is about 20 percent.&quot; 
 Misciagno said one common reason for refusal is that applicants did not have Russian citizenship.
 &quot;It's hard for such applicants to receive visas because it is difficult for them to show that they have strong ties to Russia, especially if they have been living here only two to three years,&quot; he was quoted as saying.
 Other applicants less likely to be issued a U.S. visa include those without a permanent job, recent graduates, single people and those with neither &quot;good income or strong family ties&quot; in Russia, Misciagno was quoted as saying.
 There is no gender discrimination when deciding to issue a visa; the number of men and women receiving visas is about equal, he said.

TITLE: Prosecutor Pressures Courts, Judge Says
AUTHOR: By Caroline McGregor
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Elections, the independence of the courts and a high-profile furniture scandal converged Monday, as a Moscow City Court judge accused the Prosecutor General's Office of pressuring the court to issue rulings in its favor.
 
Judge Olga Kudeshkina, who is running for the State Duma from a single-mandate district in the Moscow region, said in a speech to voters that prosecutors have exerted &quot;unprecedented pressure&quot; on judges hearing criminal cases, in violation of the law.
 Kudeshkina has said she was pressured to rule in favor of prosecutors when hearing the case of Pavel Zaitsev, the Interior Ministry investigator who headed a disputed probe into fraud at the Grand and Tri Kita furniture stores.
 In the latest chapter of the case, which has run for three years, the Moscow City Court on Nov. 3 handed Zaitsev a two-year suspended sentence for abuse of office.
 The Prosecutor General's Office in November 2000 had charged Zaitsev with overstepping legal bounds in his investigation of furniture importers allegedly tied to the two stores, which were suspected of listing artificially low weights to minimize customs duties.
 Prosecutors also said Zaitsev had conducted 12 unauthorized apartment searches and had detained two suspects without cause.
 But in September 2002, the Moscow City Court cleared Zaitsev of all charges, ruling that prosecutors had not presented sufficient evidence of his guilt. 
 In an interview Monday on Ekho Moskvy radio, Kudeshkina said that with Zaitsev's acquittal, prosecutors who sought a guilty verdict &quot;felt their prestige in the eyes of society had been injured.&quot;
 The Prosecutor General's Office appealed to the Supreme Court, which sent Zaitsev's case back to be heard by a new panel of judges, including Kudeshkina.
 Kudeshkina said in the course of hearing the case, Olga Yegorova, the chairman of the court, had summoned her to her chambers and made it clear what decision was expected. 
 Yegorova and the Prosecutor General's Office &quot;act as one, having a common interest in the Zaitsev case,&quot; Kudeshkina said, singling out First Deputy Prosecutor General Yury Biryukov as being behind Yegorova's interference.
 Judges on low state salaries are subject to pressure that comes in different forms, she said. Stubborn judges risk having their salaries cut, authority restricted and fringe benefits revoked.
 &quot;In my experience, this is not an isolated instance of a court case being used for political or commercial or personal interests,&quot; said Kudeshkina, who has 20 years experience on the bench. &quot;Today it's Zaitsev, tomorrow it could be any one of us. No one is protected.&quot;
 Kudeshkina said she had decided to run for the Duma in order to make judges less vulnerable to outside pressure.
 &quot;With what's happening now, it's impossible to keep silent,&quot; she said. &quot;If judges are quiet, then the country could become a judicial basket case.&quot;
 Prosecutors dismissed the allegations as a publicity ploy. &quot;This is an unconcealed campaign speech,&quot; Natalya Vishnyakova, a spokeswoman for the Prosecutor General's Office, told Interfax Monday. &quot;What else can you say when she saved up all her rage almost half a year? The events she's talking about happened this summer.&quot;
 Genri Reznik, the head of the Moscow Bar Association, said Kudeshkina's allegations were serious and deserved &quot;intense scrutiny&quot; by a qualified group of judges. If confirmed, such intervention &quot;bears the markings of a criminal offense. Of course it's a scandal. I can't recall a recent time when a judge has been so outspoken,&quot; he said.
 Lawyer Dmitry Afanasiev attributed the problems to a loophole that exists in Russian legislation. In contrast to laws in the United States, there is no prohibition on lawyers from either side, representing the government or private individuals, meeting one-on-one with a judge to present their views before the case is heard. 
 &quot;It's a mini-judicial process, before the judicial process,&quot; he said. &quot;The name of the game is who gets access to the judge first, and who will be heard more. It's totally ridiculous, but that's the basic flaw.&quot;

TITLE: Matviyenko Booed at Rock Concert
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: St. Petersburg governor Valentina Matviyenko was booed when she arrived at Boris Grebenshchikov's 50th anniversary concert at the Oktyabrsky Concert Hall on Thursday to decorate the lead singer of the seminal local rock band Akvarium with a state honor.
 
Earlier in the month, President Vladimir Putin signed a decree awarding Grebenshchikov the Order of Merit for the Motherland (4th grade) medal for his &quot;great contribution to development of the art of music.&quot;
 Many in the audience reacted with hostility while Matviyenko was delivering a lengthy, Soviet-era-worded speech. 
 &quot;Akvarium's music has always met the expectations of youth,&quot; she said, and even &quot;It's thanks to you that rock music has become the 20th century's classic.&quot;
 The speech and ceremony did not fit well with the spirit of the band, according to some members of the audience.
 &quot;Most people who go to Akvarium concerts know the history of rock and roll in Russia very well, including the role of such people as Matviyenko, who was a boss at the local department of culture in the 1980s,&quot; said Andrei Burlaka, the editor of the local web publication Rock-n-Roll.ru, who was at the concert.
 &quot;I think that most people saw it as false and unscrupulous. Grebenshchikov has always been outside politics. Flirting with the authorities was seen as unworthy [for underground rock musicians]. I think that everybody felt the falseness of the moment.&quot;
 Grebenshchikov has been generally seen as kind of spokespman for his generation, like Bob Dylan in the West, while Akvarium was considered subversive and frequently banned from playing concerts under communist rule. The band reacted by developing a system of underground, private apartment concerts.
 In one particularly vicious clamp-down on the band, Grebenshchikov was fired from his job and expelled from the Komsomol after he unleashed a performance at a rock festival in Tbilisi in 1980.

TITLE: Russians in U.S. Have Voice
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Votes by Russian citizens living in the United States are unlikely to have a big influence on the outcome of voting in electoral district No. 209 in St. Petersburg, Interfax quoted Nikolai Konkin, a member of the Central Electoral Commission responsible for the Northwest, as saying Friday.
 
Votes by Russian citizens living in the U.S. can be counted in city elections.
 &quot;According to a consular list are about 40,000 Russian citizens there and polling stations will be organized in New York, Washington, San Francisco and Seattle,&quot; Konkin was quoted as saying. Many Russians will have to travel several 100 kilometers to take part in the elections.
 &quot;In the past only 2 percent to 5 percent of eligible [Russian] voters in the U.S. actually vote,&quot; he added.
 Interfax reported that during a visit to St. Petersburg last month U.S. ambassador Alexander Vershbow asked Governor Valentina Matviyenko about the local electoral district, where an &quot;interesting contest is underway between Deputy State Duma Speaker Irina Khakamada and Speaker Gennady Seleznyov,&quot; in which immigrants' votes may be a crucial factor.

TITLE: Call to Send Troops Home
AUTHOR: By Arthur Max
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MAASTRICHT, Netherlands (AP) - Georgia's acting president Nino Burdzhanadze called Monday for a swift withdrawal of Russian troops and said her country had earned the right to be integrated into Europe after its peaceful revolution. 
 
With Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov looking on, Burdzhanadze accused Russia of undermining Georgian sovereignty by supporting separatist provinces and by hosting their leaders last week in Moscow. 
 That meeting &quot;ruined all the positive messages&quot; sent by Russia when it helped broker the resignation of former president Eduard Shevardnadze, she said at a meeting of foreign ministers of the 55-nation Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe. 
 It was Burdzhanadze's debut appearance outside Georgia since the popular uprising sparked by the elections denounced by the opposition as fraudulent. 
 Burdzhanadze held out an offer of better relations, saying the new leadership &quot;is ready to step out of the box of historical tragedies&quot; with Russia. 
 Ivanov met last Thursday in Moscow with the leaders of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, two provinces that declared themselves independent republics in the early 1990s. They have not been internationally recognized. 
 Burdzhanadze later met privately with Ivanov in a small conference room. Details of the meeting were not available. She also was likely to meet U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell Tuesday, the final day of the two-day conference.

TITLE: Shoigu Takes United Russia Dance to Perm
AUTHOR: By Carl Schreck
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: PERM, Ural Mountains - With a healthy dose of populism, Sergei Shoigu took the United Russia show to Perm on Friday, showing off his soccer skills and offering a vision of Russia's future geography that could make for some nervous neighbors.
 
&quot;In the end, I hope we live to see the day when we again have a huge country within the borders of the Soviet Union,&quot; said Shoigu, emergency situations minister and No. 2 on the federal list of the pro-Kremlin party.
 The statement at the Perm Drama Theater was met with resounding applause from the crowd of 1,000 that was bused in to support the unification of the Perm region and its smaller neighbor, the Komi-Permyak autonomous district. A referendum on unification will be held next Sunday, the same day as the State Duma elections.
 Shoigu, one of Russia's most popular politicians, traveled to this industrial city of 1 million in the southern foothills of the Urals to stump for United Russia ahead of the elections. But his expansionist pronouncement left journalists puzzled about what exactly he meant by &quot;within the borders of the Soviet Union.&quot;
 At the press conference following the speech, he didn't exactly clear things up, saying only that he was talking about reunification in geographical terms, not political.
 When asked how he envisions such a process, Shoigu sat silently for 13 seconds before unleashing another head-scratcher.
 &quot;Would you like the Russian national hockey team to win the world championship?&quot; he barked. Those present could only exchange confused looks.
 Then, having apparently collected his thoughts, Shoigu said he sees such a reunification as similar to the creation of a Russian-Belarussian union: &quot;hard, difficult and long.&quot;
 Shoigu responded to follow-up questions on the matter with a threat to end the press conference, ensuring a series of banal questions about earthquakes and his religious background.
 Shoigu, born in the traditionally Buddhist republic of Tuva, said he was baptized Russian Orthodox when he was 5 years old.
 But hockey non sequiturs aside, United Russia has an ace in Shoigu as its campaign face. Wherever there is trouble - earthquakes, floods, fires, mining accidents - the 48-year-old emergency situations minister cuts a dashing figure as he shows up in his trademark turtleneck sweater and Gore-Tex jacket to save the day.
 Though he is on the United Russia party list, Shoigu is not expected to take a Duma seat, but rather to stay on as minister.
 Vladimir Pribylovsky, who heads the Panorama think tank, said it is no mystery why Shoigu enjoys great popularity. 
 &quot;He's always on TV, and he's always saving something,&quot; Pribylovsky said.
 Perm resident Alexander Voronov, a 40-year-old construction worker, said he likes what he's seen of Shoigu and would vote for him if he ever decided to run for president. &quot;He's a responsible person,&quot; he said. &quot;He's a man of his word and a man of action.&quot;
 Shoigu's stop at the Perm Drama Theater was his fourth appearance of the day on a standard campaign menu of stops and photo-ops: meetings with small-business leaders, visits to schools and sports clubs and speeches to rally the United Russia troops.
 Earlier in the day, he visited Perm's prestigious Gymnasium No. 11 to tour the school's facilities, a tour Putin took a few weeks earlier during his visit to Perm. The school's hallways were chaotic 30 minutes before Shoigu's arrival. Raisa Zobachyova, the school's director, raced around shouting instructions to restless students on where to stand, while a boy and girl in traditional peasant costumes practiced their greeting near the front entrance.
 &quot;We're happy to welcome you to our school!&quot; the girl would say, bowing while holding a loaf of bread and a small bowl of salt in one hand, the traditional offering to guests.
 &quot;Our doors are always open for you!&quot; the boy would say.
 When Shoigu finally arrived, the welcoming duo gave a flawless and perky performance, after which 15-year-old student Dima Torchuk gave the guest of honor a guided tour of the school. Shoigu's bodyguard, who bore a striking resemblance to the Perm region's karate expert governor, Yury Trutnev, kept students and journalists from getting too close to the minister.
 During a stop at the school's Internet classroom, a school official meekly asked Shoigu's permission to hang his picture in the room. Shoigu gave a muted affirmative, to the official's obvious relief.
 After the tour, Shoigu was treated to a boys' choir rendition of the song &quot;You Don't Have to Fear,&quot; (&quot;You don't have to fear thick fog, you don't need to fear empty pockets.... You just have to fear your own cowardice.&quot;) and the school's ballerinas' performance of &quot;The Waltz of the Flowers,&quot; from Tchaikovsky's &quot;The Nutcracker.&quot;
 Shoigu's final stop was at Perm's Spartak Sports Complex, where he donned a United Russia jersey for an indoor game of soccer against a team of local United Russia members.
 Everybody loves a winner, and United Russia has not been shy about aligning itself with Russia's recent soccer success for some free PR. In September, Shoigu was shown prominently on television alongside Interior Minister and United Russia leader Boris Gryzlov and State Sports Committee head and hockey legend Vyacheslav Fetisov, cheering wildly as the national team beat Switzerland 4-1 in Moscow. 
 The win helped pave Russia's way to next year's European Championships in Portugal.
 A few days later, Gryzlov and Shoigu were photographed alongside Brazilian soccer great Pele for the opening of a soccer field in Moscow.
 The local United Russia squad hardly stood a chance Friday evening against Shoigu's squad, which, with legendary Soviet goalkeeper Rinat Dasayev in goal, won 6-4 in front of a crowd of 500. After 10 straight missed shots at close range in the first half, Shoigu eventually managed to score one goal in the second half.
 Pribylovsky said United Russia's sports politics and talk of restoring the Soviet Union play on similar emotions among voters.
 &quot;Hockey and soccer are the two most popular sports in Russia, and more than half of the population roots for one team or another,&quot; he said. 
 &quot;It's the same type of populism as the nostalgia for the Soviet Union,&quot; he added. 
 &quot;They're just trying to show unity with a majority of the population.
 &quot;The only difference is that it is a bit harder to play soccer than to sit there and wish the Soviet Union still existed.&quot;

TITLE: Deputies Pass Raft of Bills On Last Day of State Duma
AUTHOR: By Anna Dolgov
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW - To the strains of the national anthem, a half-empty State Duma on Friday ended its last session before new elections of Dec. 7, having rushed through a last-minute flurry of largely economic measures.
 
In the chamber, which emptied through the day as deputies left to go on the campaign stump, a handful of opposition lawmakers were drowned out by a chorus of self-congratulation from pro-Kremlin lawmakers.
 Deputies passed the final readings of bills on the 2004 budget, bank deposit insurance and cutting stock market trading fees.
 Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin welcomed the 245-151 passing of the budget, which included approval of a new stabilization fund aimed at creating a cushion against plunging oil prices.
 &quot;After the creation of a stabilization fund, the prospect of Russia defaulting in the foreseeable future... has greatly receded,&quot; Kudrin said after the session. &quot;This is a great final accord of the work done by the Duma. It's a bill to be proud of.&quot;
 The budget requires that the government place between $5 billion and $6 billion in the stabilization fund next year, but is not allowed to spend from the fund until it totals 500 billion rubles ($16.8 billion).
 The budget provides for a surplus of 0.5 percent of GDP, abolishes the sales tax and cuts value-added tax to 18 percent. Inflation is predicted to fall to between 8 percent and 10 percent next year - down from a predicted 12 percent this year.
 The Duma voted 371-0 to approve a bill insuring bank deposits, which is expected to aid the modernization of the banking system and protect private depositors against loss if banks go bankrupt.
 Under the bill, expected to come into force Jan. 1, deposits of up to 100,000 rubles will be fully insured, while deposits in state-owned Sberbank will be insured through a separate government fund until 2007.
 The administration hoped to speed the amendments through three readings without debate, but after the Union of Right Forces and Yabloko factions said they would not approve a second reading unless their objections were taken into account, the bill passed only a cursory first reading.
 In televised comments Friday, President Vladimir Putin thanked outgoing deputies for their &quot;joint, creative and intensive work&quot; and said he expected the same from the new Duma.
 &quot;If the Duma is efficient, a president can do a lot together with the parliament,&quot; he said. &quot;But if the Duma is involved in internal intrigues and posing before cameras... the president will be tied hand and foot.&quot;

TITLE: Nemtsov Courts Young Voters in the Urals
AUTHOR: By Oksana Yablokova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: CHELYABINSK, Ural Mountains - Some 450 students sat in a hall of the Chelyabinsk State Pedagogical University, licking ice cream cones and munching on potato chips as they waited with increasing impatience for Boris Nemtsov to show up and explain why they should vote for his Union of Right Forces, or SPS, party.
 
After 40 minutes and several announcements by school officials that Nemtsov was running late, the anger in the air was almost tangible. 
 By all appearances, it was not the best start for one of Nemtsov's final campaign trips in the run-up to the Dec. 7 State Duma elections. Nemtsov made a quick half-day visit Thursday to this freezing industrial city in the southern Urals to drum up support among young voters with a speech and a rock concert. 
 The waiting students, however, warmed up quickly to the handsome, well-spoken politician when he got on stage a few minutes later with a brief apology for being tardy.
 &quot;With 10 days left before the vote, my aim is quite obvious - to convince you to vote for the Union of Right Forces,&quot; Nemtsov told the crowd of mostly young women.
 Over the next 1 1/2 hours, he answered questions ranging from Georgia to the amount of his personal wealth, which were passed up to him on pieces of paper. He read every one of them out loud and often joked with the senders.
 &quot;So why did you and Yeltsin sell out to America?&quot; one note said.
 &quot;Yeltsin and I sold Russia, how interesting,&quot; Nemtsov said, chuckling.
 &quot;What is going on in Georgia, and how is Chubais doing these days?&quot; another note asked, referring to Unified Energy Systems chief and SPS candidate Anatoly Chubais.
 &quot;Chubais is doing great. He recently bought an energy company in Georgia, by the way,&quot; Nemtsov said.
 One student asked why he should trust Nemtsov and whether Nemtsov could offer any guarantee that his statements were more than pre-election promises.
 &quot;I have not just appeared recently, like many others have,&quot; Nemtsov said. &quot;I have been around for some time, and I will stay around. I will not vanish.&quot;
 Nemtsov discussed two key SPS policies - military reform and combating corruption - and warned students not to vote for pro-Kremlin United Russia, which he described as &quot;a party of power-hungry and corrupt bureaucrats.&quot; 
 Nemtsov wrapped up the meeting by asking the students whether they wanted to have good jobs, their own businesses, big salaries and better housing. SPS, he said, holds the key to all of these desires.
 &quot;I don't just think I have won them over. I know I have,&quot; Nemtsov said as rushed out of the hall to go to the rock concert.
 SPS won a strong 18 percent of the vote in Chelyabinsk in the 1999 Duma elections, and local party officials make no secret that they are counting on young voters this time around.
 But in the lobby an old woman stopped him, saying, &quot;Aren't you ashamed about what you have done to the country? I don't think this is something your mother taught you, or is it?&quot;
 &quot;I am not ashamed, and my mother supports me in everything I do,&quot; the 44-year-old former deputy prime minister replied.
 Some 15 minutes later he showed up at the Yunost stadium, where an SPS concert featuring the rock bands Chicherina and Serga had already started. On the way over, Nemtsov and his entourage of local party officials swapped suit coats and ties for casual sweaters.
 &quot;Honestly, I cannot sing, but I am not as bad as Zhirinovsky,&quot; Nemtsov told the crowd of several thousand people, referring to Liberal Democratic Party leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who released an album in 1999.
 But the crowd began to roar its disapproval before he could start to sing.

TITLE: Crude, Clever Tricks in Siberia
AUTHOR: By Caroline McGregor
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: NOVOSIBIRSK, Western Siberia - In a campaign environment strikingly devoid of issue debates, candidates are left to seek creative and sometimes manipulative ways to win voters' affection.
 
This is true nationwide, but it's easily visible in Novosibirsk, where anti-oligarch slogans are used against a Yukos-supported candidate for the State Duma, anti-Semitic slogans are leveled against the governor, and sports matches and vandalism are employed as publicity tools. The region will elect a governor and four Duma deputies on Dec. 7.
 The tricks can range from the crude to the clever.
 Andrei Shimkiv is the director of Novosibirsknefteprodukt, a retail subsidiary of the newly formed oil giant YukosSibneft, and he's running for a Duma seat as an independent, against the Communist incumbent.
 His campaign manager, Dmitry Petrov, complains that every time television journalists mention Shimkiv's name, &quot;he's identified as a gasoline oligarch. The want him to be seen up there with Khodorkovsky,&quot; the former Yukos chief executive.
 This particularly chafes, since Shimkiv is a company manager, not a shareholding owner. &quot;There's no logic,&quot; Petrov said. &quot;It's like calling a journalist a media magnate just for working at a paper.&quot;
 The negative coverage Shimkiv feels he recieves roots in a tangled web of backroom agreements involving regional Governor Viktor Tolokonsky, the Communist Party and the interests that control the local television stations. Through these opaque deals, the Communist Duma candidates get favorable TV coverage in exchange for not challenging Tolokonsky for the governor's seat. 
 All of Novosibirsk's leading state and private television networks are controlled by Yakov London, which has ties to Press Minister Mikhail Lesin and advertising agency Video International. These three are said to function independently of Tolokonsky's administration, though they have a cooperative relationship, said Andrei Nikolayev, director of the city's Public Policy Institute.
 The governor, meanwhile, calls the shots in mainstream newspapers, because low circulations and thin profit margins make them financially dependent on his support, said Andrei Kostyanov, a journalist who writes for Novaya Gazeta and other papers.
 Petrov said the Communists get good mileage out of pinning &quot;all economic sins and troubles from the last 15 years&quot; on Shimkiv, who is spun as the face of big business.
 Recently, he said, he has had to deal with the distribution of black PR leaflets appearing to be Shimkiv's responses to six questions. Among them: &quot;Why do gasoline prices keep rising?&quot; The answer given made Shimkiv out to be profit hungry, Petrov said, even though prices are determined by world markets and refinery costs.
 Shimkiv is not the only candidate to argue that the media unfairly give him a bad rap.
 TV reports cast suspicion on the alcohol produced and sold by local vodka baron Eduard Kozhemyakin, running for the Duma for United Russia, said Igor Reshetnikov, spokesman for the party's Novosibirsk branch. He said the leading local station links Kozhemyakin to the mafia whenever possible and notes that his business quadrupled after he was elected to the city legislature.
 Mikhail Titov, one of the five candidates running against Tolokonsky, was accused of selling poor-quality shoes through a company he founded in 1993. Titov has run as a Communist in the past, but this time around, he does not have the party's support, which observers chalk up to the governor's bargain with the Communists, who account for a solid quarter of the regional electorate.
 Given the backdrop of strong public support for the case against Yukos, it's not surprising that politicians running against these candidates would try to stoke voter resentment against wealthy businessmen.
 A candidate vandalizing his own posters or distributing ads for rivals, however, is a bit more unexpected. It may seem counterproductive at first glance but done properly, it's not.
 On several Novosibirsk roadside billboards, black paint was dribbled over the image of a local TV journalist running for governor. And a spate of sidewalk light boards promoting a Union of Right Forces candidate for the Duma and his grand plans for expanding the city's metro were smashed.
 In both cases, the defacement was rumored to be the handiwork of the candidates' own teams, not their opponents whom they accused.
 Vandalism &quot;is an excuse for a news story,&quot; Igor Patrushev, a local journalist, said over lunch in the basement of the city's press club. &quot;You get to talk about yourself, and it makes it seem like your competitors think you are a serious contender, when that might not be the case.&quot;
 Distributing a rival's campaign material can deprive him of votes, if done in a properly irritating way.
 Each car to which an opponent's sticker is pasted is at least one vote that opponent won't get, and the stickier the glue the better. Littering entryways with a flurry of flyers for another candidate makes him equally unpopular.
 Gubernatorial candidate Ivan Starikov says the playing field is tilted in Tolokonsky's favor. His campaign manager, Nadezhda Chugainova, says the city's newspapers require her staff to submit Starikov's ads three days before they run, simply so the governor's office has time to come up with a direct retort for the opposite page.
 Opposite a full-page interview with Starikov in a recent local edition of Argumenty i Fakty - paid for by his campaign - was a caricature of Starikov as a donkey and a short fable titled &quot;The Candidate Ass.&quot; It reads: &quot;One ass, deciding that all around were asses / Hatched a plan to push the lion from the director's chair ... &quot;
 A tagline at the bottom clearly stated that the mocking tale was paid for from Tolokonsky's campaign fund.
 Here, the retort came from Tolokonsky himself, but sometimes it comes in the person of Viktor Starkov, another candidate in the six-man race for governor about whom little is known.
 Starkov was a contestant four years ago, too, when Tolokonsky, then-mayor, narrowly defeated Starikov for the governor's post. It is widely thought that pro-Tolokonsky forces put Starkov on the ballot to dupe Starikov's voters into casting their vote for someone with a similar name.
 The regional administration's mouthpiece, Sovietskaya Sibir, has tried to blur any distinction between Starikov and Starkov. A Starkov ad replicated the text and layout of an adjacent one placed by Starikov, with only a handful of words changed. The picture of Starkov looked strikingly similar to Starikov.
 &quot;The idea is to make voters lose track of who's the real candidate and who's the imitation,&quot; Chugainova said.
 Tolokonsky rivals are, meanwhile, using a similar tactic. Candidate Boris Mironov, whose campaign registration documents describe him as &quot;temporarily out of work,&quot; seems to have been put forward for the express purpose of banging the anti-Semitic drum against Tolokonsky, who is Jewish. The candidate has no chance at winning, so many suspect he is being financed by a business figure with an interest in unseating Tolokonsky.
 Blocked from direct access to the media, Starikov came up with a way to get in through the back door by casting himself at the center of a hockey-match scandal, or the appearance thereof.
 Through his connections with Vyacheslav Fetisov, the head of the State Sports Committee, Starikov organized a recent hockey game between two teams of &quot;living legends&quot; - all-star veteran players now in their 50s and 60s - at the city's biggest stadium.
 A week before the match, after thousands of tickets had been given out, Starikov said the game risked getting canceled by the governor - a move that effectively cast Tolokonsky as a villain who would make a political tool of an apolitical event.
 Whether or not Tolokonsky was indeed prepared to call off the game, it ultimately took place as planned, and both Tolokonsky and Starikov claimed credit for making it happen.
 Not all tricks involve two different candidates, some involve two identical ones. Yevgeny Loginov is the face of Vladimir Zhirinovsky's ultranationalist LDPR party in Novosibirsk, having run in virtually every federal and regional election since 1993 and won election to the State Duma in 1999. This year he is running for both a single-mandate seat and for governor.
 Another Yevgeny Loginov is running in one of Novosibirsk's three other single-mandate districts, also from LDPR. Registered in Moscow, he seems to have been imported solely to stretch LDPR's reach in the region.
 &quot;You need a way to stay in the public eye,&quot; said Petrov, Shimkiv's campaign manager. &quot;So if you clone yourself, you can be two places at once and meet twice as many people. Even if people say, that's the wrong Loginov, it's already an excuse to talk about him.&quot;
 These ruses, however, can't go on forever, as people are getting wiser, said Galina Bychkovskaya, editor of state-owned Radio Slovo.
 She recalled that in the 1995 governor's race, a photo of a mansion was widely circulated that was ostensibly in Switzerland and belonged to a leading Communist figure. Four years later, in 1999, the same picture was wheeled out, this time against the incumbent governor. This time it is labeled as his home in the Canary Islands.
 &quot;We're reaching the limit of trust,&quot; Bychkovskaya said. &quot;You can only deceive people so long. Eventually they figure it out.&quot;
 


TITLE: Zhirinovsky Offers All Kinds of Aid to Voters
AUTHOR: By Greg Walters
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW - For more than an hour they streamed into Vladimir Zhirinovsky's office, handing written complaints and legal documents to the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party and asking for assistance.
 
To each, Zhirinovsky, like many politicians, promised solemnly, &quot;We'll try to help you.&quot;
 But, unlike most politicians, he often meant it more personally.
 Zhirinovsky offered short-term loans to help with utility bills. He said he would get gas supplies to apartments turned back on. He volunteered the services of LDPR lawyers.
 Visitors, in turn, thanked him and about half promised him their votes.
 &quot;This is an everyday activity,&quot; an LDPR spokeswoman said of Sunday's gathering.
 Zhirinovsky has been flying around the country and meeting with voters in a similar fashion, she said.
 &quot;Of course it's part of the campaign,&quot; she said. &quot;But this is standard. It's not just part of the campaign.&quot;
 Zhirinovsky's election campaign has entailed much more than handing out individual favors. His oratory has ranged from the populist - he has called for oligarchs and liberal reformers to be &quot;removed from the country&quot; - to the bizarre, such as a proposal to legalize polygamy as a way to deal with the declining population.
 The key to understanding Zhirinovsky as a political phenomenon is the realization that while he excels at getting attention, almost no one takes his ideas seriously, said Masha Lipman, an analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center. &quot;He's often described as an ultranationalist in the West,&quot; she said. &quot;That's part right. He's a buffoon with ultranationalist rhetoric. He always caters to the tastes of the discontented audience.&quot;
 The discontented audience was certainly in attendance Sunday.
 &quot;My dear Vladimir Volfovich. It's awful, awful,&quot; said one retiree who was on the verge of tears. &quot;Please help me. I can't live without gas. They privatized my apartment, and now they tell me my pension's not enough to pay my bills. There's no light, no heat. And my cat and dog have died.&quot;
 Zhirinovsky glanced over her gas bill. &quot;And your deputies, what are they doing about it?&quot; he said. &quot;Don't they still have deputies in the Duma? That's our democracy for you. And they dare call me a fascist. Just yesterday, Yavlinsky did it again.&quot;
 After making their cases, visitors to Zhirinovsky's office on Sunday were handed gift bags with LDPR lighters, pens, campaign literature and a CD featuring samples of Zhirinovsky's public statements laid down over electronic dance tracks.
 One song, titled, &quot;Bush Is a Shitty Cowboy,&quot; appears to use remarks Zhirinovsky has denied making. 
 Sunday, though, saw a more even-tempered politician listening to his electorate.
 One young woman, a student, complained of living in a 12-square-meter room with three other people. A limping soldier said he wasn't receiving his stipend. Most, it seemed, had some sort of financial or housing troubles.
 Zhirinovsky promised to help them all. Between cases, he blamed reformers, oligarchs and the government in general of selling out the average Russian, pounding his desk as he made his points. 
 &quot;There's democratic freedom for you,&quot; he said.

TITLE: Supreme Court Bars Former Foes of Kremlin From Polls
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Supreme Court on Saturday barred two former foes of ex-President Boris Yelstin's Kremlin from running in State Duma elections, revoking former Vice President Alexander Rutskoi's registration and upholding a decision to prevent former Prosecutor General Yury Skuratov from registering. 
 
The Supreme Court overturned a ruling from a regional court that had rejected a Communist Party official's suit to prevent Rutskoi from running in the Dec. 7 elections. It was the second time he has been prevented from running for office in recent years. 
 In Saturday's ruling, the Supreme Court agreed with claims by prosecutors and the regional Communist Party chief that Rutskoi included inaccurate information about his place of employment on his application for registration as a candidate, Interfax reported. 
 Rutskoi was jailed in 1993 after joining a hard-line opposition to Yeltsin's Kremlin and went on to serve a term as Kursk governor.
 Also Saturday, the Supreme Court upheld a ruling barring Skuratov, who was the chief prosecutor from 1995 to 1999 and investigated corruption in Yeltsin's Kremlin, from running as a candidate from the Buryatia region. 
 Skuratov also was denied registration because of problems with his statements about his place of work and, according to Interfax, he and Rutskoi had indicated the same place of employment on their registration papers - the Moscow State Social University. 
 Rutskoi and Skuratov have not been vocal opponents of the Kremlin under President Vladimir Putin. 
 Rutskoi accused the Communists of engineering his removal from the race, while Skuratov claimed the decision to bar him was politically motivated, and said he would lodge a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights, Interfax reported.

TITLE: City Pledges Transparency
AUTHOR: By Robin Munro
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: St. Petersburg's new administration wants to work with the foreign business community to make the city attractive to investors, says Mikhail Brodsky, Governor Valentina Matviyenko's representative in the Legislative Assembly.
 
&quot;I am ready to listen to any proposals from this association,&quot; he told a briefing organized by the St. Petersburg International Business Association and The St. Petersburg Times.
 He also said he could personally promote businesspeople's objectives, rather than merely pass requests on to the governor.
 &quot;I have some leeway to act on my own,&quot; he said. &quot;I will try and do everything properly and will not make the governor correct me.&quot; The administration intends to provide tax incentives, including tax credits and tax holidays, to make administrative information readily available and to slash bureaucratic hurdles, Brodsky said.
 &quot;We want to become open and transparent,&quot; Brodsky said. &quot;Any person will be entitled to have access to any information that the state authorities have, for a small fee in line with the cost of providing it.&quot;
 To address the problem of businesses having to knock on many doors in the administration to get permission to operate, Brodsky said the administration is considering creating a special agency that would see that foreign investors are treated correctly by all the authorities they have to deal with.
 A draft law &quot;On State Information Resources&quot; regulating the information policy has been prepared by the city administration and will be introduced to the Legislative Assembly shortly, but could still be amended.
 &quot;I invite you to participate in the process,&quot; he said to the assembled business people.
 Brodsky, a member of the Union of Right Forces, or SPS, party said Matviyenko is more ready to listen to ideas on how to develop business than was the previous governor Vladimir Yakovlev. Unlike Yakovlev, who toward the end of his term in office faced a hostile legislative assembly, Matviyenko has majority support from lawmakers, he said.
 Mikhail Oseyevsky, vice governor in charge of city finances, Yury Molchanov, who is to head a new committee on investment, and Andrei Chernenko, who is in charge of law enforcement, are to &quot;safeguard and streamline&quot; the administration's actions so that a good investment climate exists in the city, he added.
 Natalya Kudryavtseva, executive director of SPIBA, said Monday that the briefing was the beginning of an official dialogue between the new City executive authorities and the international business community.
 &quot;The feedback I got from SPIBA members was overall positive,&quot; she said. &quot;Brodsky brought good news to the business community: the new city administration is ready to listen to business, and to facilitate the improvement of the investment climate in St. Petersburg.
 &quot;However, it is just the beginning of the long and difficult way,&quot; she added. &quot;Lots of measures should be taken to break barriers to investment.
 &quot;Just one example is the new draft city law on corporate property tax by the St. Petersburg Legislation Assembly that abolishes the property tax concessions that were given to investors by the previous legislation and will result in the significant increase of the tax burden to investors and deterioration of the investment climate,&quot; she added.

TITLE: Mobster Casts Shadow on Gazprom Partner
AUTHOR: By Catherine Belton
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - &quot;Three Romanians with no business experience and an Israeli with alleged mob ties register a trading company in a Hungarian village. Before the company is even legally formed it is granted the rights to transport billions of dollars' worth of natural gas from Central Asia, across Russia, to Ukraine.&quot;
 
These shareholders are, at least on paper: an actress hoping to earn money to pay her phone bill, a nurse, a computer programmer, and an alleged associate of a Ukrainian-born crime lord who is on the FBI's &quot;most wanted&quot; list for money laundering, racketeering and fraud.
 Linked to the same mobster, according to the Russian government, is the head of the new company, Eural Trans Gas, which stands to gain about $1 billion a year in pre-tax profits that could have gone to Gazprom.
 Sound dodgy? For Gazprom's minority shareholders, the tale just gets worse.
 Not only has the world's biggest gas company let the little Hungarian operation take over a lucrative export channel over which it had pledged to regain control, it has also supported it with almost $300 million in loans and guarantees.
 The gas giant, according to its own financial statement for the first half of 2003, is the guarantor of a $227 million loan to Eural TG from state-owned Vneshekonombank. On top of that, Gazprombank, which is 100 percent owned by Gazprom, loaded another $70 million to the company, according to a list of the bank's 10 biggest borrowers obtained by The Moscow Times.
 Investors thought Gazprom management had put an end to such practices. When President Vladimir Putin put a loyal lieutenant, Alexei Miller, at the helm of the gas monopoly back in 2001, Miller vowed to liquidate the murky schemes used by former management to siphon off up to $3 billion a year from the company.
 Miller regained most of those lost assets and eliminated a lot of the murky trading deals that mainly benefited Itera, an octopus-like structure based in Florida and widely believed to be tied to the old management team.
 But Miller failed to retrieve one of the biggest channels - the sale of gas from Turkmenistan to Ukraine. Instead of wresting it back from Itera, as he said he would, it has been turned over to Eural TG.
 Investors say Gazprom's financial aid to Eural TG appears to point to closer connections between the two companies than Gazprom is willing to admit. They say it is a clear sign that having managers loyal to the state does not necessarily mean greater transparency.
 &quot;Gazprom's support for Eural Trans Gas does not make business sense,&quot; says William Browder, the head of Hermitage Capital Management, which owns shares in Gazprom.
 &quot;One has to question the management's motives. None of their current arguments make sense to us,&quot; he says. &quot;It does not seem in line with Putin's law-and-order campaign.&quot;
 Putin's crackdown on corruption and the jailing of Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky on charges of fraud and tax evasion to the tune of $1 billion are seen as part of a Kremlin campaign to gain greater control over the oil industry.
 &quot;The creation of Eural Trans Gas is comparable to what Gazprom did with Itera, which ultimately led to Putin's dismissal of the previous management team,&quot; says Vadim Kleiner, Hermitage's director of research.
 Others say turning over the Turkmen-Ukrainian operation to Eural TG is even more outrageous than letting Itera take over Gazprom markets in the former Soviet Union.
 &quot;This would not be the first time Gazprom has created its own competitor,&quot; says Valery Nesterov, energy analyst at Troika Dialog. &quot;But at least Itera is more solid, has its own reserves and extracts gas. Eural TG is just a trading firm that at best can be called shady.&quot;
 According to a copy of company documents obtained by The Moscow Times, Eural TG was launched with just $12,000 in start-up capital.
 
 <strong>
THE DEAL</strong>
 The contract appointing Eural TG the agent for transporting 36 billion cubic meters of gas per year from Turkmenistan to Ukraine was signed by Gazprom deputy chairman Alexander Ryazanov on Dec. 5, 2002, according to company documents.
 
Eural TG was registered in Hungary on Dec. 6, 2002.
 In return for its services, Ukraine is obliged to pay Eural TG 38 percent of the value of the deal, or 13.7 bcm in gas, according to Naftogaz Ukrainy, the Ukrainian gas monopoly that is paying Eural TG under the deal.
 Now that Eural TG is beginning to export gas from Ukraine - it already has one contract under its belt to sell Poland 2 bcm by July 2004 - it is on track to post a pre-tax profit of more than $1 billion a year if it can export the rest of the gas Ukraine pays it, even after paying Gazprom $450 million in annual fees for the use of its pipeline network.
 Gazprom says it was forced to give up the trade deal and bow to the wishes of its Ukrainian counterpart, which, it says, insisted that if Itera had to be replaced, the new agent had to be Eural TG.
 Gazprom says its $227 million loan guarantee is designed to give it leverage over Eural TG's trading deals because it is collateralized with the gas Eural TG is being paid with.
 But Naftogaz Ukrainy says that Eural TG is Gazprom's creation all the way. &quot;All the agreements with Eural Trans Gas were made by Gazprom,&quot; says Naftogaz spokesman Konstantin Borodin. &quot;It is a contractor for Gazprom.&quot;
 
 <strong>
THE MOBSTER</strong>
 Reports that Eural TG is linked to notorious Ukrainian-born organized crime lord Semyon Mogilevich, whom the British government has dubbed &quot;one of the world's top criminals,&quot; are starting to haunt Gazprom.
 
&quot;The ownership of this company is a dark story and it smells bad,&quot; says Troika's Nesterov. &quot;Potentially this is very dangerous for Gazprom.&quot;
 The respected publication Jane's Intelligence Digest was the first to blow the whistle on the company's relationship to Mogilevich.
 In January, the magazine said that it had &quot;uncovered links&quot; between Eural TG and Mogilevich, pointing out that Eural TG and a company tied to Mogilevich and headquartered in Cyprus called Highrock Properties share the same Budapest address.
 &quot;Highrock Properties' address in Israel is reportedly the same as the address of one of Eural TG's four owners, the Israeli Zeev Gordon, who, according to a copy of company filings with the Hungarian Registration Chamber, is registered as living at Tel Aviv, 35 Shaul Hamelech Street, America House.&quot;
 None of these allegations could be confirmed independently, but a copy of a letter written to Interpol by Russian Interior Ministry Major General A. P. Mordovets links the head of Eural TG, former Hungarian Education Minister Andras Knopp, to Mogilevich. Mordovets told Interpol in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Moscow Times, that Knopp helped Mogilevich create a cigarette smuggling ring in the 1990s.
 The letter, which was written in 1998 when Knopp was a vice president at major German cigarette maker Reemtsma, says Knopp supported Mogilevich's appeal for Hungarian citizenship. It says Mogilevich introduced Knopp to members of the Russian government responsible for the cigarette business. It alleges Mogilevich &quot;threatened to kill&quot; an individual who was disrupting their smuggling operation.
 German investigators began looking into Reemstma's possible involvement in cigarette smuggling in 2000, but no charges were ever filed.
 &quot;Knopp's assistant said he could not be reached for comment, but in an interview with the Kyiv Post earlier this year, Knopp confirmed Eural TG did business with Mogilevich-linked Highrock Properties. He denied, however, any ties with Mogilevich himself.&quot;
 &quot;I have never seen or heard Mogilevich on the premises of Eural TG, though he is obviously always with us because unsubstantiated news reports make the claims regularly,&quot; he told the Ukrainian newspaper. &quot;We are not hiding from anyone. We are absolutely legal, available and ready to answer questions.&quot;
 Nevertheless, the reports of ties with organized crime were compelling enough to attract the attention of the U.S. State Department. In May, the then U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Carlos Pascual, lashed out at the Gazprom-Naftogaz-Eural deal and expressed concern about the latter's links with organized crime.
 
 <strong>
PHONE BILLS</strong>
 Apart from Gordon, the other three registered shareholders of Eural TG appear to live pretty much in poverty. According to a copy of the latest company filing with the Hungarian Registration Chamber, as of Nov. 21, Eural TG's other owners are three Romanian citizens - Anca Negreanu, Mihai Savu and Louise Lukacs - who live in the town of Cluj-Napoca. The ownership structure has not changed since the company was established last December.
 
A Romanian investigative reporter, Paul Radu, who works for the Jurnalul National, a Romanian newspaper, visited these three Eural TG &quot;owners&quot; in their homes.
 &quot;Anca Negreanu and Mihai Savu are a young couple in a pretty bad financial situation,&quot; Radu wrote in the paper in March. &quot;They live in a room in Anca's mother's apartment. Anca is a nurse and also studies psychology. Mihai works for a computer software company in Cluj.&quot;
 The three were contacted by a Hungarian lawyer named Karl Ferenc who was a friend of the other Romanian shareholder, actress Louise Lukacs, and told them they could make some money if they traveled to Hungary to register as the official owners of Eural TG, he wrote.
 &quot;Karl Ferenc called me. He is an old and trusted friend. He told me to enter this business,&quot; Lukacs was quoted as saying. &quot;I accepted and I hope I will get some money out of this. At least to cover my phone bill. I have to pay more than 1 million lei [$34] every month for the phone. I don't know what exactly it is with this business. You better ask Karl.&quot;
 Attempts by The Moscow Times to contact Ferenc were unsuccessful.
 
 <strong>
NO WORRIES</strong>
 Gazprom and Naftogaz brush off concerns over Eural TG's shareholder structure and allegations of its links to organized crime.
 
When asked why Naftogaz had decided to make three Romanians and an Israeli linked to organized crime major players on the geopolitical stage, at least nominally, company spokesman Borodin says simply: &quot;Eural TG made the best offer and we took it. After working together for nearly a year, we trust the management of the company.&quot;
 Both Naftogaz and Gazprom say they knew of no contacts between Eural TG and Mogilevich and that they are unconcerned by reports to the contrary.
 &quot;[These allegations] are important only if there are official charges brought against the leaders of this company,&quot; says Gazprom spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov. &quot;Khodorkovsky is right now sitting in prison and Yukos continues to work.&quot;
 Though Gazprom and Gazprombank are now backing the company with nearly $300 million in loans, Kupriyanov says the company's shady ownership structure is of no concern either.
 &quot;We understand that this is not the most transparent company in the world. But we have no choice,&quot; he says. &quot;If we buy the company, then we will do the due diligence. But if we are lending to it, then we demand collateral.&quot;
 
 <strong>
BLAMING EACH OTHER</strong>
 Gazprom has already tried to buy the company. When news of the Eural TG deal first broke, Gazprom tried to wave aside investors' concerns by saying it and Naftogaz were each about to buy 50 percent of its new broker. That way, it said, it could get a share of the transit fees.
 
But those talks broke down over the summer and have not been renewed. The two sides blame each other.
 Gazprom blames Naftogaz for refusing to allow it into the venture on a parity basis. But Naftogaz says the buyout fell through because Gazprom's ownership of companies already based in Hungary would have made Eural TG ineligible for the offshore status and the associated tax breaks it now enjoys.
 &quot;If Gazprom wanted to take the business away from Itera it had to compete,&quot; Borodin says. &quot;You can only do this through an offshore company. Itera was an offshore company.&quot;
 Borodin says if Gazprom becomes the sole transit agent it will have to pay greater taxes in all the states through which gas is transported.
 Gazprom says its hands are tied, and that &quot;certain moments in our relationship [with Naftogaz] go beyond commercial relations.&quot;
 Gazprom says an intergovernmental agreement good through 2006 means it cannot attempt to force its way into a deal by threatening to turn off access to its pipe network.
 &quot;There are a lot of conflicting interests,&quot; says Kupriyanov. &quot;We want to supply gas ourselves. They want to do it independently. We are dependent on them for transporting gas to Europe. They have large debts to us, and so on.&quot;
 Kupriyanov says if Gazprom tries to push Eural TG out Ukraine will retaliate by raising transit fees for Russian gas heading to Europe.
 &quot;The security of our supplies to Europe depend on Ukraine. We can be hit with fines if the gas does not get through,&quot; Kupriyanov says. &quot;It makes no sense for us to break our heads trying to get in on this deal.&quot;
 
 <strong>
WESTERN RIVALS</strong>
 In an ironic twist, Gazprom's funding of Eural TG may just fatten it up for a Western rival eyeing a way to break into Gazprom's monopoly on exports to Europe from the former Soviet Union.
 
British-based JKX Oil &amp; Gas, which already has stakes in a number of Ukrainian oil ventures, has been trying to buy part of Eural TG together with a company called Benam Holdings since July, according to JKX.
 JKX company has several heavy hitters behind it, including former British Trade and Industry Minister Peter Fraser and controversial Swiss tycoon Bruce Rappoport, who has close ties to the Israeli government.
 JKX, for now, says it cannot say what Benam Holdings is. A web search for the company also came up with no results. Like Gazprom and Naftogaz, JKX says it is not worried about Eural TG's ownership structure, adding that any future deal will be conducted in the interests of its own shareholders.
 
 <strong>
SHRUGGING CRUSADER</strong>
 Boris Fyodorov, the independent Gazprom board member whose crusading against the monopoly's relations with Itera nearly landed him in jail, says he's prepared to give Gazprom management the benefit of the doubt on Eural TG.
 
&quot;Neither I nor any of the other directors like the situation. But the general position is not to fight Ukraine.&quot;
 Fyodorov told a conference call with concerned investors Wednesday that he had raised the issue at a meeting Friday with Gazprom CEO Miller and was told that Eural TG &quot;is purely a Ukrainian effort.&quot;
 He also said Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref wants to raise the issue with Gazprom management, as do investors.
 &quot;Gazprom's explanations have not cleared the matter up for investors,&quot; Troika's Nesterov says. &quot;Instead, what they've heard has worried them. We would like a clearer explanation from Gazprom on why and how this company was created.&quot;
 According to Fyodorov, Eural TG's relationship with Gazprom will be terminated when a new gas supply contract between Gazprom and Turkmenistan comes into effect. But that will not be until Jan. 1, 2007.

TITLE: Local Lawyer Shatters Glass Ceiling
AUTHOR: By Michael Diosi
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: There is a contagious enthusiasm about Olga Litvinova, office managing partner of Ernst &amp; Young and EY Law in St. Petersburg. For a start, she manages to make tax law sound exciting. More than that, she makes it sound exhilarating.
 
A useful quality for Litvinova, as this week she launches EY Law in St. Petersburg as the new brand for the legal practice of professional services firm Ernst &amp; Young. &quot;We are not so much opening something new,&quot; she says, &quot;as giving a separate identity to an existing department, reflecting the fact that we already have a law firm. It is,&quot; she explains keenly, &quot;a truly integrated practice. We are able to consider a problem from all angles.&quot; 
 Litvinova herself exemplifies the multidisciplinary ethic, and is accordingly immersed in the St. Petersburg business environment. She was last week elected the new chairman of the executive committee of the St. Petersburg International Business Association, a forum for local business to voice its concerns and lobby for legislative and administrative changes. She is the first Russian, and the first female, to hold the position. 
 &quot;I have found that it is very interesting,&quot; she says, &quot;to work in an environment with the representatives of various disciplines - financial, tax, legal. That is very exciting.&quot;
 &quot;Russian law is still an emerging law, and it is very controversial,&quot; she says. &quot;Every tax issue is also a legal issue.&quot; And it is so exciting, she says, &quot;because it changes every day.&quot; 
 Growing up in distant Kamchatka, where her father was an electronic engineer with the Soviet navy, she received a &quot;phenomenal&quot; education which she complemented by attending St. Petersburg State University in the early 1990s. &quot;My family was originally from St. Petersburg,&quot; she explains, &quot;and so it was logical for me to go to law school here.&quot;
 Becoming a tax lawyer, however, happened somewhat accidentally. &quot;I must say,&quot; she says, &quot;that I never expected to do something like tax.&quot; 
 At the suggestion of one of her law school professors, she applied for an internship at Arthur Andersen in 1992.
 &quot;It was my first employment,&quot; she says. &quot;I was still in law school at the time and I was probably one of the few lawyers who joined an accounting firm. At the beginning I was not sure whether this would be a long-term career for a lawyer. ... I was only looking for a job part-time, expecting to go back to study at the end of the summer, and when the summer was over I approached the then head of the office and said that I was going back [to University]. He showed me his ten shelves of German tax law books, and then he showed me the single shelf below it with just three very thin binders of the new regional Russian tax law. He said to me, 'Look at how much I had to learn at law school, and how much you have to learn, and then tell me you can't work and study at the same time!' So I stayed working for them.&quot;
 It was, it seems, a good decision. &quot;It was such an exciting time, everything was as new for an intern as it was for the professor and the clients. I could practice tax law and learn together with everybody. There was no knowledge accumulated, everybody was learning from their own experiences.&quot; 
 As Andersen's grew, Litvinova describes a very forward-thinking management philosophy at the firm. &quot;I was very impressed,&quot; she says. &quot;Maybe a year after starting with the company, the management started talking with me about careers, and this was new, because nobody in Russia in the early '90s was talking with a fairly junior person about what you should be doing and how they can help you to build your career. I remember a discussion with our managing partner and the first time he mentioned to me, 'you know what, you can be a partner in our firm.' I thought at the time that this was close to impossible.&quot;
 But when in 2002 Arthur Andersen merged practices with Ernst &amp; Young, Litvinova took over as managing partner of the St. Petersburg office. 
 Her personal and professional ambitions are clear. &quot;Yes,&quot; she says, &quot;I would describe myself as ambitious, and I believe that this is a characteristic that we are specifically looking for. Ambition in a good sense is the driver for people to progress. The mentality of continuous improvement is the driver for any professional services firm. Every day you try to be better than you were yesterday.&quot;
 Her intention now, she says, is to be constantly tackling new and bigger challenges. She is not, however, drawn to Moscow. &quot;Unfortunately there is migration from St. Petersburg to Moscow because they don't see the opportunities for self-realization here,&quot; she says. &quot;But for me, I see that there is still so much that can be done. It would be easy for me to relocate, but there is no point. At Ernst &amp; Young I can work on a Russia-wide scale. I believe St. Petersburg has not explored all of its potential, it is maybe 20 to 30 percent utilized. St. Petersburg is not a satellite region but has its own interesting and dynamic identity. There is a gap now between Moscow and St. Petersburg in terms of business development. It is more challenging to work in a more difficult, less developed regional market.&quot;
 For Sebastian FitzLyon, of surveyors and valuers S. Zinovieff and Co. - and the Australian honorary consul in St. Petersburg - it is Litvinova's energy that informs her success. &quot;She is the most energetic person I know here,&quot; he said. &quot;As a lawyer she is extremely competent, running a very large and successful legal practice. She has very strong leadership skills and makes decisions extremely quickly. She is normally thinking of three things at a time.&quot;
 For someone so immersed in law and business (even her husband is a lawyer), it is surprising Litvinova can find time for anything other than work. &quot;It is a question of attitude,&quot; she explains, &quot;of prioritization. It is a fine balance, and sometimes work wins.&quot; She is a keen skier, going every year to Scandinavia with friends. &quot;Living in Northwest Russia, skiing is always possible here, especially if you don't have much time,&quot; she says. 
 She is also a keen supporter of the Mariinsky Theater, indulging a personal affection for opera and ballet by attending with clients and business partners. &quot;The Mariinsky is a landmark for the city,&quot; she says, &quot;and such cultural establishments require the support of the community.&quot; Indeed, she is launching EY Law this week with a cocktail reception at the premiere of &quot;Samson et Dalila.&quot;
 Being multi-disciplinary, it seems, is not just about work.

TITLE: Markets React to Yukos-Sibneft Merger Nixing
AUTHOR: By Dmitry Dmitriev
TEXT: MOSCOW - Russian external debt was lower last week in line with global markets. The benchmark Russia 30 ended the week at 93 7/8 (-7/8), with its yield increasing from 7.25% to 7.37%. The losses were mainly caused by weakened U.S. Treasuries. Meanwhile, the sovereign spreads tightened by 4-6 bp, demonstrating their resilience to the political uncertainties arising from developments surrounding the Yukos-Sibneft merger and the forthcoming elections.
 
Corporate Eurobonds were even more resilient last week. Most posted notable gains and the best performers were Gazprombank 08 (+1.28%) and Sistema 08 (+1.14%). Corporate spreads over the sovereign yield curve tightened by 10-40 bp. Meanwhile, Vneshtorgbank has decided to scale down the size of its proposed Eurobond to $300 million. Pricing has been postponed until Dec. 1.
 Russian sovereign spreads can be expected to tighten further in the medium-term on the back of Russia's robust economy, the authorities' strong commitment to service the country's debt, and the decreasing volume of external debt in both absolute and relative terms. In the near-term, this tightening should, however, be constrained by political tensions - driven by both the Yukos events and the elections - as well as by the lack of activity by major players as the year draws to a close. 
 The corporate spreads have been hit even harder by the political uncertainty. However, their high yields and shorter durations make them less exposed to global interest rate volatility. We continue to consider Eurobonds issued by state-owned companies as being protected from both types of risk. Therefore, we see them as being the most attractive buys under current market conditions.
 The GKO-OFZ market was stronger last week despite a lack of rubles on the market at the end of the month. The market only fell on the last trading day of the month, as news broke that the Yukos-Sibneft merger may be cancelled. Corporate and municipal ruble bonds were also stronger last week, with City of Moscow bonds posting the best gains due to their large duration and the strong creditworthiness of the issuer, which draws foreign investors. The key factors in the ruble debt market's increase were the rise of the ruble in the FX market, a fresh increase in the CBR reserves, and the CBR's comments that the ruble may be allowed to float more freely and may continue to appreciate in the short-term - implying that the Bank may make fewer ruble interventions.
 The best surprise last week was the Duma's approval in all three readings of a reduction in stamp duty on new security issues, from the current 0.8% to 0.2%, with a maximum charge of 100,000 rubles (approx. $3,300). This long-awaited and necessary law will have a positive impact on the market's development and be attractive to companies considering ruble bond issues, as it should lead to a significant reduction in their borrowing costs.
 
 <i>
Dmitry Dmitriev is a fixed income and banking analyst with United Financial Group. </i>

TITLE: Piracy Stifles Creativity and Stalls Economy
AUTHOR: By Alexander Vershbow
TEXT: Russians are rightly proud of their rich heritage of music, literature, theater and film, as well as their achievements in science, space and technology. The critical acclaim of recent films such as &quot;The Return&quot; shows that Russia's long tradition of literary and artistic creation is still alive and well. Russia is known throughout the world for its achievements in science and culture. But something that Russia is becoming increasingly known for - theft and piracy of intellectual property - threatens Russia's future capacity for cultural and scientific achievements.
 
Over the past year, growing attention has been paid to the burgeoning levels of optical disc piracy (CDs, DVDs and CD-ROMs) in Russia. However, recent polls show that Russian citizens are not concerned about piracy involving music, films and software products, because they believe the only victims of this type of piracy are major Western recording and film studios, which, in their view, have no need for the extra revenue generated by sales in Russia. But Russians, too, are already victims of the pirates, and if piracy continues unchecked the number of domestic victims will swell.
 Intellectual property rights exist to serve as an incentive to creativity. The reason that artists can afford to write and record music is because they can expect to be paid for their recordings. During discussions with both prominent and up-and-coming Russian musicians, I have made a point of asking how to obtain their works on CD. Sadly, the overwhelming response has been that it is simply not profitable to record their works in Russia due to current piracy levels. President Vladimir Putin's visit this month to Mosfilm emphasized the similar damage that piracy is doing to Russia's film industry, despite recent critical successes.
 Likewise, the reason software firms can afford to pay computer programmers and other technicians is because they can expect to make money selling a final product. Russia has a large pool of talented programmers and technical professionals, but the technology sector here is also a victim of the pirates, who deprive innovators of the funding they need to keep innovating.
 Russia's scientists and inventors have the potential to contribute to bringing Russia into the mainstream of commercially viable technical innovation, especially if the country can attract investment from high-tech companies. But this process will never truly get off the ground if technical innovation is not adequately protected by well-enforced protection of intellectual property rights.
 Despite an attractive pool of talented creative professionals in both the technological and cultural arenas, foreign investment that could help bolster these industries in Russia is undermined by the pirates. Piracy has reached such epidemic proportions in Russia that it is increasingly seen as the next China, which during the height of its piracy problem had 29 plants producing pirated material. Russia is reported to have at least that many illegal plants operating now. It is estimated that more than 320 million pirated disks are produced in Russia each year, about 90 percent of which are exported. As long as potential investors view Russia as a country that does not respect the rule of law, intellectual or personal property rights, they will continue to invest in places where their property, in all of its forms, is better protected.
 For example, Western studios say that one of their primary goals in entering the Russian marketplace is to cultivate the abundance of talented musicians in Russia and to share their creative talents with the rest of the world - not just to sell CDs of Mariah Carey and Eminem. But - they continue - due to the current level of piracy it is simply not viable to invest the amount of money the Russian music industry deserves.
 Nowhere is the danger of piracy as clear as in the ever-increasing arena of counterfeit pharmaceuticals. Not only does drug piracy take away profits that could be used to develop more effective and more profitable medicines, but it directly endangers the health and even the lives of Russians who rely on fake or poor quality remedies.
 The ultimate result here is that, in the long run, the financial effects of piracy will continue to hinder the development of high-content-value industries that would provide some of the best jobs for Russians - jobs that focus on knowledge, creativity and innovation - while creating unneeded obstacles for the growing Russian export market.
 Piracy is very profitable, but the profits are realized by only a very rich few, at the expense of many, many others. It is obviously at the expense of the artists and creative professionals whose profits are siphoned off. But it is also at the expense of the software developer who is unable to create new and innovative computer programs without fear of his final product being stolen. It is at the expense of the musician who cannot afford to record her work. It is at the expense of the film studio that has to reduce the number of films it can produce for the Russian market. It is at the expense of every Russian worker who could be employed by a growing company in an industry that simply won't grow while the pirates bleed away its funding.
 And it is at the expense of all of us here and around the world, who are deprived of the rich cultural and scientific achievements that constitute Russia's greatest historical legacy - and her promise of even greater contributions to our world in the 21st century.
 
 <i>
Alexander Vershbow is the U.S. ambassador to Russia. He contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times. </i>

TITLE: Tax Evasion Isn't Just For Multimillionaires
AUTHOR: By Vladislav Schnitzer
TEXT: Not long ago my old friend Stepan asked me sheepishly if I would spot him 2,000 rubles till the end of the month. &quot;Of course,&quot; I replied. &quot;What's wrong?&quot;
 
I was surprised by Stepan's request. We'd been friends for ages and in all that time we'd never borrowed more than 100 rubles from each other.
 &quot;It's like this,&quot; said Stepan. &quot;The day before yesterday I got a notice from the tax inspector's office saying that I had five days to pay a 2,000-ruble fine or face legal action.&quot;
 A fine? Tax inspectors? This surprised me even more. &quot;You aren't earning a little extra under the table, are you?&quot; I asked.
 &quot;Oh, come on!&quot; he said. &quot;Can the tax inspectors really have found out that I pick up the occasional fare on the way to and from work?&quot;
 Stepan took time off from work, drove to the tax office and stood in line for two hours just to talk with the inspector, a pretty young woman who muttered something when he said &quot;Hello&quot; without looking up from her computer. &quot;Name?&quot; she asked. &quot;Address?&quot; Reading from her computer screen, she announced: &quot;You have concealed income from the government. That offense carries a 2,000-ruble fine.&quot;
 Stepan explained that he had only one source of income, and that the institute payroll office assured him that his taxes had been paid. But the woman stuck to her guns. &quot;You have a second source of income,&quot; she said.
 &quot;What is it?&quot; he asked. In the heat of the moment he nearly mentioned that he occasionally worked as a gypsy cab driver, but right at that moment the inspector took pity on Stepan, opened a second file on her computer and told him that he had concealed dividend income.
 &quot;But I've never owned stock in my life!&quot; Stepan insisted.
 &quot;You have received dividends. We have all the details.&quot;
 And then Stepan remembered that back in the 1990s he had traded his privatization voucher for 50 10-ruble shares in Gazprom.
 &quot;You have been paid a dividend of 10 kopeks per share, for a total of 5 rubles,&quot; the inspector said. &quot;By law you have to pay tax on that income. You failed to pay, so you've been fined. Simple as that.&quot;
 &quot;But I never saw that money,&quot; Stepan objected. &quot;No one told me anything about it.&quot;
 &quot;That's your problem,&quot; the inspector said. But given the ridiculously small amount of income involved, the inspector softened. &quot;Tell you what. I don't think you're guilty of intentional tax evasion, so I'll reduce the fine to 500 rubles.&quot;
 In the end Stepan appealed his case to the deputy head of the district tax inspectorate, who finally saw the absurdity of the situation and rescinded the fine.
 
 <i>
Vladislav Schnitzer is a pensioner and journalist living in Moscow. </i>

TITLE: Chris Floyd's Global Eye
AUTHOR: By Chris Floyd
TEXT: <b>Naked Gun 
 </b>Don't kid yourself - and don't let <i>them</i> kid you. When they come at you with that pious sugar, telling you how they're going to protect you, secure you, keep you free, you better run and check the back door ... because that's where their goons will be breaking in.
 
Last week, the U.S. Congress approved an expansion of FBI powers that will allow Attorney General John Ashcroft's federal police to arbitrarily seize records from a range of private businesses without bothering a judge or grand jury with any silly-billy nonsense about evidence or even suspicion of criminal intent. All Ashcroft's boys have to do is say, &quot;Boo! Terrorism!&quot; and they can take whatever they want.
 This expansion of Patriot [sic] Act powers was smuggled into the funding bill for the Bush Regime's security organs. Although the FBI is technically under the supervision of the Judiciary committees, Bushist bagmen in Congress routed the measure through the secret sessions of the intelligence committees to avoid any public debate, Wired Magazine reports.
 As usual, the power grab was accompanied by earnest pledges that it would only be used in the most extreme cases of genuine terrorist danger. This was also the line given out when the Patriot [sic] Act was first passed in 2001. Ashcroft - who is so holy that he had his daddy pour cooking oil over his head after his 1994 election to the Senate to signify that he, like King David, had been anointed with the Lord's &quot;dominion over men&quot; - solemnly swore that the draconian measures would never be applied to anything but dire threats to the national security.
 This was, of course, the usual load of mule manure we've come to expect from the incontinently mendacious Regime. Witness the scene in Las Vegas this month, where Ashcroft's agents invoked the Patriot [sic] Act's anti-terrorism powers to run roughshod over due process in a local probe of a lap-dancing joint. The club owner was suspected of offering bribes to Vegas officials to win approval of a law allowing a more hands-on approach between dancers and customers, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports. While the case had nothing to do with terrorism, obviously the very thought of naked flesh being fondled constituted a dire threat to national security in Ashcroft's oily mind. And obviously, nothing will prevent Ashcroft and his minions from using the Act to pursue any other personal bee that's buzzing in their fully armed federal bonnets.
 While Ashcroft's sexual anxieties are mildly amusing (last year he installed an $8,000 curtain to hide the wantonly bare breast of a statue at his Washington headquarters), there's a far more sinister side to this corrosion of America's few remaining liberties. For the very day <i>after</i> the Congressional rubberstamps gave their Viagra-like boost to the FBI's reach, another legislative committee released its report on &quot;one of the greatest failures in the history of federal law enforcement&quot; - the FBI's eager participation in Mob murders, carried out with the full knowledge and approval of the highest levels of government, The New York Times reports.
 It began in the heyday of J. Edgar Hoover, the cross-dressing martinet who reigned supreme in Washington for decades, blackmailing presidents, wiretapping dissidents (his sex tapes of Martin Luther King Jr. were said to be a particular favorite) and generally playing merry hell with American liberties all across the board. In the 1960s, the FBI formed a partnership with a Boston gangland outfit, using its hitmen as informants to finger other gangs. It was a sweet deal for both parties: the Bureau got high-profile collars for its PR mill, and the gangsters got to knock off their enemies with the blessing - and cover - of the biggest &quot;roof&quot; around: the U.S. government.
 Not only did the FBI cover for its pet killers; agents actually allowed four men to be convicted (two of them sentenced to execution) for a murder that Hoover knew had been committed by one of his &quot;informants.&quot; Two of the innocent men died in prison; the others were freed after serving 30 years of hard time. In all, the FBI's informants murdered more than 20 people in Boston - &quot;often with the help of FBI agents,&quot; noted the Congressional report. And lest you think this blood work was just something from the &quot;bad old days,&quot; consider this: the FBI-Mob death squad was still operative at least as late as 1995, when a helpful fed tipped off Boston's top mobster, Whitey Bulger, before he could be arrested by some nonmobbed cops. Whitey is still at large - and presumably still enjoying the shelter of his trusty &quot;roof.&quot;
 And, by the way, not a single FBI agent has ever been arrested - or even <i>disciplined</i> - for their part in this murderous enterprise.
 So don't kid yourself that these new powers won't be abused. They will. Power - the armed power of the state, the power over life, death and the liberty of the individual - will always go just as far as you let it. It will trample every ethical and moral boundary, pour itself into every nook and cranny of life, public and private, seeking dominance at every level - unless you maintain a rigorous system of checks and balances to balk the flow of power, frustrate it, channel it, disperse it, subject it to reason, <i>humanize</i> it.
 But in the militarized, one-party state of Bushist America, where law is scorned and reason has fled, those restraints are being swept aside. The back door is wide open.
 
 <i>
For Annotational references, see the Opinion section at www.sptimes.com</i>


TITLE: Disney Co. Vice Chair Roy Disney Resigns, Lashes Out At CEO Eisner
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LOS ANGELES - In a sign of simmering tension at the top of one of the nation's largest media giants, Walt Disney Co. vice chairman Roy Disney stepped down from the board of directors and called on chairman and chief executive Michael Eisner to resign in a scathing letter.
 
&quot;It is my sincere belief that it is you that should be leaving and not me,&quot; Disney wrote to Eisner. He also accused Eisner of &quot;muzzling&quot; his voice on the board.
 Disney's departure may be a pre-emptive move to avoid being forced from the board of The Walt Disney Co. He is the nephew of company co-founder Walt Disney and the last family member to be active in the company.
 The board's governance and nominating committee decided against recommending the 73-year-old Disney for another term because he is over the mandated retirement age of 72, the company said Sunday.
 The board's presiding director, former U.S. Senator George Mitchell, said in a statement Sunday he regretted Disney's actions and confirmed that the governance and nominating committee recently informed Disney that the age-limit rules should apply.
 &quot;It is unfortunate that the Committee's judgment to apply these unanimously adopted governance rules has become an occasion to raise again criticisms of the direction of the Company, and calls for change of management, that have been previously rejected by the Board.&quot;
 Eisner is credited with transforming Disney from a minor producer of mediocre films and caretaker of two theme parks in 1984 into a media giant, whose holdings include five theme parks around the world, the ABC TV network, the ESPN sports cable channel and one of the highest-grossing movie studios.
 Eisner's detractors accuse him of presiding over a &quot;brain drain&quot; that saw top executives leave the company over the past 10 years, including former studio chief Jeffrey Katzenberg, Steven Bollenbach, who now heads the Hilton Corp., and most recently, Paul Pressler, who left last year to head Gap Inc.
 Roy Disney's letter also blames Eisner for the failure to maintain constructive relationships with business partners, including Pixar Animation Studios, which co-produces computer-animated films with Disney, including the record-breaking &quot;Finding Nemo.&quot;
 Disney's stock has fallen from more than $40 per share in 2000 to under $14 in 2002. The stock has risen nearly 34 percent since the beginning of the year as the company's fortunes have gradually improved.

TITLE: 54 Iraqis Dead In Bloodiest Post-War Battle
AUTHOR: By Niko Price
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAGHDAD - In the deadliest reported firefight since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime, U.S. soldiers fought back coordinated attacks Sunday using tanks, cannons and small arms in running battles throughout the northern city of Samarra. The troops killed 54 Iraqi fighters, and five Americans were wounded. 
 Minutes later, two South Korean contractors were killed nearby in a roadside ambush in what U.S. officials called a new campaign aimed at undermining international support for the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq. 
 Attacks on Saturday killed seven Spaniards, two Japanese diplomats and a Colombian oil worker. 
 Lieutenant Colonel William MacDonald of the 4th Infantry Division said attackers, many wearing uniforms of Saddam's Fedayeen militia, opened fire simultaneously on two U.S. supply convoys on opposite sides of Samarra. After barricading a road, the attackers began firing from rooftops and alleyways with small arms, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades, he said. 
 U.S. troops responded with rifles, 120mm tank rounds and 25mm cannon fire from Bradley fighting vehicles. U.S. fire destroyed three buildings the attackers were using, MacDonald said. 
 &quot;It sounds like the attack had some coordination to it, but the soldiers responded, used their firepower, used tank and Bradley fire and other weapons available to them, to stop this attack and take the fight to the enemy,&quot; he said. 
 When the smoke cleared, 46 Iraqis were dead, 18 were wounded and eight were captured, MacDonald said Sunday. Five American soldiers and a civilian were wounded, he said, adding that none of the injuries were life-threatening. A statement released by the military on Monday raised the death toll to 54. 
 &quot;We have been very aggressive in our convoy operations to ensure the maximum force protection is with each convoy,&quot; MacDonald said. &quot;But it does send a clear message that if you attempt to attack one of our convoys, we're going to use our firepower to stop that attack.&quot; 
 Shortly after the firefight, four men in a BMW attacked another U.S. convoy in Samarra with automatic rifles, MacDonald said. The soldiers wounded all four men and found Kalashnikov rifles and grenade launchers in their car. 
 MacDonald said the attack was the largest faced by his Task Force Ironhorse - whose mission includes the hunt for Saddam. Military officials in Baghdad said they haven't reported a deadlier attack since May 1, when President Bush declared major combat over. 
 U.S. officials have only sporadically released figures on Iraqi casualties, and wouldn't say whether there has been a deadlier firefight that went unreported. Samarra is 60 miles north of Baghdad in the so-called Sunni Triangle, where opposition to the U.S. occupation of Iraq has been fiercest. The fighting came as the U.S.-picked Iraqi Governing Council said Sunday it is rethinking an agreement with Americans for a power handover by July, with officials saying the council has set up a committee to assess the best way to choose a provisional legislature. 
 A delay or unraveling of the agreement would be a major setback for Iraq's U.S.-led administration. 
 Also Sunday, U.S. forces reported an attack the previous day near the Syrian border in Husaybah, 200 miles northwest of Baghdad, in which two U.S. soldiers were killed and a third was wounded. Their deaths brought to 104 the number of coalition troops who have died in Iraq in November, including 79 American troops. In terms of coalition losses, it has been the bloodiest month of the war that began March 20. 
 MacDonald said the attack on the South Koreans - on the highway between Samarra and Tikrit - had no apparent link to the attacks on the U.S. convoys. 
 The South Koreans were electricians who were building power lines for the Seoul-based Omu Electric Co., said Lee Kwang-jae, director general of South Korea's Foreign Ministry. Two were killed and two were injured in the attack. 
 
On Saturday, gunmen in a car - apparently in coordination with others waiting by the side of the highway - ambushed a convoy of Spanish military intelligence agents, killing seven. One Spaniard escaped from the attack as young men kicked the bodies and chanted pro-Saddam slogans. Two Japanese diplomats also were killed Saturday north of Baghdad when they stopped to buy food and drinks at a roadside stand, MacDonald said. The diplomats, on their way to attend a reconstruction conference, were not traveling with a military escort. Their Iraqi driver was also reported killed.

TITLE: U.S. To Free Inmates From Guantanamo
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - More than 100 prisoners will be released from U.S. custody at the detainment camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and more will follow, military officials said.
 
It wasn't clear if the men and boys to be transferred from Guantanamo would face further detention or prosecution in their own countries. The first of two new transfers is scheduled for the end of December, and the other in January, an official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
 The official did not say where the prisoners would be sent and a military spokeswoman declined Sunday to provide details about future transfers from the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
 The military official who spoke on condition of anonymity said that one of the boys who would be transferred shot and killed a special operations soldier in Afghanistan, where a U.S.-led coalition ousted the Taliban regime in late 2001 and 11,500 American troops remain.
 The official did not know why the boy was being released from U.S. custody, but the military has said previously that the main purpose of the detention mission is intelligence gathering.
 The United States holds about 660 prisoners from 44 countries at the base in eastern Cuba but the government declines to provide a breakdown of their citizenship, ages or the reasons they are being held. The government has not charged them or given them access to lawyers.

TITLE: Pioneer Swimmer Dies at 98
AUTHOR: By Polly Anderson
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK - Gertrude Ederle, who was the toast of America and Europe in 1926 when she became the first woman to swim the English Channel, died Sunday. She was 98. 
 
Ederle had spent the last several years living at a Christian Health Care Center about 25 miles northwest of New York City, said Martin Ward, whose wife is one of Ederle's 10 surviving nieces and nephews. 
 In a roaring decade when Americans cheered daredevils, few were as celebrated as Ederle, who was 20 when she made her historic swim on Aug. 6, 1926. 
 &quot;People said women couldn't swim the channel,&quot; Ederle told The Associated Press in a 2001 interview marking the 75th anniversary of her feat. &quot;I proved they could.&quot; 
 When she returned to her native land, there were celebrations, receptions and a roaring ticker-tape parade for her in New York, where she was born in 1905. She met President Calvin Coolidge, was paid thousands to tour in vaudeville, played herself in a movie (&quot;Swim, Girl, Swim&quot;) and had a song and a dance step named for her. 
 Only five men had succeeded in swimming the channel before her, and she beat the record by more than two hours. 
 &quot;I thought it was marvelous, and I thought only Gertrude could have done it,&quot; another top swimmer from the era, Aileen Riggin Soule, said in a 1999 interview. &quot;She had the stubbornness.&quot; 
 Ederle swam the choppy, treacherous stretch under adverse conditions, battling rip tides, cross currents, driving rain and mountainous seas, as well as a constant threat of floating debris, poisonous jellyfish and sharks. She left Cape Griz-Nez, France, at 7:05 a.m. and stumbled ashore at Kingsdown, England, 14 hours and 30 minutes later. 
 Because of the stormy weather, she had swum 35 miles in crossing the 21-mile-wide channel. Yet her time for the crossing stood for 24 years before it was eclipsed in 1950 by Florence Chadwick, who negotiated 23 miles in 13 hours and 20 minutes. 
 Two tug boats accompanied Ederle, one filled with relatives and friends, and the other with reporters and photographers, some of them seasick. A phonograph played lively tunes to buoy her spirit, and those in the boats sang, too. 
 But Ederle said her well-wishers needed to be buoyed more than she did. 
 &quot;I had to keep joking with them to keep their spirits up,&quot; she recalled. &quot;I remember they sang endlessly: 'Let Me Call You Sweetheart,' 'Sweet Rosie O'Grady' and 'After the Ball Is Over.' But when the storm was fiercest, they all looked as if they were going to a funeral. Every time I stopped, they jumped and said, 'What's the matter, Trudy? Everything OK?'&quot; 
 During some of the toughest moments, her trainer, fearful of her well-being, tried to get her to give up, &quot;but I'd just look at him and say, 'What for?'&quot; she recalled. 
 At the ticker-tape parade, the crowds shouted, &quot;Hello, Miss What-For!&quot; 
 She was little affected by the fame that followed. She remained what one writer called her, &quot;an almost old-fashioned girl in a world of flappers.&quot; Soule, who toured with Ederle in a swimming exhibition, recalled her as &quot;a sweet person - thoughtful, kind. She even wrote poetry.&quot; 
 Ederle eventually quit touring when the stress got too much. 
 Ederle was a champion swimmer before her Channel swim, holding a string of world records at various distances. At the 1924 Olympics in Paris, she was hobbled by the stress of travel and turned in a disappointing performance - by her standards - of one second-place finish, one third-place finish and a first on a relay team. 
 In 1925, she swam the 21 miles from the tip of Manhattan to Sandy Hook, New Jersey, in seven hours, 11.5 minutes, bettering the record held by men. 
 That same year, she made her first try at the English Channel, saying later that she failed only because a worried trainer grabbed her when she briefly began coughing. As soon as someone touched her, she was disqualified. 
 Her hearing hadn't been good since a childhood bout with the measles, and hours spent in the water aggravated the problem. By the 1940s, she was deaf. 
 Out of the spotlight, she taught deaf children to swim - &quot;since I can't hear either, they feel I'm one of them&quot; - and participated in some business ventures. Giving few interviews, she lived quietly in Queens for many years. 
 &quot;I have no complaints,&quot; Ederle said in one interview in the 1950s. &quot;I am comfortable and satisfied. I am not a person who reaches for the moon as long as I have the stars. God has been good to me.&quot;
 
 q 
 

 MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) - Australian Leisel Jones broke the women's 100-meter breaststroke short-course world record at a World Cup meet on Friday. 
 Jones broke Swede Emma Igelstrom's world mark by two-hundredths of a second, finishing in 1 minute, 5.09 seconds to beat fellow Australian Brooke Hanson (1:05.45) and American Amanda Beard (1:06.00) in the 25-meter pool at the Melbourne Sports and Aquatic Center. 
 Igelstrom set her mark of 1:05.11 in March at Stockholm, Sweden. 
 In the women's 200-meter backstroke, Margaret Hoelzer and Lindsay Benko led the United States to a 1-2 finish.

TITLE: Baltimore Ravens Rout San Francisco 49ers In Lopsided 44-6 Win That Augers Well
AUTHOR: By David Ginsburg
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BALTIMORE - The defense returned to form, the offense matched the standard it set one week earlier, and the special teams were spectacular. 
 
It added up to the most lopsided victory in the history of the Baltimore Ravens, a 44-6 rout of the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday that served as a perfect tuneup for next week's clash for first place in the AFC North. 
 Ray Lewis returned an interception 29 yards for a touchdown to cap a 17-point flurry in the second quarter, and the rejuvenated Ravens cruised past the road-weary 49ers. 
 &quot;This is a complete game for us, the kind of game we're capable of having,&quot; Ravens coach Brian Billick said. &quot;It's what we're going to need the rest of the way to get done what we want to get done.&quot; 
 That would be a return to the playoffs following a one-year absence. Baltimore can take a huge step in that direction next week against Cincinnati, which beat Pittsburgh to remain tied with the Ravens atop the division. 
 The Bengals beat Baltimore in Cincinnati earlier this season, and the Ravens have been itching for the rematch. 
 &quot;Now we can focus on Cincinnati. Everybody else is out of the way,&quot; Lewis said. 
 One week earlier, the Ravens trailed Seattle by 14 points at halftime and by 17 in the fourth quarter before rallying to win. Baltimore (7-5) took a far easier path against the 49ers, building a 24-6 halftime lead before coasting. 
 &quot;Our offense is definitely setting a trend,&quot; said Gary Baxter, who had a key interception. &quot;They're setting a standard to do that every week. And that's what we want them to do.&quot;
 It's the first time in team history Baltimore reached 40 points in consecutive games. The four interceptions helped, as did a kickoff return by Lamont Brightful and three field goals by Matt Stover. 
 But also give credit to the offense, which has been on a roll since breaking a drought of eight quarters without a touchdown against Seattle. 
 &quot;Our mentality was to come out and prove that last week wasn't a fluke,&quot; said Anthony Wright, who threw two touchdown passes. 
 The return of quarterback Jeff Garcia did nothing to change the fortune of the 49ers (5-7), who fell to 0-6 on the road. Back from a three-game absence with a sprained ankle, Garcia went 14-for-29 for 112 yards with a career-high four interceptions before being pulled early in the fourth quarter. 
 &quot;It's like a bad nightmare. All four interceptions, one way or another, were deflected,&quot; Garcia said. &quot;When it started to go downhill, it went downhill fast. We couldn't find a way to stop the steam.&quot;
 It was San Francisco's worst loss since a 41-3 defeat against Jacksonville in September 1999. 
 &quot;It was an embarrassing game,&quot; 49ers coach Dennis Erickson said. &quot;We didn't play well in all aspects, starting with me.&quot;

TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: <b>Skating Fixing Denied
 </b>

PARIS (AP) - A reputed Russian mobster told a French sports daily that he had no role in fixing figure skating results at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.
 "I have nothing to do with this affair," Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov was quoted as telling L'Equipe in an interview published Friday. He also said he was not involved in organized crime.
 "All the media portrayed me as a dangerous criminal, but I am just a simple and honest citizen who never asked anything of anyone," he said.
 Tokhtakhounov spent nearly a year in a Venice, Italy prison on U.S. charges that he helped secure a gold medal for Russia in the pairs competition at Salt Lake City in exchange for a victory by the French ice dancing team of Marina Anissina and Gwendal Peizerat.
 In June, Italy's highest court overturned Tokhtakhounov's extradition order to the United States, and he left prison. L'Equipe said he returned to Moscow.
 
 
<b>Flyers Win 5-1
 </b>

UNIONDALE, New York (AP) - John LeClair had a goal and an assist during Philadelphia's five-goal second period, lifting the Flyers to a 5-1 victory over the New York Islanders and stretching their unbeaten streak to 12 games on Saturday night. 
 LeClair tallied a power-play goal 3:47 into the second to tie it at 1 and start the barrage. Mark Recchi put Philadelphia in front 1:50 later, and Donald Brashear, Simon Gagne and Justin Williams followed to send the collapsing Islanders to their fifth straight loss.
 The Flyers - 10-0-2 since a loss at New Jersey on Oct. 30 - were led by their power play. Philadelphia, which entered with the NHL's second-best unit, was 2-for-6 with the man advantage and is 24-for-91 this season. 
 
 
<b>Milan Tops Juve
 </b>

MILAN, Italy (Reuters) - Inter Milan recovered from their midweek Champions League mauling by Arsenal to hand Italian champions Juventus their first defeat of the season with a shock 3-1 win at the Delle Alpi stadium Saturday.
 Argentine striker Julio Ricardo Cruz struck twice as Inter put their 5-1 home defeat by Arsenal behind them with a superb display to end Juve's 11-month unbeaten home record in Serie A.