SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #929 (97), Friday, December 19, 2003
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TITLE: Putin Declares He Will Run in 2004
AUTHOR: By Catherine Belton
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin, facing the nation Thursday in his annual televised call-in show, said he would run for a second presidential term and, without mentioning the campaign, laid out a no-nonsense pitch for trying to solve the country's social woes.
"I'm going to run," Putin said in answer to a phoned-in question about his plans for the March presidential election. "I will make an official announcement about this in time."
With popularity ratings soaring above 70 percent, Putin is considered a shoo-in for a second term. He flatly rejected, however, questions on whether he might use the huge pro-Kremlin majority won in this month's parliamentary elections to change the Constitution and seek a third term.
Fielding 68 questions from ordinary citizens nationwide for three hours about some of their toughest problems - drugs, pensions, hazing in the military and the parlous state of crumbling housing and infrastructure - Putin appeared to be the man with the answers.
But as he rattled off figures on planned and past increases in spending for infrastructure improvements, agriculture and the military, he often acknowledged that the hikes were far from being enough.
He said increased taxation on the nation's booming oil sector and improved state "administration" over private businesses would be key priorities next year to improve the well-being "of each and every citizen" in a country where, he said, poverty was still a huge problem.
"We have to stop the stealing of national resources and bring order to how they are used," he said.
The ask-the-president session has become a traditional December event since 2001. This time it attracted a record 1.53 million questions to the call-in center. Hundreds of people also gathered on snow-swept town squares from the Far East city of Komsomolsk-on-Amur to Vyborg, near the border with Finland, to ask questions via a televised link-up. Thousands more questions were sent via the Internet.
This show came as Putin nears the endgame of what could turn out to be the biggest battle of his presidency: the relentless legal onslaught against the nation's richest man, oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky. The Yukos founder was jailed in October on charges of fraud and tax evasion, in what many have seen as Putin's response to his attempts to encroach on the president's political power base and his attempts to block Kremlin initiatives to raise taxes on the oil sector. It also has been seen as Putin's attempt to assert his control over the oligarchs who gained vast swathes of the nation's natural resources in rigged 1990s auctions.
Putin, when asked whether it had been a difficult year, replied: "Yes. For me, personally, it has been."
Although not one question referred to the standoff with Khodorkovsky, some of the initiatives Putin announced as being key to helping restore social welfare seemed to center on the fallout from that battle.
Without mentioning Khodorkovsky by name, Putin lashed out at "lobbyists" from oil companies for blocking the passage of bills through the Duma aimed at boosting the state's take of the massive windfall profits oil giants have reaped from this year's sky-high oil prices.
"For reasons unclear to me, the entire Communist Party and the entire Yabloko faction voted against this measure," he said. "SPS [the Union of Right Forces] gave almost no votes. 90 percent of [pro-Kremlin] Unity voted for it, but some deputies slipped through."
Khodorkovsky has said he was funding SPS and Yabloko, while another major Yukos shareholder was reported to be funding the Communists. Khodorkovsky had been seen as one of the key players trying to prevent the oil-tax hike going through.
Putin called for a fairer distribution of the oil sector's windfall revenues. He said hikes in export tariffs and in natural-resource taxes had been proposed to increase the budget's take by $3 billion, a figure that he noted was less than the tens of billions being called for by some politicians.
In response to a concerned question from a Surgutneftegaz oil worker, he said these measures were not intended to hit the oil sector too hard.
"We should not forget that the oil sector is the goose that lays the golden egg. Killing that goose would not be very sensible, it would be stupid and impermissable," he said. "This won't happen. Don't worry."
Instead, the president seemed to suggest, tighter state control is needed to share the wealth.
Putin said the state has to improve its system of administration over private businesses, which he said was more efficiently run than state-owned ones, to boost state revenue. He said there was no sense in overturning privatization results.
"We have to take a different path. We should not end privatization, but strengthen legislation and administration so that the effect from effectively working enterprises has an impact on the national economy and on each and every citizen," he said. "This is possible to achieve."
In a veiled criticism of Khodorkovsky, he said "any old passers-by" should not be allowed to take up the mantle of democracy "to decide their own clan interests." Khodorkovsky has said he was fighting Kremlin moves to impose a more authoritarian regime.
Unsolved problems of distributing the nation's wealth were clearly weighing down on Putin. Even as he listed the growing improvements in economic performance notched up by the country since he came into power - such as expected GDP growth this year of 6.9 percent and a hike in foreign currency reserves from $11 billion in 2000, at the start of his term in power, to about $70 billion now - he insisted this was still far short of the mark.
"There are things that we should not forget," he said, pointing out that the number of people living below the official subsistence level of 2,121 rubles per month was still 31 million. "This figure is still huge and humiliating for Russia.
"Until we resolve this problem, we cannot say that we have coped with all out tasks and cannot feel that we have achieved at least the first stage of work that we set out to do."
Putin said the biggest threat to national security was the nation's economic backwardness. "If we don't ensure growth rates, we will lag behind in everything. A tough economic battle is going on in the world. If before it went on in the military sphere, now it is going on in the economic sphere."
Putin made clear that his greatest concern was over social woes. As the phone-in session came to an end, Putin said he had handpicked some questions that had come in via the Internet the evening before and wanted to make sure they were answered.
He said priorities for next year include ramping up a mortgage system to solve the nation's housing woes and improving services in the communal housing sector, in education and in medicine.
He said the next Duma would be crucial in pushing through reforms to improve the national economy next year. But he said he regretted that right-wing parties Yabloko and SPS failed to win enough votes to make it into the Duma.
"In my opinion, representatives of all political forces in the country should be in the Duma," he said.
But he blamed the parties' own campaigning, in particular that of SPS co-leader and Unified Energy Systems chief Anatoly Chubais, for their collapse in the elections.
"If you consider that SPS was headed by Anatoly Borisovich Chubais, who at the same time is the head of the country's entire electrical energy system, then we can guess that it did not suffer from any lack of administrative resources or any other resources for getting into parliament," he said.
"They [voters] have had enough of all this. What was lacking was an understanding of what people expect from political parties. And, there was not enough political will to agree on joint actions for the elections."
After the session was over, the president told reporters he would run for president independently, not as a party candidate.
He said suggestions made by the Commmunists and other parties that they might not run in the presidential elections as a protest were cowardly and harmful. "This is a stupid and harmful stunt," he said, Interfax reported.
He told reporters he considered his main achievement this year to have been carrying out his plans. "This did not happen by itself," he said. "It happened against the backdrop of a battle of opinions. The optimal decisions were found in the end."
TITLE: Catholic Charity Opens Pregnancy Counselling
AUTHOR: By Alina Ledovaya
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A Catholic charity has started providing a counselling and support service in St. Petersburg to pregnant women who are thinking of having an abortion.
The German-funded charity Caritas says it is worried about Russia's demographic decline. Its Life Protection project provides women with psychological and material help if they decide to proceed with the pregnancy.
"Our main concern is the birthrate and the great number of abortions in Russia," said Olyga Kochatkova, head of the project, who has been working with Caritas for four years.
Abortion is a common, relatively cheap form of birth control with about 13 abortions for every 10 Russian children born. In 2001, the World Health Organization said Russia had one of the highest abortion rates in the world.
Abortions are offered free to women aged 18 or under and cost only about 1,500 rubles ($50) for older women.
Little in the way of sex education is offered in schools and women seeking abortions are not required to undergo counselling.
Russia's death rate is alarmingly high, and some demographic experts fear that if present trends continue the population will shrink by a third in 50 years.
Although unusual for a Catholic organization to do so, Life Protection also provides information on contraception, but only if women request it. It also teaches young people about basic family values and the importance of love in sexual relationships.
The project is approved by the Orthodox Church and City Hall's health committee.
A spokesman for the Moscow Patriarchate declined to comment on its support, but referred to its web site where it states that abortion is a sin and the church considers it murder.
Patriarch Alexy II in a statement this month called for "united efforts by the state, the Orthodox Church, traditional Russian confessions and society to improve the demographic situation in Russia; to strengthen the moral education of young people, to help them to form a respectful attitude to the family and maternity, to reduce the number of abortions and to protect the life of unborn children."
Life Protection will help women of any Christian or other faith, but most women who seek help from the project have no religious beliefs.
"The women who strongly believe in God very often do not hesitate about whether to have an abortion," Kochatkova said. "They consider abortion to be a sin and they usually decide to have the child."
Kochatkova said the religious component of Life Protection is not the main focus of the program and religion is only addressed if women ask to discuss it, which does not happen often.
Seventeen women are receiving help from the program, which began in September. Already Life Protection boasts one birth.
On Oct. 26 an unplanned pregnancy ended with the birth of Veronika. The young pregnant woman and her mother did not want the baby to be born, but the child's father did. After completing a course of counseling organized by Life Protection, the young woman married her baby's father and gave birth to the child. Kochatkova said the mother is now delighted with the choices she made.
"It is our first experience and we are sure the program will work," Kochatkova said.
According to the city health committee, the number of abortions in St. Petersburg has steadily declined in the last few years. In 1999, 49,958 women terminated their pregnancies, while in 2002 the number dropped to 42,035.
But Boris Novikov, a leading city gynecologist, said these figures are misleading. They are the number of abortions performed in state hospitals and official medical centers, but they do not include abortions performed in commercial medical centers.
"Nowadays more and more private clinics appear and they do not report their figures to the health committee," he said.
Thus it is difficult to judge whether the situation in St. Petersburg has improved or not, Novikov said.
Tatyana Kazhuhovskaya, a specialist at the youth gynecological center Yuventa, agrees.
"I don't think there are any fewer abortions, we just can't get the full picture," she said. "In most foreign countries commercial medical centers are obliged to give their data to the health committee annually or they lose their license. In this country we still can't make commercial institutions report to the health committee."
The organizers of the new Caritas project believe that through their work they will be able to raise St. Petersburg's birthrate. Their two-stage project is aimed at pregnant women and women with children aged under 18 months.
The first stage of the project includes organizing education for teachers at schools, colleges and orphanages and providing them with reliable information about relationships, including contraception.
"The main reason for unwanted pregnancy in our country is the lack of sexual education at school as well as at home," Novikov said. "The main principle of sexual partners in Russia is avos [hopefully I won't get pregnant]."
According to the Yuventa, 52 percent of young men and 42 percent of young women get information about sex from their friends and partners. The next popular source of information on this subject is the media, upon which 32 percent of men and 15 percent of women rely. Family and school are last on the list - only 5 percent of men and 6 percent of women say they get their information about sex from these sources.
The result is ignorance about contraception.
"Many women are afraid of taking hormonal birth control pills because they are discouraged by their mothers," said Tatyana Kozhuharova, deputy chief doctor at Yuventa. "At the same time their partners very often refuse to use condoms, so the most popular form of contraception is the coitus interruptus [withdrawal before ejaculation] that very often leads to pregnancy."
Life Protection has already organized two seminars for teachers of orphanages in the Leningrad region and for volunteers from teacher training colleges, giving them information on how to prevent abortions.
The next stage of the project is advising mothers-to-be and preparing them for childbirth. It includes counseling those women who come to gynecological centers intending to have an abortion.
"We offer them different kinds of help depending on the situation," says psychologist Vera Vladimirova, one of the project leaders. "We find out the reason why a woman wants to terminate her pregnancy, offer her psychological, legal, and sometimes material help, talk to her family and try to encourage her."
When a 38-year-old woman came to a gynecological center intending to terminate her first pregnancy because she had been fired after employers found out she was pregnant, the director of the center, Irina Yefimova, advised the woman to contact Kochatkova. After several consultations, the woman changed her mind. Life Protection helped her find a new job and she will soon become a mother.
"I just could not let her have an abortion without consulting a psychologist," Yefimova said. "I took her off the chair and brought her to the organizers of Life Protection. The result is obvious. She is very happy now."
The program has five permanent workers, including three psychologists, a teacher and a nurse-gynecologist, as well as volunteers.
Life Protection does not have its own building yet, so works out of gynecological centers in the Krasnogvardeisky and Central districts, giving seminars and consultations for women and organizing meetings for mothers-to-be who are in crises.
Life Protection plans to rent a room in a center where it will have its own library, video and counselling rooms, and also perhaps offer shelter to pregnant women.
"One of our women has no place to live now because she was deprived of her apartment under a court ruling," Kochatkova said. "She has two nine-month-old babies and is pregnant again. We feel we will have to organize shelter."
Caritas has similar programs across Russia, including in Sochi, Irkutsk, Arsentyev, Novosibirsk, Vladivostok, and it claims they have proven to be effective. In Novosibirsk, for example, 150 babies were born after mothers in the program decided not to have abortions.
"Such projects are necessary for a society in which the population continues to decline," Kochatkova said. "We are worried about the demographic future of Russia and plan to boost the birthrate in St. Petersburg."
TITLE: City Fails Again to Tap Rights Watchdog
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Like most Russian cities, St. Petersburg is infamous for all kinds of violations of human rights - from racially motivated murders and government structures silencing newspapers during the gubernatorial campaign to the hazing in its naval college and the sale of outdated milk.
Yet the city has been living without an official ombudsman for the past five years. In that time eight attempts to elect one have failed.
This week the Legislative Assembly, which has responsibility for appointing the ombudsman, failed again and has postponed a vote until next Wednesday. Two candidates are up for election: Dmitry Krasnyansky, deputy head of the City Election Commission , and human rights advocate Leonid Romankov.
Krasnyansky was proposed by Governor Valentina Matviyenko, while Romankov is strongly backed by local human rights groups.
Yury Vdovin, deputy head of St. Petersburg's branch of the international human rights group Citizens' Watch, says that top-level city authorities have never been interested in having an independent-thinking ombudsman in town, largely because the city administration is itself responsible for many human rights abuses.
"The right person for the job must be someone unbiased and equally distanced from all structures, be they judicial bodies or the administration," Vdovin said. "There has always been a very strong pro-governor's lobby in the city parliament, and such a person would never stand a chance of winning."
Mikhail Brodsky, Matviyenko's representative to the Legislative Assembly, said Krasnyansky's major advantage over Romankov is his legal background. "He is a highly professional and experienced lawyer, coming from a dynasty of lawyers," Brodsky said. "He is also almost 20 years younger and more energetic than Romankov."
But democratic politicians are outraged even at the mention of Krasnyansky's name.
Mikhail Amosov, head of the Yabloko faction at the Legislative Assembly, this week filed a suit against Krasnyansky in the Oktyabrsky District Court for libel and defamation.
"During the gubernatorial election campaign Krasnyansky was publicly talking about 'dead souls' on my lists [of declared supporters]," Amosov said. "But a subsequent official investigation proved him wrong. Krasnyansky's words were damaging and blackened my professional reputation."
Each candidate was required to show lists of supporters' signatures before being allowed to run in the election.
Krasnyansky's only response to Amosov's suit was to point out that Yabloko supports Romankov.
Vdovin describes civil servant Krasnyansky as a puppet manipulated by Smolny.
"If he does get elected, it will be just beyond any decency," Vdovin said. "Not just has Krasnyansky never demonstrated any interest in human rights and is linked to the city administration, there are allegations of defamation against him."
St. Petersburg sociologist Tatyana Protasenko, a senior researcher with the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, expressed concern at the contrast between the two candidates.
"This juxtaposition of Romankov and Krasnyansky shows that the lawmakers don't really know what they want," Protasenko said. "Romankov, with his background in human rights, would be excellent in issues like freedom of speech or hazing, while Krasnyansky would be successful in more practical spheres, such as consumer rights. And, in such a context, it is unclear where the parliament's priorities lie."
Despite the acknowledged dominance of Smolny over the assembly's decision making, Romankov is hopeful.
Asked if the election of the governor's protégé would make the ombudsman a mere token figure, he appeared unconcerned.
"You don't have to be the governor's favorite to do this job well," he said. "It is important to be able to deal with ... for instance, the head of the city police, [since] the police are infamous for using violence against those they detain, the city's prosecutor general, [since] the judicial system is known to be tied to and serving the administration, the head of the local prisons department of the Justice Ministry, [since] prisons are overcrowded and the conditions are horrendous and so on."
Problems in this area are not new. The St. Petersburg Pardons Commission, established on Feb. 5, 2002, following a Dec. 28, 2001, decree by President Vladimir Putin that abolished the national Pardons Commission and handed its responsibilities to regional commissions, managed to pardon only one person after a year's work. The apparent inefficiency is explained by excessive bureaucracy in state structures.
"If an appeal is supported by a regional commission, it must be signed by the regional governor, who may choose not to do so, before being sent to Moscow to be signed - or not - by the president," Alexei Kozyrev, head of the St. Petersburg Pardons Commission, said this spring. "I'd like to point out that regional pardons commissions, two-thirds of whose members are representatives of non-government organizations, with one-third being civil servants, are always and entirely appointed by local administrations."
TITLE: VOX POPULI
TEXT: On Thursday after President Vladimir Putin answered questions from citizens on national radio and television channels, Irina Titova asked St. Petersburgers what question they would have liked to ask Putin. Photographs by Alexander Belenky.
Pasha Tolkich, 11:
Why do my parents get such a low salary?
They each get about 3,000 rubles a month. My Mom works as a telephonist, and my Dad is a construction worker. We don't have a car, and I want us to have one. They also can't afford to buy me a motor scooter.
Timur Savlukov, 34:
Can we create a system in which people will be able to save their money safely, instead of keeping it under their mattresses?
The state should give guarantees that the money saved in national banks will always be safe.
Yury Bogov, 40, mechanic:
When will we have security in our country? I mean, how can we be protected from criminals? It's scary to walk in our streets.
Alexander Yermola, 70, engineer:
How does the president see the balance of power in the country now when after the recent elections to the State Duma we have a one-party system and one executive authority?
Alexander, 19, student:
How much longer are young people going to be drafted?
Young people just don't want to serve in the kind of army that the country has now. It's a waste of two years of our lives. I wouldn't mind if it was just for four months to get the basic military training.
Lidiya Nikolayevna, 82, pensioner:
Why are pensions so low?
I just went to get my pension and was shocked. Last month I received 2,300 rubles, and this month it was only 2,200. They all talk about raise of pensions, but in my case it has just gone down for some unknown reason.
Marina, 26, economist:
Why are the streets of the president's hometown in such an ugly condition?
It's dirty, wet, and slippery even in the center, where so many visitors to St. Petersburg walk. Nobody seems to be cleaning the snow away.
I think they should hire more street cleaners and pay them a decent salary. And if they can't find enough street cleaners they can hire homeless people to do it.
Svetlana Rakova, 24, administrator:
Today when people have to pay for their education at many Russian institutions, many young people who want to get higher education just can't afford to pay for it.
So I wonder if Russia is going to introduce a system of loans for students as is done in many civilized countries.
As for a personal question to Vladimir Putin, I'd ask him how his character changed after four years as president.
Vera Gavrilova, 50, scientist at the Vavilov Horticulture Institute:
I'm a scientist and I wonder what attitude our president has to science and its financing.
Russian science has been suffering from underfunding for years, and many of us just can't stand it anymore and leave. No young scientists are coming forward to replace them because of the very low salaries.
So, I ask the president to pay attention to this problem.
Valeria Aleyushkina, 24, courier:
I have two degrees in higher education, which the government has spent lots of money on. However, despite having all that education I can't find a job with a decent salary and I work as a courier instead.
I graduated from the Philosophy Department of St. Petersburg University, and also studied at the Herzen Pedagogical University to become a teacher for deaf children. However, the salaries offered for me at the jobs with my education are only 1,500 rubles!
So, my question would be: is there any opportunity for me to work using my education and to have a decent salary?
Natalya Pozharskaya, 55, member of Cinematography Union:
I don't want to ask anything but I want to wish something. I want our country to be safe and for our people to have a happy future. And to have all that we need a strong state.
A personal question: does Vladimir Putin like being president?
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Finger Scans for Visas
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Electronic fingerprint scans will be taken as a biometric form of identity from those applying for visas at the U.S. Consulate General in St. Petersburg from the end of February, Interfax reported Thursday.
The U.S. Embassy in Moscow began taking fingerprint scans last week and Russia is one of the 32 countries where the method is being introduced, the report said. It will be compulsory for all U.S. visa applicants worldwide from Oct. 26, 2004.
The scans will be made at the same time interviews are conducted, the U.S. consul in Moscow James Petitt, was quoted as saying. From Jan. 5 U.S. international airports will also take scans to confirm that travelers are the same person for which the documents on which they are traveling are issued, the report said.
Seleznyov Seeks Role
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Gennady Seleznyov who was last week re-elected to the State Duma, does not want to be the national ombudsman for human rights, but will not turn down the post if it is offered to him, Interfax quoted the deputy as saying Thursday.
Earlier, the news agency had quoted a source within United Russia saying Seleznyov would be offered the rights position.
Election Date Named
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - A rerun of the State Duma election in the city's electoral district No. 207 will be held in conjunction with presidential elections on March 14, Interfax reported Tuesday.
No one was elected in the district after 23.9 percent of voters voted "against all," with the next highest polling candidate being former figure skating champion Irina Rodnina who received 21.8 percent of votes, the report said.
TV Channel Head
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Alla Manilova, the head of City Hall's media committee, has been elected head of the board of directors of television station TRK Peterburg, Interfax reported Thursday.
City-Oblast Merger?
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Lawmakers of the Legislative Assembly plan to consider holding a referendum on a possible merger between St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast, Interfax reported Wednesday.
Yury Gladkov, a deputy speaker in the assembly, proposed holding the referendum on the same day as presidential elections on March 14.
The assembly is to consider his proposal next Wednesday.
Payback for Slovenia
MOSCOW (SPT) - Russia plans to repay $129 million in debt to Slovenia over the next seven years, Finance Minister Alexey Kudrin said after meeting his Slovenian counterpart Dusan Mramor, ROS news agency reported.
Kudrin said the debt would be paid off with goods, but not in oil products, according to ROS. Otherwise they would be repaid in cash over another seven years.
Putin Supports Ruble
MOSCOW (Prime-Tass) - Russian people should keep their savings in rubles in bank accounts, President Vladimir Putin said in a live phone-in Thursday.
"I think that the best way to keep savings now is in bank accounts in Russian rubles," Putin said.
Putin said the ruble is "one of the most stable currencies, and confidence in it is growing."
Putin also said he is positive the ruble will be fully convertible "within a short time."
Toll Roads Coming
MOSCOW (Prime-Tass) - Russia plans several pilot projects to build toll roads in central Russian regions next year, Transportation Minister Sergei Frank told reporters Thursday.
The projects have already been prepared, he added, without elaborating.
However, Frank said these projects will "be carefully and thoroughly analyzed" to determine the viability of toll roads in Russia.
He said toll roads may be built in tandem with alternative regular roads along the same routes.
Yukos Austria Pipeline
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) - A unit of Yukos, Russia's biggest oil producer, agreed with Austria's OMV to build a pipeline from Bratislava to an Austrian refinery to supply crude.
OMV and Transpetrol AS, a Slovak pipeline company in which Yukos owns a 49 percent stake, will build a 60-kilometer link to ship 3.6 million tons of crude a year (72,000 bpd) starting from 2006, Yukos said in a statement.
Yukos will supply 20 million tons of crude to the Schwechat refinery, Austria's sole refinery, over a 10-year contract. OMV and Transpetrol will invest 28 euros ($35 million) in the pipeline.
Yukos' supplies will satisfy about 20 percent of Schwechat's processing capacity. The pipeline's capacity may be expanded to 5 million tons a year, Yukos said.
Evraz Borrows $100M
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's biggest steel producer, Evrazholding, said on Thursday it had borrowed $100 million in an export-backed loan from Western banks to finance its investment plans.
The company said in a statement that the loan was granted by Germany's Commerzbank, France's Societe Generale and Moscow Narodny Bank for three years and carried an interest of LIBOR plus 3.75 percent.
TITLE: Court Starts Starovoitova Trial
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The murder of democratic State Duma deputy Galina Starovoitova that shook the nation in November 1998 finally came under scrutiny in a St. Petersburg city court on Wednesday when the first day of a preliminary hearing began. The case was adjourned until Friday.
Six suspects, who have been in detention since the end of last year, are on trial on charges of murder and assisting Starovoitova's assassins, who gunned her down on the stairway of her St. Petersburg apartment.
The Agency for Journalistic Investigations has named the six suspects as Yury Kolchin, Igor Lelyavin, Vitaly Akishin, Igor Krasnov, Anatoly Voronin and Yury Ionov.
Another four suspects, for whom federal arrest warrants have been issued, are being tried in absentia. No one has been charged with ordering the assassination.
"I have certain feelings after this hearing," said Ruslan Linkov, Starovoitova's assistant, who was with her when she was shot dead and was himself severely injured after being shot in the head and neck. "I have looked into the eyes of the person who pulled the trigger. I will talk about it in court."
Journalists were excluded from Wednesday's preliminary hearing, which was to determine whether the case is strong enough to go to trial and to consider pleas by the defense.
"It seems the defense is deliberately trying to drag out the hearing," Linkov said a few minutes after the suspects were escorted from the courtroom by a dozen police guards in bullet-proof vests armed with machine guns.
"Today the court was supposed to appoint a date to start the trial, but the defense filed more than 50 different requests and petitions which have to be examined," Linkov said. "It looks as if the defense lawyers are not ready for the hearing and know little about details of the investigation."
If the case does proceed to trial it will be St. Petersburg's first heard by a jury, at the request of the defense.
"We haven't filed any petitions," said Yury Shmidt, a lawyer for Starovoitova's family and Linkov. "[But] if it's heard by the jury this is a good thing for this case."
"The evidence base looks big and solid," he added. "The investigation has done quite a big job."
Starovoitova, who was 52 when she was killed, was the founder and leader of the Democratic Russia Party. Starovoitova's friends said she had received death threats and witnesses described how her killers, one of whom was dressed as a woman, fled to a waiting car, leaving five bullets, an automatic rifle and a pistol at the scene.
At first, the Federal Security Service concentrated on rumors that Starovoitova had been carrying a big amount of money to finance a December 1998 Legislative Assembly election campaign for her allies. More recently the FSB has treated the killing as political and has charged the suspects with "an act of terrorism or an attempt to kill a state or public figure so that she would cease carrying out her state or other political activity, or it was revenge for such activity."
"The circle of people linked [to the case] is known," Linkov said last month in an interview. "For how many years have I been demanding that investigators interrogate [former governor Vladimir] Yakovlev and [State Duma Speaker Gennady] Seleznyov? I was told that they can't be questioned because they have legal immunity. Investigators have told me, 'Yes, we know that, but we haven't received any orders.' There's no political will, that's why [the investigation has not progressed]."
On Wednesday, Linkov's words were echoed by Yuly Rybakov, a former State Duma lawmaker and ally of Starovoitova, who said that charging those behind the investigation would require the assent of top officers in the law enforcement and secret services.
"The fact that the investigation found the executors of the crime was a big success, which I didn't expect," Rybakov said in 2001. "However, I'm not sure we'll ever know the names of those who commissioned them. I fear that some rather high-up officials were involved."
Court officials said further preliminary hearings and the jury trial that is expected to start in January will likely be closed to the public and the media.
"Preliminary hearings are always closed," said a court official who declined to be named. "As for the upcoming trial, you understand yourself what kind of a resonance this case has and for this reason what kind of people could show up for such a hearing. That is why it is very likely the court sessions will be closed."
TITLE: Smolny's Suppression Of Protest Ruled Unlawful
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: St. Petersburg anti-globalists on Tuesday won a court case against Alexander Malkevich, the former deputy head of the city's media committee, after he refused them permission to hold a public demonstration in May.
The Leninsky district court said Malkevich's decision that the anti-globalists' action was "illegal" was itself unlawful.
"The judge said Malkevich's decision did not conform to St. Petersburg's law on civil actions," said Vladimir Soloveichik, a representative of the city's regional Communist Party, who was one of the participants and was detained by police at the demonstration.
The court decision means that neither the anti-globalists' leader nor those who took part in the demonstration performed any illegal actions, Soloveichik said.
The demonstration, which included anti-globalists and representatives of the city's left-wing movements, protested visits by U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair for St. Petersburg's 300th anniversary. The protesters were unhappy with the two leaders' role in the war in Iraq.
The gathering was forcefully broken up by the city's OMON special police, many of whom were in civilian clothing. More than 30 protesters were detained and 10 were hospitalized.
Soloveichik said the court's decision would rehabilitate the participants, who were detained and fined for no reason.
"We proved that we were not bandits, but victims," he said.
"This sets a precedent of a kind for the city," Soloveichik added. "It will provide an incentive to solve other similar problems relating to civil actions in St. Petersburg. The court proved that it is independent of the executive authorities."
Next the anti-globalists plan to have the OMON's actions investigated, and make those who stopped the action answer in court.
Yury Vdovin, deputy head of human rights organization Citizens' Watch, said the court had been right to rule in favor of the anti-globalists.
Russian legislation states that organizers of civil action must give notice of their intentions and this had been done in the case of the anti-globalists, he said.
"It was silly for the city's administration to forbid it," Vdovin said. "They followed the old Soviet principle of fear of public protests."
"This way the administration just made things worse," he said. "It could have been just a regular meeting, but it turned into a big scandal."
Soloveichik said the current media committee is no longer in charge of granting permission for civil actions. This is now a function of the youth committee.
"I hope we won't have similar problems in the future because the new administration obviously does not want to repeat the mistakes of the old one," he said.
TITLE: Paksas Under Fire
TEXT: VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP) - Impeachment proceedings began Thursday against Lithuanian President Rolandas Paksas amid allegations his office has close links to the Russian mafia.
A petition was delivered to the parliament, launching a process that appears likely to result in Paksas' ouster.
The impeachment articles handed in Thursday accuse the president of violating the Baltic state's constitution and his presidential oath, including by disclosing state secrets.
TITLE: Russia Forges Own Ethics
AUTHOR: By Vanessa Bittner
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Corporate governance is a concept that can help a company make money... and make it honestly, Matthew Murray, president of Sovereign Ventures, Inc. told participants in a seminar on the topic Wednesday.
The title of the seminar "Corporate Governance: Luxury or Necessity" pointed to trade-offs connected with putting business ethics into practice.
The seminar was co-sponsored by the Center and the U.S.-Russia Business Forum and held at St. Petersburg University's School of Management.
Prof. Godwin Wong of the Haas Business School at University of California Berkeley shed light on the U.S. experience of corporate governance.
As Prof. Wong pointed out, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act - adopted in 2002 in reaction to the Enron and Arthur Andersen scandals - is a double-edged sword.
"All publicly traded companies are suffering because they have to spend several million dollars just to satisfy the act," Wong said.
He was quick to caution against wholesale adoption of an American model.
Russia must go "the way that will be most comfortable and suitable for [it]," he said, with the eventual goal being "to go public in foreign markets and attract investors."
But Russia is far from instituting a mandatory law for corporate governance. The existing Corporate Governance Code for the Russian Federation is only recommendatory in nature.
This is because there are few small investors in Russia, as opposed to the United States, where legislation is needed to protect individual investors.
In addition to legislation, Russian participants highlighted many obstacles to the rise of a culture of corporate governance in Russia, such as mentality and the lack of independent directors.
Denis Kuzin, of the Association of Independent Directors, for example, noted that corporate governance is not an end, but a means of capitalization and achieving transparency for a company. "The more IPOs there are in Russia, the better indicator that Russia is on the Western track, or the generally accepted track ... ," Kuzin said.
Differences in mentality include the concept of whistleblowing named by the American professor as a positive element of corporate governance. As Kuzin said, American whistleblowing could never be implemented as a mechanism of corporate governance in Russia because it is not seen as a way of ensuring transparency, but as snitching.
Insider trading, one target of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, is also viewed differently in Russia.
As one businessman put it, how can business be expected to implement corporate governance measures in a country where governors and legislators are elected by affiliation with the president's party?
TITLE: RTS Risks Closure by Securities Watchdog
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Russian Trading System, Russia's second-largest bourse by volume, may be closed as the securities market watchdog considers banning trading by negotiation to fight stock price manipulation, daily Kommersant reported Thursday.
A committee of Russia's Federal Securities Commission began Wednesday to review a draft on exchange regulations that includes banning non-anonymous trading, Kommersant reported, citing commission officials. The committee includes members from brokerage houses and the commission.
The RTS, an order-driven trading platform created by brokerages in 1995, conducts trading in a non-anonymous format, with brokers concluding transactions over the phone. The bourse's index, the RTS Index, is the country's most watched.
Non-anonymous trading opens the possibility of stock price manipulation, the commission has said.
Stock price manipulation is a main complaint of foreign investors, hindering growth in investment and trade turnover, FSC chairman Igor Kostikov said this week.
Russia is considered a non-regulated market by such countries as Luxembourg, one of them main centers for European mutual funds.
The FSC itself has been criticized of late, most recently the World Bank, which said Wednesday that the watchdog has too little authority and too few employees to protect people who invest in any of the 100,000 companies under its jurisdiction.
The FSC, which has never charged anyone with insider trading, lacks enough legal power to investigate issuers, and fines for breaking laws on securities and joint-stock companies are low, said Julian Schweitzer, the bank's country director for Russia.
The market watchdog cannot perform its functions adequately because its roughly 250 staff members are too few to cover the about 100,000 companies it regulates, Schweitzer said.
It is also burdened by high staff turnover because the government-paid salaries are too low, he said.
Information about statutory filings and required disclosure by companies on the commission's web site is also out of date, compromising its credibility among market participants, Schweitzer said.
(Bloomberg, SPT)
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT:
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Forty successfully completed internships with European Union companies will help St. Petersburg's universities to receive international accreditation. This was one positive outcome of the Young Petersburg joint educational program highlighted at a conference held Thursday at the St. Petersburg State University School of Management, the coordinator said.
The program, sponsored by St. Petersburg State University and the Deutsche Management Akademie Niedersachsen and funded by the EU, got internships for 40 students. Twenty-five successful applicants spent four weeks at international firms in Germany, while 15 students were placed with offices in St. Petersburg.
Companies participating in Germany included Siemens, Volkswagen, Commerzbank and TUI-AG. Credit Lyonnais, Carl Zeiss, Delovoi Peterburg and Oslo Group hosted students locally.
Vice Governor Sergey Tarasov, who opened the conference, said the government suffers from a serious lack of talented middle and top managers in their 30s and 40s. The Young Petersburg program could solve this problem, he said.
Ilim Wood Up
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - IlimSeverLes, a member of Ilim Pulp Enterprise, increased wood felling by 7.3 percent to 1.712 million cubic meters in January-November 2003 as compared to the same period in 2002, Interfax reported.
Investment in wood felling amounted to 150 million rubles in 2003, the general director of IlimSeverLes said in a press release. The money was used to purchase equipment.
Oblast Gas Cuts
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Gazprom cut gas supply to the Leningrad Oblast by 30 percent to 4 billion cubic meters in response to arrears in payment, Interfax reported the Oblast's supplier, Peterburgregiongaz as saying.
By Dec. 1, 2003 total arrears in the oblast had reached 88 million rubles.
The Kingissep administration owed 13 million rubles, Tosno 11 million rubles, and Lomonosov 9.5 million rubles.
TITLE: Gas Stations Must Pay Up
AUTHOR: By Robin Munro
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The amount of excise tax collected from city fuel retailers has risen sharply after Governor Valentina Matviyenko announced that no new gas stations would be built by retailers unless they pay the taxes in St. Petersburg, an official says.
Vladimir Blank, head of Smolny's economic development, industrial policy and trade committee, said that in October only 58 million rubles came into city coffers from this tax.
However, almost immediately after Matviyenko was elected on Oct. 5 she announced that only those companies that pay the excise will be allowed to build new gas stations.
As a result, Blank said, in November close to 100 million rubles was collected.
"In December, we expect a lot more," he said.
Speaking at a seminar on construction of gas stations organized by Vedomosti newspaper, AI92 news agency and Lynx information technology firm, Blank said last week that City Hall had budgeted to collect 2.7 billion rubles ($90 million) in excises in 2003. If this amount had been collected the city budget would be deficit-free.
Since Jan. 1 the excise has been set at 3,000 rubles per metric ton of fuel, with 60 percent of the tax going to the local administration and 40 percent to the federal budget. No law says whether excises should be paid in the administrative region where the refinery, fuel wholesaler, or retailer is located and in many cases these three institutions are in different administrations.
Blank said St. Petersburg is lobbying for legislation making the beneficiary of the tax the administration where the end user is.
Although prices are unregulated in the retail market, retailers must get supplies on which the excise has not been paid if they want to pay the tax to the city and remain competitive. However, oil refiners Surgutneftegaz, Lukoil and Slavneft have their own retail outlets to which they provide excise-free fuel, but other retailers are supplied only with fuel on which the excise has been paid elsewhere.
About half the city's fuel comes from Surgutneftegaz's refinery at Kirishi in the Leningrad Oblast, which will lose significant revenue if Matviyenko prevails.
Told of fears that City Hall's action will remove some players - and especially developers who build only to sell gas stations and therefore never build a tax-paying history - from the market, Blank said Smolny is ready to reconsider if the fears prove true.
"This policy can be changed and if we notice that it has a negative effect then we will change it," he said.
Blank said an expert commission is being created that will regulate the sale of sites for new gas stations. The commission is to take into account the changes to traffic flows that will affect fuel purchases after the planned completion of the ring road in 2006, he added.
Also discussed at the seminar was retailers' desire for the administration to regulate the allocation of sites so that they could be more certain their business plans will be realized. Until next year when tenders will be introduced, retailers have found their own preferred sites and then negotiated obtaining them in an untransparent system that does not tell them if competitors are doing the same for an adjacent site.
Oleg Ashikhmin, president of the city's oil industry lobby group, said St. Petersburg has 258 gas stations and another 70 are under construction, having received planning approval. Those under construction are expected to be completed in the next 18 months, he said.
"That will be enough," he added. "Then we can really look at the situation in the city and determine what we really need."
TITLE: UN Think Tank Study Rips 'Naive' Reforms
AUTHOR: By Simon Ostrovsky
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Policies advocated by the IMF and World Bank in the 1990s and pursued by early reformers such as Anatoly Chubais were destructive and naive, a United Nations think tank said Wednesday.
Egged on by Western consultants, early reformers of Soviet bloc economies - especially Russians like Chubais and Yegor Gaidar - rushed too fast to dismantle the communist system, ignoring the long-term consequences of their actions and the more important issue of institution-building, the Helsinki-based World Institute for Development Economic Research said at a presentation of its new study on Russia's transition to capitalism.
"They did things that were stupid and destructive," Robert McIntyre, who directed the WIDER study, told reporters in Moscow.
McIntyre, a professor of economics at the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute for International Economic and Political Studies, said the biggest mistake made by reformers was assuming that privatizing the largest companies first would lay the groundwork for a free market that would flourish on its own, driven by scores of vibrant small and medium-sized businesses.
"These expectations were based on either the pure theory of market economy or knowledge of the large role that small enterprises play in many advanced economies," McIntyre said.
Once these ideas became generally accepted, debate was more or less suppressed, "and the West was explicitly pushing that simple idea." he continued. "The World Bank reached an opinion and religiously imposed it on country after country."
The World Bank acknowledges that things could have been done differently, but it downplayed its role in the way events panned out.
"The transfer of existing assets over the creation of new ones was in theory the wrong priority. But the most decisive privatizers were Russians," said Christof Ruehl, the Washington-based institution's chief economist for Russia.
Ruehl said that because of the dramatic collapse of the planned economy, policymakers may not have had the option to do things any other way: "If you have the luxury to create a vibrant new private sector, do it, but there was very little alternative to privatizing old businesses at the time, and I think you'll find that those companies which were privatized are doing better than companies which continue to be state-owned."
Nonetheless, the WIDER study found that the views the World Bank helped to instill in "country after country" continue to be reinforced by misleading statistical data showing that the number of small businesses in Russia and other countries in Eastern Europe is booming. It says there is evidence that many small businesses that were registered but never actually operated continue to be included in official totals, as are real businesses that went bust.
"These statistics led people to believe the Gaidar and Chubais logic," said McIntyre, referring to the architects of the privatizations of the early 1990s. In addition, most of the small businesses that are actually in operation represent shuttle-trading activity that has little cumulative developmental effect and contributes little to the economy as a whole.
WIDER is urging Russia and other countries whose economies are in transition to stop relying on "automatic market processes" and focus instead on creating the "managed processes" needed to develop the engines of economic growth - small businesses - in a meaningful way.
This means creating an environment that exists in developed countries, where large enterprises act as customers and suppliers to small businesses and both national and local governments are deeply involved in the day-to-day activities of companies, supplying subsidies and funding research, McIntyre said.
The study's authors said the Moscow city government, for example, is moving in the right direction with plans to require its subcontractors to farm out 5 percent of their work to small businesses.
The government can promote the development of value-adding small businesses in other ways as well, they said, citing food-labeling as an example.
Small businesses often lose market share to conglomerates that sell lower-quality products but have superior distribution and marketing capabilities, McIntyre said. "Requiring proper and honest labeling can show consumers that one jug of milk is fresh and locally produced, while another was shipped in from afar," he said.
The government should play a more active role in the distribution of capital, too, according to WIDER.
"Small businesses are dynamic in an environment of complex relationships between the national government, regional governments, big companies and credit institutions," McIntyre said. "People shouldn't expect too much of small businesses without these conditions."
TITLE: A Bigger EU Threatens Russian Steel
AUTHOR: By Simon Ostrovsky
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - With European Union expansion planned in less than six months, the domestic steel industry is fighting to retain its markets in Eastern Europe.
When seven countries formerly in the Warsaw Pact join the EU next spring, Russia stands to lose a significant share of its steel exports.
As a precaution, some Russian steelmakers have gone as far as buying factories in countries that soon will be located in Europe's expanded market.
According to a 2002 agreement, Russia will be allowed to sell 1.3 million tons of steel roll to the EU next year.
But this figure does not include the 500,000 tons of steel roll Russia currently exports to Eastern Europe.
Moscow is trying to persuade Brussels to modify the agreement and increase the volume of steel that Russia will be able to export to the enlarged EU.
A delegation from the Economic Development and Trade Ministry took the Russian case to Brussels last week. But officials are refraining from commenting on the results of the talks, citing the illness of the head of the delegation.
Interfax quoted an unnamed ministry official as saying only that the EU promised to "consider Russia's interests."
There have already been signs that EU quotas will be adjusted.
"Quotas will be adjusted to take into account traditional trade flows between new European members and countries such as Russia," said Arancha Gonzalez, spokeswoman for European Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy.
High-level talks in May resulted in the EU saying it would consider raising quotas by 495,000 tons, almost as much as the Russian side requested, said Vasily Varyonov, head of the department for the protection of foreign markets at Magnitogorsk metal works, the country's largest steelmaker.
"If things continue moving in this direction, I don't foresee any problems for us," he said.
Not all steelmakers are so certain, and some industry players are preparing for the worst.
The Novolipetsky metals factory has purchased Dansteel in Denmark, an EU member, and Severstal has bought a stake in SeverstalLat in Latvia, a candidate country.
Foreign holdings serve as a sort of insurance, giving Russian companies the option of skirting quotas altogether.
In the future, domestic steelmakers could export steel slabs - which unlike steel roll are unregulated - to their EU plants for further processing.
Severstal is currently bidding for the purchase of Hungarian steelmaker Dunaferr.
"You've seen a move [by Russian companies] to buy Eastern European steel assets," said Renaissance Capital's Rob Edwards.
"They are trying to hedge themselves out of marginalization on the market."
But there are also drawbacks for Russian companies, analysts warn.
Domestic companies have little experience working the European market from the inside.
"The managers of Russian companies are not familiar with these markets. They will have to learn to work with more stringent regulation and higher costs then they are used to," said Vladimir Savov, a senior analyst at NIKoil.
"[Buying companies in Eastern Europe] doesn't guarantee instant and easy market shares."
Since the United States lifted tariffs on steel earlier this month, the global market for the metal is in flux.
Part of the EU's rationale for keeping trade barriers was to stem the flow of imports redirected to Europe after being blocked from America, said Vladimir Pechik, executive director of the Russian Union of Metals Producers.
Russian producers, he said, hope EU regulations will be softened now that the U.S. market has opened.
Nevertheless, domestic steelmakers are not overly optimistic. Some believe that even with adjustments, the EU will try to keep Russian steel off its markets.
"There is a difference between getting quotas and fulfilling them," said Andrei Selenyuk, executive director of one of the country's largest steel producers, Yevrazholding, which reported $2 billion in sales last year.
"Just as the United States did, [the EU] will use anti-dumping laws to block as many imports as possible. And even if those cases are unfounded, they drag on for a long time."
TITLE: Economists: WTO Not a Necessity
AUTHOR: By Alla Startseva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Forget about Russia's troubled bid for membership in the World Trade Organization - the economy is healthy and set to keep on growing next year.
That's the message coming from some of the country's leading economists from the Association of Independent Centers for Economic Analysis.
"Economic growth has exceeded all our expectations," Yevsei Gurvich, head of the Finance Ministry's Economic Expert Group, said Wednesday.
The government has upped its forecast for economic expansion in 2003 to about 6.7 percent, marking the fifth consecutive year of growth. Originally it had predicted the economy would grow just 4.5 percent this year.
Consistently high oil prices played a large role in buoying the economy, although some economists argue that the country is diversifying and becoming less dependent on oil exports.
"Next year will be very similar to this year, according to our forecasts," Gurvich said. "And this is good for all of us as Russian citizens."
The continuing surge of growth, combined with qualitative changes in the economy, is making the country's stalled application for WTO membership less urgent, the economists said.
Furthermore, entry into the organization is unrealistic for another four to five years anyway.
Currently the country is at loggerheads with the European Union, which as a precondition for WTO membership is demanding that Moscow stop subsidizing energy prices.
"It is hard to imagine that [Russia] would accept that," said Leonid Grigoryev, president of the economic analysis umbrella group AICEA.
Instead of bending to demands from the EU or the United States, Russia should wait until it can join on its own terms, said Andrei Klepach, director of Development Center, an independent analytical group.
"We will enter the WTO... but not because we satisfied their demands. The key factor will be that our economy will become as attractive and interesting to them as China's," Klepach said.
"We believe that next year there will be decreasing - but not low - oil prices, and that nothing will threaten the budget." ," Grigoryev said. "The price of Russian exports will be stable."
The government's 2004 forecast for economic growth is 5.2 percent, the price for benchmark Russian crude Urals $22, and inflation between 8 and 10 percent.
Economists said next year they expect up to 5.5 percent gross domestic product growth, an average price on Urals between $23 and $26; and inflation from 10 to12 percent.
Klepach said that the high price of oil, which accounts for 25 to 30 percent of GDP, is not the only motor behind the country's powerful economic growth.
The most unexpected component of growth, Klepach said, was that the electricity and machinery sectors - and not just oil and gas - reported an investment boom this year.
"In the previous years the industry was falling behind other sectors. Now we have an industrial boom as the manufacturing sector grew 14 percent," he said.
"There haven't been any revolutionary changes. However, despite a significant rise in imports, the niche for domestic production to grow has remained.
"Not only quantitative but qualitative changes have occurred in the Russian economy. The question is whether we will nurture these positive changes," Klepach said.
Klepach's colleagues agreed with him.
Gurvich argued that the economy's dependence on oil is decreasing: "Our estimates show that this dependence is firmly and steadily falling."
The share of national income from oil exports decreased from 38 percent in 2001 to 33 percent in 2002 and "it is clear that the process continued this year," he said.
Gurvich said that he would expect the country's sovereign credit rating to be upgraded by the Fitch rating agency after the presidential elections, but doubted Standard & Poor's would do so.
TITLE: Lessons for the Liberals
AUTHOR: By Boris Nadezhdin
TEXT: The results of the Dec. 7 State Duma elections can only be assessed as a complete disaster for Union of Right Forces, as well as for Yabloko - not to mention the other smaller democratic parties. In short, we failed to get over the 5 percent threshold for representation in the Duma.
Political scientists will no doubt ponder over the causes of the flop for weeks and months to come, but I think one can already talk about at least two factors.
First is the regime of "managed democracy" or putting it more bluntly - the complete annihilation of public politics in Russia and the absence of an alternative to President Vladimir Putin who can compare in terms of popular support and influence on decision-making. Add to this the complete mobilization of "administrative resources" from enlisting governors and mayors en masse to work for United Russia (with tough targets set for each region in ensuring support for the "party of power") to the use of national television stations as a machine for brainwashing the electorate.
Second is that public opinion in the country has clearly moved to the left politically. This trend has objective causes, but it was also encouraged by the authorities unleashing their campaign against the oligarchs and the creation of the Rodina bloc, which took upon itself chief responsibility for promoting the "confiscate and redistribute" theme.
Of course, part of the responsibility for the defeat must lie fair and square on the shoulders of the leaders of the democratic parties - primarily SPS and Yabloko. I believe that SPS's campaign strategy was wrong. The alternative was a tough campaign based on an anti-bureaucratic platform, focusing not on TV airtime, but on working with voters in the regions. This plan, however, was curtailed by the advent of Alfred Kokh as chief of the campaign staff and Anatoly Chubais as No. 3 on the party list. In addition, I think that Grigory Yavlinsky lost a lot of votes by his demonstrative loyalty to Putin, and that both SPS and Yabloko lost a lot as a result of squabbling with each other.
What lessons should those that consider themselves liberals and democrats draw from the elections?
First, we must not give up. Say what you like, but six million people voted for the values that we uphold. We cannot allow millions of voters, who share the values of democracy, freedom and the market economy - as well as the goal of a European path of development for Russia - to remain without their representatives in government and parliament. We cannot allow the main players on the Russian political stage to be the party of bureaucrats, the left and the "national patriots."
Second, we need to overcome the personal ambitions of individual party leaders and join forces. Negotiations must be conducted to unite democratic forces, and first and foremost, SPS and Yabloko. New leaders need to be brought to the fore.
Turning to the issue of what will happen in the country in the foreseeable future, the main outcome of the parliamentary elections is that there is now one politician in the country who is responsible for everything: Putin. The Duma and Federation Council are controlled by the Kremlin. There is not a single political party or political leader capable of independent political action.
I do not want to engage in predicting what Putin will do, but rather will limit myself to describing certain things that the president cannot fail to understand and take into acccount.
It is quite clear that there can be no serious discussion about doubling GDP and tackling poverty under a market economy system, unless the state guarantees property rights and freedom for Russian business.
It is also abundantly clear that there can be no serious crackdown on corruption or reining in of Russia's monstrous bureaucracy whatsoever if one relies on the selfsame bureaucracy and not on the institutions of civil society.
It is manifestly apparent that it is extremely difficult to preserve genuine institutions of civil society (including independent political parties) in a "managed democracy" and in the absence of genuine political competition.
I honestly hope that Putin is aware of all this. In any case, all will become clear in the course of the upcoming presidential campaign and during the formation of a new government after the presidential election.
If the campaign is similar in style to the 2000 presidential campaign, with the president failing to take a clear position, instead choosing to campaign as "Putin - president of all Russians, both left-wing and right-wing;" if the president refuses to participate in serious discussion on key issues; and if the new government is formed along "court" lines - then Putin will become hostage to the bureaucracy. And that is the path to authoritarianism, economic stagnation, growth of corruption and the further fusion of business and the state at all levels.
I hope this does not come to pass. I hope that Putin moves to the right and that taxes continue to be lowered, that independent media outlets will once again thrive, that elections will allow real competition and offer real alternatives for the development of the country and that the bureaucracy understands it should serve the public rather than manipulate it through television.
There is a chance that this could happen. The problem is that everything now depends on one man.
Boris Nadezhdin, deputy head of the Union of Right Forces, contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times.
TITLE: Don't Trade Economy For Kyoto
TEXT: Kremlin fears that ratifying the Kyoto Protocol might put a dent - or worse - in economic growth are well-founded, although not necessarily the way presidential economic adviser Andrei Illarionov explains it.
Illarionov pulled out a dazzling array of charts Tuesday night to explain his case against the treaty and argued that even under his most pessimistic of economic forecasts, Russia would not be able to meet Kyoto restrictions by 2012 and could end up having to buy emissions credits from other countries.
Economic growth is a Kremlin priority, and for good reason. The energy-dependent country is mired in poverty, and President Vladimir Putin has made it clear - in words if not always in deeds - that he will do whatever it takes to double GDP by 2010 and raise dismal living standards.
Clean air, on the other hand, is also a good cause. Russia produces 17 percent of carbon emissions, far behind the United States' 36 percent but still a significant proportion of the world's pollution.
European countries and Japan have been trying to coax Russia on board by dangling the possibility of making money off of emissions credits. With industrial output - and, thus, emissions - way down from Soviet levels, at which emissions quotas were set in the treaty, Russia could theoretically sell unused credits to European countries at a potentially handsome profit.
The problem with this is the credits are a gray area that may or may not benefit Russia - should they indeed ever materialize.
One can argue, in general, that Russia's less stringent pollution controls provide it with a competitive advantage vis-a-vis more developed countries in the EU and elsewhere.
However, Russian industry is notorious for its profligate energy consumption: More modern technology would provide gains in energy efficiency, meaning that GDP growth would not necessarily result in increased emissions.
Indeed, in this day and age the correlation between economic growth and emissions is not a direct as Illarionov would have us believe. Illarionov himself has called for economic diversification away from the pollution-heavy oil and gas industries, and suggested that information technology could become a driving force of the economy. By his estimates, Russia could become the world's fourth biggest IT producer, after the United States, India and China, over the next few years. Greenhouse gases don't play a role in software development.
Cleaning up the air is an important task, but surely the Kyoto Protocol is not the way to go if it means handcuffing Russia's economic growth. After all, what good is clean air if people have nothing to eat?
TITLE: Corruption Casts Huge Blight on City
TEXT: I heard some very encouraging words from Governor Valentina Matviyenko this week: she wants to make St. Petersburg a civilized place.
"My general policy is to turn St. Petersburg into a city with a European standard of living," she said in an interview published in Profil.
And how?
Matviyenko wants to create a good investment climate, stop bribery, relocate half a million St. Petersburg residents from communal apartments and increase the city budget. It should all cost 170 billion rubles ($5.8 billion), she said. As I understand, her goal is to get local taxpayers to cough up more instead of paying bribes.
"We have set up a working group to increase the revenue of the city budget," she said. "We will invite managers of certain companies, [we] will talk [to them], explain, examine. We have all the necessary resources to do that, including administrative ones."
That's quite true. She is good at employing "administrative resources," as the last gubernatorial election showed. For this reason, I advise managers of "certain" companies to be prepared for the worst. There's nothing bad, of course, in encouraging businesses to declare all their income to the city authorities, but it seems very unlikely that bribery will end as soon as they start paying taxes in full. It is more likely that businesses will have to pay higher taxes and continue to bribe authorities to keep their operations running.
Matviyenko admitted bribery was a serious problem for the city government. "It is no secret to anyone that the system of allocating city orders and contracts was built on kickbacks," she said. "This means contractors have automatically built 20 percent into their price to compensate for their spending on bribes. We've been introducing much-needed tenders for the allocation of contracts."
This sounds promising, but businessmen dealing with city contracts tell me nothing has changed. "Money disappears in such amounts that it's just hard to believe," one said.
It is really quite hard to face this reality. Figures cited by Matviyenko suggest that up to $400 million was paid in kickbacks last year. This is just a simple calculation, taking into account that the city's $2.2 billion 2002 budget was mainly spent on financing city orders and contracts. The city budget for 2003 is $2.6 billion, and for next year it is about $3 billion. Take a calculator and find out how much 20 percent of these amounts is. Isn't it just amazing?
As an example of her fight against corruption, Matviyenko pointed to the arrest last month of Vladimir Yarmin, then head of the Kirov district administration, who has been charged with extortion of more than $100,000 from a local trading company. Her example makes her look very effective, of course, but local politicians say the arrest was the result of an insider fight between Yarmin and Vyacheslav Krylov, the former head of the Kirov district. If so, I wish City Hall were drowning in such conflicts, because it looks as if it is the only way to stop hundreds of millions of dollars from disappearing.
I was very glad Matviyenko finally released figures about widespread corruption at City Hall. But it looks as if she has a long way to go to make St. Petersburg a city with a European standard of living, if one-fifth of its more than $2 billion budget is literally being stolen each year.
If it were 5 percent, Europe might have understood that, But 20 percent is over the top. It just makes me wonder what the figure is for Moscow.
TITLE: fighting french musical cliches
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
TEXT: Bertrand Burgalat, the French musician and producer, described as the "French genius" and the "French Phil Spector" in his native country, will perform a concert in the city backed by a pair of New York musicians.
With such bands as Air and Daft Punk, French acts have had an impact on the international charts lately, leading Neil Tennant of The Pet Shop Boys to state that all interesting contemporary music is coming from France rather than from Great Britain when he spoke to The St. Petersburg Times in 1998.
Five years later, France's own Burgalat seemed not to subscribe to Tennant's enthusiasm.
"I am not sure the French are invading much these days," he wrote in a recent e-mail interview from his home in Paris.
"Anyway we have always produced club music or instrumental music so Daft Punk or Air are a kind of refined contemporary version of Cerrone or Jean-Michel Jarre; but we are still unable to deliver a rock band which is not ridiculous; to me the AS Dragon are the only French rock band that can impress someone who is not French."
Burgalat did agree that British music has probably deteriorated over the past decade - and the beginning of the process mysteriously coincided with the opening of the English Channel Tunnel in 1994.
"Maybe there has been a kind of swap between England and France when the channel tunnel opened in the 1990s: the English, who until then had a kind of monopoly of witty pop music, have started doing pompous schoolish rock like Oasis and most of the Britpop except Pulp and Supergrass.
"On the other hand the French, but also all continental Europe, has started doing witty, vicious, sexy music like The KLF or The Pet Shop Boys used to do."
Born in the Corsican town of Bastia in 1963, Burgalat began taking classical piano lessons at the age of six. However, he was introduced to a different kind of music making when he attended a Pink Floyd concert at the age of 10. It was 1973, the era of "The Dark Side of the Moon."
"It is still the concert that impressed me the most (along with Kraftwerk, which I saw two years later)," he wrote.
"Although it is the only concert I cannot remember very precisely in technical terms as it was a kind of hallucination to me, I still remember very well the films that were displayed during the concert, one with alarm clocks, another one with a kind of oscillator. I also remember that there were pictures of Nixon and Brezhnev and that the audience laughed when they appeared."
Burgalat started his own career in the 1980s, first as a producer and arranger. One of his first major works was producing the Slovenian techno-goth act Laibach in 1987.
"Of course I was intrigued first by the way they used totalitarian images, which was very different than the other industrial bands, more provocative and at the same time less stupid," he wrote
"They taught me a lot because they had many fewer musical preconceptions than me, a way of not giving a shit about the technique, a way to go straight to their idea."
Since Laibach, Burgalat has worked on more than a hundred projects, from Einsturzende Neubauten to Supergrass to remixing Depeche Mode. He also played with Sweden's Eggstone and France's own AS Dragon.
Although the German electronic pioneers Kraftwerk pop up whenever the question of Burgalat's influences arise, his own description is broader and more complex.
"I have a kind of double influence: pop music with complex songwriting, like The Kinks, The Beach Boys but also Northern Soul, glam, bubblegum etc. which are more straightforward; and more psychedelic, hypnotic, linear music on the other hand."
Burgalat said he did not sound distinctively French deliberately but he could have been influenced by French chanson and such cabaret-tinged singers as Serge Gainsbourg indirectly.
"Probably, although it is not conscious. I guess that I do sound French even if I do not want to calculate that," he wrote.
"Also you can hear vaudeville influences on British punk or Gershwin on American psychedelic music, and Iggy Pop is a fan of Sinatra."
Though Burgalat's style lacks any clear-cut definition, he gave some clues.
"I try not to hide my influences and at the same time I would like to be able to go beyond them. I'd love to be able to do what bands like The Specials and Madness with do ska, or the 1960s rock bands with the 1920s blues."
In St. Petersburg, Burgalat is planning to perform some compositions from his own albums and some new songs that he will record this winter, but he is applying a more experimental, spontaneous approach than he usually does.
"I want to try a different way of playing live than what I am used to," he wrote.
"I want to try doing it in trio because I feel it may be the best way to do something more intuitive, more spontaneous as it is easier to improvise [with] only three [performers]. So in a way these Russian concerts are going to be a kind of happening..."
Burgalat will be backed by Dana Shechter on bass and Larry Mullins on drums, both based in New York. Shechter fronts her band Bee and Flower, while Mullins, who is known for playing with Iggy Pop in the 1990s, plays with the Residents. He has also a solo carrier as Toby Dammit.
Burgalat will play keyboards and sing. Shechter and Mullins will also provide vocals.
Bertrand Burgalat, with Larry Mullins and Dana Schechter, at 8 p.m. Saturday at Red Club.
TITLE: rothko returns to his homeland
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: On the 100th anniversary of his birth, works by the internationaly renowned American artist Mark Rothko are being exhibited for the first time in the country of his birth - Russia. Called "Mark Rothko: A Centennial Celebration," the new exhibition which opened at the State Hermitage Museum on Tuesday, comprises over 20 graphic works and paintings by the artist from the extensive collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.
"The selection provides a fair representation of Mark Rothko's art, from the 1930s until possibly his last canvas, dated 1970," said Ruth Fine, the exhibition's curator from the National Gallery of Art.
"Underground Fantasy" (1940) - a subway scene showing rather conventional and alienated people awaiting a train - reveals Rothko's emerging interest in abstraction, while 1946's "Aquatic Drama" is a nod to surrealism. Rothko's last series of abstract works are tangibly depressing as they meditate on death and mortality. Mark Rothko took his own life in 1970 in New York.
The National Gallery of Art boasts around 300 paintings and another several hundred graphic works and sketches by Rothko, with all items displayed with permission from the Mark Rothko Foundation.
"The major two criteria for hosting this exhibition are for the Russian audiences to see the classics of 20th century world art," said the Hermitage's director Mikhail Piotrovsky before the exhibition's opening. "And I would like the world classics to be interpreted in both the sense of [classical] style and [high] class and quality."
The project took seven years to mount, and the exhibition is seen as the beginning of a series of exchanges between the Hermitage and the National Gallery of Art.
Rothko, also known by his original name Marcus Rothkowitz, was born in 1903 in the Russian town of Dvinsk, now Daugavpils, Latvia. The artist's family left Russia for Portland, Oregon, when Mark was ten years old. Rothko studied at Yale University and then subsequently took classes with Max Weber at the Art Students League in New York. His art from various periods reflects interest in abstraction, primitivism, expressionism and surrealism although his first and strongest passion was traditional art. Rothko's works can now be found in modern art museums across the globe, from the United States and Canada to Switzerland and the Netherlands.
Rothko's two children, Christopher and Kate, attended the exhibition's opening on Tuesday, but, despite their father's Russian origins, they don't speak Russian. Christopher also admitted to being in Russia for the first time.
"Just as many other emigrants of that period, my father was seeking assimilation, and therefore Russian wasn't really spoken in the house," said Rothko's daughter Kate. "I was interested in studying Russian while a student but I have since been involved in medicine and my Russian is is weak that I wouldn't burden anyone with it."
Although frequently referred to as an abstract expressionist, Rothko was known to be displeased with any attempts to classify his artistic style. Even today, Fine refrains from fitting Rothko's art into a particular genre. "As perhaps with many other artists, Mark Rothko didn't like being ranked in a particular category, or trend," she said. "Every painting was an independent work."
Mikhail Piotrovsky prefers the description "iconoclastic icons."
"I believe that this description reflects the roots of his art, the level of its spiritual importance and its place in the history of art," Piotrovsky said.
In terms of the artistic context for the American exhibition at the Hermitage, Piotrovsky personally perceives the Rothko exhibit in opposition to Kazimir Malevich's "Black Square," which is displayed on the museum's second floor. "There is naturally quite a distance between the ground floor and second floor but what I mean is a philosophical opposition," Piotrovsky explains. "The 'Black Square' is a symbol of the end of an era, while Rothko's works mark the beginning of the new era, which follows the era of Malevich."
For Rothko himself, the most important thing about art was not its style but its emotional content. "I am not interested in relationships of color or form or anything else," the artist wrote in 1957." I am interested only in expressing basic human emotions - tragedy, esctasy, doom, and so on - and the fact that lots of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I communicate those basic human emotions ... The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them."
Mark Rothko: A Centenary Celebration until March 8, 2004. Links: http://www.hermitagemuseum.org
TITLE: chernov's choice
TEXT: Red Club will host a pair of important concerts this weekend again.
Spitfire will launch its new album, "Thrills and Kills," its first in four years, there on Friday, while French artist Bertrand Burgalat will play a concert that he describes as a "kind of happening" on Saturday. See article, this page.
After the shows, the venue will go on some sort of vacation until its Dec. 31 New Year's party. It will only briefly reopen on Thursday to host a concert by local folk bands Darts and Mervent.
It looks like the Burgalat show will be the last potentially interesting event involving international artists for a while, as things seem to slow down in winter.
Also, the Philip Glass show last month showed surprisingly poor tickets sales making promoters wonder about the local public's preferences. Originally, they planned to attract both rock fans and classical music fans since the appeal of the U.S. composer is broad.
But there were even worse goings-on in the city's show business this month.
The Cardigans show (scheduled on Dec. 3, then rescheduled on Dec. 15) was canceled while its promoter Sergei "Hobbott" Kuznetsov of the agency Hobbot.ru disappeared briefly before the event should have take place.
The funds collected by Hobbot.ru from box offices (both for the concerts by The Cardigans and Kosheen, the latter being also canceled) have disappeared as well. According to the Delovoi Petersburg newspaper, which describes what has happened as an "unprecedented fraud," the sum in question is around $20,000.
Putting Whitney Houston (due in February) aside, there will be some worthwhile concerts next year.
February will see Marc Almond at last launch his "Russian album" featuring collaborations with artists as diverse as Russian rock guru Boris Grebenshchikov and Soviet-era party pop diva Lyudmila Zykina, in St. Petersburg. Called "Heart on Snow," it was released internationally early last month, and will get its Russian release in February.
Einsturzende Neubaten, the German band led by Blixa Bargeld, whose other job is playing guitar with Nick Cave's Bad Seeds, will also perform in February.
Rumor has it that a dozen even bigger names, including Peter Gabriel and David Bowie, will come to St. Petersburg but negotiations are still in progress.
However, it is already known that neither Kraftwerk or David Sylvian come to the city in the near future.
Folk-punk band Iva Nova will play Fish Fabrique on Friday, while ska/rock band Chirvontsy will appear in Manhattan the same night.
Modernization Festival, an annual celebration for Russian radio-friendly pop rock, seems to go through hard times. Held at Ice Palace, it was postponed from Nov. 21 and now is rescheduled on Sunday, Dec. 21, with a new lineup.
Probably thinking that usual headliners, such as Splean, are not enough, the promoters are attempting to lure the audience with the burnt-out 1970s rockers Uriah Heep and the "possible" appearance of Russian pop diva Zemfira.
- By Sergey Chernov
TITLE: cool as ice-cream but not as sweet
AUTHOR: By Joseph James Crescente III
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Vanilla-scented candles creating a dim, intimate atmosphere drew me in to Vanil, a new, slick cafe on Rubenshteina Ulitsa located behind Dostoyevskaya metro station. The interior is blank, gloomy and grey, illuminated by the candles and strong lamps hanging from the ceiling. Latin, lounge and jazz was playing. But things weren't as they seemed.
Scrutinizing the menu, we couldn't find a wine list, or anything even resembling it. When we got our server's attention, she quietly explained that, being a new restaurant, Vanil does not as yet have a liquor license. However, she then showed us the 'unofficial' wine menu, which had a grand international display of wines from Chile, France, Italy, Moldova and Georgia. The prices were dramatic, much like the selection. I chose a Georgian red Mukuzany (295 rubles, $10.05), and my companion ordered a Chilean Los Andes Chardonnay (210 rubles, $7.15). The wine was excellent, but we had to sip it slowly because by now we had opened the dinner menu.
I was shocked inititally at the prices, and felt compelled to ask who the kitchen staff were to be told that they were formerly employed at top St. Petersburg restaurant Le Francais. My companion had eaten there recently and been quite impressed.
But the menu at Vanil, influenced by French and fusion cuisine, is short. There is a breakfast section featuring croissants, French omelettes, fresh juices and Quiche Lorraine, with everything is priced between 40 and 150 rubles ($1.35-5.10). But we were here for dinner.
The salad list comprises seven items, and they all sounded delicious. The prices, however, range between 210 and 400 rubles ($7.15-13.60). We settled on the lettuce, pear, shrimp and blue cheese salad (320 rubles, $10.90). It was very small - barely enough to share.
Spring greens and romaine formed the bed of the salad. The shrimps were tiny and fresh, but for a while I forgot0 that pear was one of the ingredients. It was sliced thinly and served sparingly. The blue cheese was welcome but the whole salad, while light and refreshing, was basic and overpriced.
We skipped the soups, of which there were three, including herring with roquefort cheese and cream of mushroom. All are priced at 150 rubles ($5.10). Pasta was also available in three choices including spaghetti with carbonara sauce, and pasta with calamari priced between 180 and 250 rubles ($6.10-8.50).
There are only four main courses, but they are all excellent. I chose the house sea bass, with eggplant puree and green olives in oil (550 rubles, $18.70). The fish was delicious - two thin filets left in the skin, well seared and well presented. The puree was creamy and rich. My companion had the duck filet in honey sauce served with an Asian ginger salad, which was dominated by shredded carrot and mushrooms (460 rubles, $15.65). She described the meat as tender, enhanced greatly by the honey sauce. However the ginger salad was unexpectedly pungent and she didn't finish it.
By comparison, the desert menu was vast, with items numbering in the double digits. Possibilities include blackberry cheesecake, croissants with chocolate, and apple surprise. We opted for the latter. It arrived as a glazed apple straddling a sweet tort with cream and an oversized fortune cookie filled with a small dollop of vanilla ice cream (160 rubles, $5.45.) It had been recommended to us by the server, and was above average, but nothing truly special. The coffee selection is also large, though expensive. Espresso is the cheapest at 75 rubles ($2.55).
In the end we were full, but not satisfied. Vanil is a very ambiguous and uneven establishment. I don't think it knows what it wants to be. It feels like a cafe, yet in some aspects it toys with extreme sophistication.
Our server was awkward. She didn't know what she was doing one moment, and the next she would come over to bless you if you sneezed. The major offence she committed was asking us if we wanted rolls and butter with our meals. We did, and it appeared on the bill for 30 ($1) and 40 ($1.35) rubles respectively. We had not been informed of the charges in advance.
It is not clear to whom Vanil is trying to cater. As for now, it seems like nobody. In the course of two hours only one other patron came through the door. He had a dessert and quickly left. Between bites we watched the cooks sip espresso and listened to the servers gossip. If Vanil doesn't change its direction and discover its identity, the staff might soon be the only ones to put in an appearance.
Vanil, 24 Rubinshteina Ulitsa. Tel. 117-9813. Open daily from 10 a.m. until 11 p.m. Menu in Russian only. Credit cards not accepted. Dinner for two with alcohol: 2,065 rubles ($70.25).
TITLE: play in post-soviet virtual reality
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A concrete power-station tower, overgrown streets and dreary apartment blocks with smashed-in windows - the backdrop of the new computer game "S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Oblivion Lost" may look strangely familiar.
But for the game's Ukrainian developers, the setting literally hits home. "S.T.A.L.K.E.R." is set in the nuclear wreckage of Chernobyl, just a couple of hours away from the office of GSC Games World in Kiev. Last year, the game's creators paid two visits to Chernobyl to film the power station in its protective concrete sarcophagus.
They also took footage of Pripyat, the abandoned town where the power station's workers once lived. Thanks to this research, 60 percent of the game's buildings replicate those on the disaster site, and the dubious concept of "S.T.A.L.K.E.R." has generated a buzz in the game world well ahead of its release next spring.
"We have reconstructed Chernobyl," said Oleg Yavorsky, the company's public relations manager. "Basically, all the notorious places are there: the sarcophagus, the dead city Pripyat and the red forest, which was a normal forest of pine trees until a strong wind blew radioactive dust onto it. In a day or so, from green it became instantly red."
Set in 2012, the game imagines a second nuclear accident that rings the power station with an area of mutant activity. Players act as 'stalkers,' moving freely through the 30 square kilometers as they dice with death to find alien "artifacts," and attempt to solve the mystery of this strange land.
The plot of the game owes much to a classic Russian science-fiction tale, "Roadside Picnic," by brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. In the story, first published in 1972, a zone of land, or zona, is cordoned off after an alien landing, but so-called 'stalkers' sneak inside to recover objects with mysterious and deadly powers. The story, which the Strugatsky brothers rewrote for the screen in Andrei Tarkovsky's 1979 film, "Stalker," uncannily predicted the Chernobyl disaster just a few years later. In a case of life imitating art, the contaminated area around the power station is now often called the zona.
"Those two things [the story and film] served as a powerful inspiration for us," said Yavorsky. "We borrowed the stalkers and the idea of the artifacts." However, he added, "The setting is different, and we have our own storyline."
The game takes off on a popular rumor that the Chernobyl accident was caused by an antenna that directed psychotropic waves at America, and that was accidentally turned on by the power station's staff. "According to some experts, there was such an antenna," Yavorsky said. "We have a photo of such a structure." Yet he laughed as he described the rumor as "a sort of Cold War theory."
In addition to roaming through Pripyat and its surrounding villages, players will be able to enter the power station. But the interior had to be created by digital wizardry, as the game developers were not allowed to go inside the sarcophagus. "This is absolutely prohibited," said Yavorsky. "The closest we got was about 300 meters away."
Photographing and video-taping at the Chernobyl site, the company attracted official attention.
"We actually had a visit from the KGB about half a year ago," said Yavorsky, using the Soviet name for the security services. "We had to submit all the photos ... I don't know whether they're happy with having had us there. The [travel] agency had a hard time explaining what we were doing there."
Perhaps only Ukrainian developers could get away with setting a game on the scene of an accident that killed over 4,000 people in Ukraine and continues to cause health problems for an estimated 3.3 million citizens.
Asked whether the game was in bad taste, Yavorsky paused, and then said, "It's a very delicate topic, and at the same time a very dear and close subject for us." He recalled his own childhood memories of investigators with Geiger counters checking his parents' house and yard in the northern part of Ukraine - one of the areas that suffered most - and added that the father of one of the game's designers helped build the sarcophagus. "We make this game as a warning to people against such accidents in the future," said Yavorsky. "We want people to be immersed in the story and feel how terrible these things are. We don't want to create any bad feeling."
According to Viktor Zuyev, the public relations manager for Russobit, the game's CIS publisher, whatever hesitations the creators may have had were quickly overcome. "Of course, there were some doubts, but the action of the game happens much later, in 2012," he said. "The game is made by Ukrainians; for them it's a painful topic, and they probably know better how to react. ... They resolved the moral problem," he added.
Chernobyl or no Chernobyl, the game is making waves internationally. U.S. game-trade magazine "Computer and Video Games" wrote last month that "'S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Oblivion Lost' is easily one of the most visually stunning PC titles currently in development." The California-based 3D Gamers website lists the game as one of the 10 most interesting titles presented at this year's E3 Electronic Entertainment Exposition in Los Angeles.
But game-world interest has little to do with the controversial setting. Rather, it centers around "S.T.A.L.K.E.R.'s" sophisticated technology, which creates a world in which the game's inhabitants "live" independently of the player and undergo changes even when they are off the screen. "Every living creature has its own cycle - it can feel hunger and can be afraid," said Zuyev. The game is also aimed at action fans, who can take their pick of an arsenal of weapons and Soviet-era vehicles.
GSC Games World is the largest game-making company in Ukraine, employing around 90 people. "The [game] development business is gaining momentum ... in Ukraine and Eastern Europe. We have rather good specialists here, and it's cheaper," Yavorsky said. GSC Games World's first hit game was "Cossacks: European Wars," released in 2001, which sold over 1 million copies worldwide. The game involved wars between 16 nations, including Ukraine and Russia, between the 16th and 18th centuries. "In a way it was an attempt to popularize our history, our heroes," Yavorsky said.
Despite low disposable incomes and rampant piracy, Yavorsky said, it is possible to make a profit on the local computer-game market. "It's a matter of a good copyright protection system, and control by the publisher," he said.
While worldwide distribution will be handled by California-based company THQ, the CIS market is handled by a separate firm, Moscow's Russobit. To fight piracy, the publisher uses a special protection system on its disks, which Zuyev described as "very hard to break."
But piracy also creates competition, forcing Russobit to sell AAA games - the Western technological standard - in simple cardboard cases for just 80 rubles, or less than $3. "It's a cheap option for those who can't spend $30 to $40," Zuyev stated. "In Russia, you can buy an AAA game or a game thrown together in just a couple of months for the same 80 rubles." However, Russobit is also considering releasing its own Russian-language "S.T.A.L.K.E.R." in Western-style packaging for over $30. "The game is worth it," Zuyev said. "I won't call it historic, but it will be remembered for a long time."
Indeed, Russian games have no difficulty selling abroad. International developers include Horns and Hooves in the Siberian town of Mezhdurechensk, which is working on a strategy game set in the future called "Phase: Exodus;" Moscow's Nival Interactive, which recently released the second part of "Etherlords;" and Voronezh's Burut with this year's "Kreed" shooting game, set in space. "Apart from the language, you can't tell whether a game was made in Eastern Europe or America," Zuyev said. "Games are made for the world market."
But sometimes geographical borders do come to bear on cyberspace. Several Western games have been specially adapted for Russian audiences; for example, in 2002, Germany's Epic Interactive released "Gorky 17," set in Russia, in a Russian translation by Dmitry Puchkov, also known as Goblin, who is well-known for his parody translations of western films.
And some Russian-made games never make it past the border, such as Moscow company S.K.I.F's take on the adventures of Russian Civil War hero Vasily Chapayev. Based on a popular Soviet film and book, this animated quest from 1999 was exclusively geared toward a Russian audience. The title: "Petka and Vasily Ivanovich Save the Galaxy."
TITLE: big movie about a little fish
AUTHOR: By Stephen Holden
PUBLISHER: the new york times
TEXT: Among the finned creatures who wriggle and dart through Disney/Pixar's sparkling aquatic fable, "Finding Nemo," the most comically inspired is a great white shark named Bruce (the voice of Barry Humphries), who glides through the ocean flanked by two menacing sidekicks, Anchor (Eric Bana), a hammerhead, and Chum (Bruce Spence), a mako. An ominous hulk, with eyes like gleaming bullets and a savage jack-o'-lantern grin, Bruce has adopted a 12-step program to curb his insatiable appetite for other fish. "Fish are friends, not food," goes the mantra he repeats in an unctuously imperious drawl whenever he's tempted to gobble up a passing morsel.
But sharks will be sharks, and Bruce's resolution is awfully shaky. In the movie's scariest scene, the drifting scent of blood drives him into a ravenous frenzy in which his eyes turn black and he lunges after Marlin (Albert Brooks), the meek little orange-and-white clown fish he has been regaling with his recovery spiel. Their hair-raising life-or-death chase takes them around a sunken submarine and through a minefield.
Bruce is only the most fearsome of the predators encountered by Marlin, a nervous, overprotective father who sets out over the great, wide ocean to find his lost son Nemo (Alexander Gould). Before his journey is over, he finds himself trapped in the mouth of a blue whale with only moments to spare before it takes a big, lethal gulp, and pursued by a flock of sea gulls that are almost as menacing as the birds in Alfred Hitchcock's avian nightmare.
Nemo, a squeaky-voiced youngster who was born with one fin smaller than the other, disappears on his first day of school after defying his father with a daredevil stunt. Leaving the security of the Great Barrier Reef where he and his dad live comfortably inside a sea anemone, he swims out to inspect a distant boat and is scooped up in a scuba diver's net.
Although Marlin swims to the rescue, he is repelled by the blast of the boat's propeller. Nemo eventually lands inside the aquarium of a dentist in Sydney, Australia, where his tank companions are so bored they have picked up the technical argot of dentistry from observing their keeper. In setting out to find Nemo, Marlin has only a single clue as to his whereabouts: the address of the fishing boat.
In its broadest outlines, "Finding Nemo," is an upbeat, sentimental fable about a fearful father and a rebellious son who recklessly breaks away. Each has to learn to trust and respect the other, but to arrive at a better understanding both must endure any number of harrowing trials.
At home, Marlin, a well-meaning worrywart, addresses his son in the nagging whine of a nervous milquetoast. Initially he seems the least likely candidate to risk his life to save anyone. But once he takes to the open water, he is unstoppably courageous and resourceful in his quest to find the boy.
Along the way he teams up with Dory (Ellen DeGeneres), an inveterately cheery blue tang with a severe case of short-term memory loss that causes many complications. The character, who speaks in daffy non sequiturs but knows enough to tutor Marlin in the funny language of whales, is the movie's comic center. And DeGeneres infuses what could have been a one-note role with an irresistible enthusiasm and playfulness.
The adventures they share include near-entrapment in a school of deadly jellyfish and a joy ride on the East Australian Current with a green sea turtle named Crush (Andrew Stanton) who, despite being 150 years old, has the adventurous spirit and vocabulary of a 16-year-old surfer dude.
High on the movie's list of accomplishments is its creation of an undersea wonderland whose opalescent colors and shifting light reflect the enchanted aura of dreamy aquatic photography. Whether the setting is a fish tank or an ocean current, the movie successfully sustains a watery ambience, not an easy thing to do given water's semitransparency.
"Finding Nemo" doesn't pretend that its undersea environment is a happier alternative to the world above. Under its comforting narrative arc, it presents a stark vision of the sea world as a treacherous jungle that, for all its beauty and excitement, is an extremely dangerous place to live. The movie jumps right into the darker side of life in a scene in which Marlin and his wife, Coral (Elizabeth Perkins), marvel at the more than 400 eggs that are about to yield a brood of children, only to have their future snatched away with the unwelcome appearance of a barracuda. In one furious snap, the intruder devours Coral and all but one of the eggs, leaving only Marlin and the single egg that becomes Nemo.
Once Nemo has landed in the aquarium, the story cuts back and forth between the father, desperately searching for his son, and Nemo making friends with his tankmates and plotting an improbable escape. The tank's unofficial leader, Gill (Willem Dafoe), is a black-and-white-striped Moorish idol, who like Nemo is a former ocean dweller longing to return to the sea.
The escape plan becomes a race against time once Nemo learns he is to be given as a present to the dentist's 8-year-old niece, Darla, a savage little monster who has been known to take a baggie containing a fish and shake it violently. Darla's appearances are accompanied by snippets of the shrieking murder music from "Psycho."
Visual imagination and sophisticated wit raise "Finding Nemo" to a level just below the peaks of Pixar's "Toy Story" movies and "Monsters, Inc.," which were created by many of the same hands. (Stanton, who plays Crush and was co-director of "A Bug's Life," directs "Nemo" with Lee Unkrich.) As in the earlier Pixar movies, the animation achieves an astonishing synergy of voice, computer-animated image and dialogue. Facial expressions match vocal inflections with a precision that lends even the minor characters an almost surreal clarity.
The humor bubbling through "Finding Nemo" is so fresh, sure of itself and devoid of the cutesy, saccharine condescension that drips through so many family comedies that you have to wonder what it is about the Pixar technology that inspires the creators to be so endlessly inventive. The capacity of computer-animation to evoke a three-dimensional sense of detail obviously has something to do with it. But the enterprise still wouldn't amount to much without the formidable storytelling talents driving it.
"Finding Nemo" is dubbed with Russian actors' voices in Russia.
TITLE: guidebook gets lost in translation
AUTHOR: By Peter Morley
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Writing guidebooks can be tricky. Trying to capture the essence of any city - never mind one as wrapped up in itself and in myth as St. Petersburg - with words, pictures and maps is a daunting task. Nearly all current guidebooks to St. Petersburg in English are written by strangers to the city, who often do not speak much Russian, and none of them succeed fully in providing a satisfactory guide to the city.
So it would seem to make sense to ask a native of St. Petersburg to write an insider's guide. This is what British company Companion Guides has done. The publisher chose Kyril Zinovieff, a member of one of Russia's oldest noble families, who was born here in 1910, although he left with the rest of his family after the revolutions of 1917 and wrote in the West under the name Kyril Fitzlyon. Zinovieff's roots are firmly in St. Petersburg; indeed his son, Sebastian FitzLyon, returned to live and work in real estate and is now the honorary Australian consul here.
Zinovieff and his co-writer, Jenny Hughes, devote a few well-spent pages to debunking some of the many myths about St. Petersburg. As is increasingly being shown (for example, in the recent book, "New Amsterdam," by local historian Sergei Gorbatenko), Peter the Great had the Dutch capital in mind when he founded his city, not a "Venice of The North" as other guidebooks often repeat.
The introduction is followed by an enlightening section on the prehistory of St. Petersburg. The part about the Russian-Swedish battles immediately before the city was founded is detailed and fascinating. The story of Peter's personal involvement in the military action against the Swedes on the Neva River is one that should be told more often.
Zinovieff proceeds through the city in broad historical order, starting with the Peter and Paul Fortress, moving to Petrograd Island (the southern half of the Petrograd Side), the Admiralty, Palace Square, Nevsky Prospekt, the areas north and south of Nevsky Prospekt, Vasilievsky Island, and other islands, before finishing up - after a brief diversion on the Siege of Leningrad - in some of the city's suburbs.
The writing is fluid but hampered by punctuation that is in places extremely sloppy and, a transliteration system that is both idiosyncratic (choosing to render "shch" as stch, for example) and inconsistent (the city's main avenue is spelt both Nevsky and Nevskiy, for example.) There are also a few glaring ambiguities - the implication that the student hostel at 9 Kamennoostrovsky Prospekt is the only one in the city in which foreign students stay, for example - and factual errors, such as labelling Kazanskaya Ulitsa as Ulitsa Plekhanova, which it stopped being in the early 1990s.
The book wavers between a straightforward guidebook, historical primer, architectural critique and personal-cum-family memoir. While there is arguably a place for all of these in a guidebook, this one fails to engage the reader for any length of time on any level. Ironically, it falls shortest as a practical guidebook for visitors. In trying to squeeze in as much information, anecdotage and architectural detail as possible, there is an almost complete lack of practical information such as opening hours and telephone numbers that are the backbone of other travel guides such as Lonely Planet.
The tendency to cram often leads to information overload, and the narrative tends toward Soviet-tour-guide style.
Nice touches of humor, however, save the book from becoming irredeemably dry. Writing about the sale to Catherine the Great of Sir Robert Walpole's collection of paintings, which included a dozen Van Dycks, Zinovieff notes: "The [Russian] ambassador [who arranged the sale] was proud of his coup but Catherine thought otherwise. ... What Lord Orford [Walpole's grandson, who sanctioned the sale] thought about it is uncertain. He named his next greyhound bitch 'Czarina'."
Zinovieff, a first-generation emigre who served in the British Army, spent his working life as a British civil servant, and then translated works such as Princess Dashkova's memoirs. It seems he is not the best candidate to write a guidebook to the city in which he lived the first seven years of his life, regardless of whether he remembers seeing Rasputin while out on a walk with his nanny.
It is an achievement to have any book published at the age of 93. But Zinovieff's work is unfortunately too patchy to be recommended as a companion for visitors or as a general reference work. The definitive guide to St. Petersburg, it seems, has yet to be written.
"The Companion Guide to St. Petersburg." By Kyril Zinovieff and Jenny Hughes. Companion Guides. 478 pp. $24.95. Peter Morley is a former arts editor of The St. Petersburg Times.
TITLE: the word's worth
TEXT: Pofigist: someone who doesn't give a damn about anything
The Duma election is over, but I still have words associated with it in mind. The turnout (yavka) was sufficient to have it declared legitimate (vybory sostoyalis), and the votes are being counted (idyot podschyot golosov).
A lot of people chose not to exercise their constitutional right to vote or simply marked the box "protiv vsekh" (against all or "none of the above"). As one disgruntled non-voter said: mnye naplevat na vybory! This was translated in one publication as "I spit on the elections," which is what it means literally, but a better translation might be "I don't give a damn about the elections."
You can also use the expression, naplevatelskoye otnosheniye (a disdainful attitude) as in the phrase: u nevo naplevatelskoye otnosheniye k rabotye (he doesn't give a damn about his work). Depending on the context, naplevat can sometimes be translated as "forget it," as in the exchange: "Chto mnye delat?" "Naplevat!" ("What should I do?" "Forget it!") Often naplevat is pronounced very deliberately, with pauses between the syllables for emphasis: Na-ple-vat! (Don't give it a thought!)
In Russian slang you can also say, mnye nachikhat na vybory (literally "I sneeze on the elections") or mnye nakakat na vybory ("I crap on the elections"). All of these expressions are good ways to show your disdain for something or someone, but take care - they are not very polite.
It's useful to know that when you want to describe something that is an important achievement, sneezing comes to the fore again. Ne baran pochikhal! - literally, "it wasn't just a sheep sneezing" - is the Russian equivalent of the English, "that's nothing to sneeze at."
If you want to express a more neutral kind of indifference in Russian, you can say, mnye vsyo ravno (it's all the same to me), or mnye bezrazlichno (it's all the same to me). The latter is often used when one is presented with a choice; mnye ravnodushno (it doesn't make any difference to me) can be used to describe a general state of apathy.
For some reason two idioms in Russian that express indifference involve lights: yemu do lampochka! (lampochka is a light bulb) and yemu do fonarya! (fonar is a street light). Both expressions can be translated, "he couldn't care less" or "he doesn't give a damn."
In Russian slang, pofigism is a state of total indifference, a "screw it all" or "who cares" attitude. And pofigist is someone who doesn't give a damn about anything or anyone. "Tvoy muzh golosval?" "Da nyet! On - pofigist!" ("Did your husband vote?" "Of course not - he couldn't care less.")
The main reason for the disdain for elections seems to be a kind of twisted golden rule: do to them as they do to you. There are lots of colorful expressions in Russian for mistreatment and deception: Nas duryat! (They are making fools out of us!); za kogo nas prinimayut? (who do they take us for?); veshayut lapshu na ushi! (they are pulling one over on us, literally, "they are hanging a noodle on our ears."); izdevayutsya nad nami (they treat us like dirt!); vytirayut ob nas nogi! (they treat us like doormats, literally, "they are wiping their feet on us."); vduvayut nas! (they are jerking us around!); pudryat mozgi! (they are screwing around with us, literally, "powdering our minds.")
So what do you do when they treat you like that? Na-ple-vat!
Michele A. Berdy is a Moscow-based translator and interpreter.
TITLE: U.S. Families Urged To Quit Saudi Arabia
AUTHOR: By John J. Lumpkin
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON - Al-Qaida probably does not have the wherewithal to launch a major offensive inside Saudi Arabia right now, but enough operatives remain to pull off suicide bombings such as the ones that have hit the country in recent months, U.S. officials say.
The State Department recommended Wednesday that diplomats' families should leave Saudi Arabia. A U.S. counterterrorism official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said no single specific threat or piece of intelligence triggered the department's recommendation.
Instead, the decision was based on a review of the entire terrorism situation in the kingdom, the official said.
Al-Qaida's operation in Saudi Arabia has suffered repeated blows since May, when the kingdom's security services launched a crackdown against militants. Some leaders were captured and killed, and cells in Mecca and elsewhere were disrupted.
Because of that, the group probably can't begin any type of major offensive, the counterterrorism official said, but is still capable of launching suicide bombings like a Nov. 8 strike at the Muhaya housing compound in Riyadh that killed 17.
In its warning on Wednesday, the State Department recommended that nonessential American diplomats and the families of all U.S. officials in Saudi Arabia depart.
The department also recommended that private U.S. citizens consider leaving as well. Americans making plans to go to Saudi Arabia were advised to defer any such travel in light of "the potential for further terrorist activities."
"We remain fully confident that Saudi authorities are doing everything they can to protect their citizens and foreign nationals in the kingdom against terrorist attacks," department spokesman Lou Fintor said. He said the department's decision was "based on the reality that the terrorist threat in Saudi Arabia remains at a critical level."
The departure of U.S. officials and family members was not ordered, but was voluntary. Expenses were to be paid by the U.S. government.
"The U.S. government continues to receive indications of terrorist threats aimed at American and Western interests," the department said. This includes the targeting of transportation, the statement said.
"American citizens in Saudi Arabia should remain vigilant, particularly in public places associated with the Western community," the department said.
There are some 200 to 300 nonessential U.S. officials and family members in Saudi Arabia, and some 30,000 U.S. citizens in all.
U.S. officials say the top al-Qaida figure in Saudi Arabia is Abdulaziz Issa Abdul-Mohsin al-Moqrin, also known as Abu Hazim. He took over when Yousif Salih Fahad Al-Ayeeri - "Swift Sword" - was killed in a shootout late in May.
The violence in Saudi Arabia started in May with suicide bombings at three housing projects in May. Thirty-five people, including nine attackers, were killed. The State Department responded by ordering nonessential U.S. officials and family members to depart.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Iran Allows Inspectors
VIENNA, Austria (Reuters) - Tehran on Thursday signed a protocol giving the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog the right to conduct snap nuclear inspections across Iran, a gesture one Western diplomat described as "long overdue."
Iran's promise to sign the Additional Protocol to the 1968 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or NPT, comes nearly 18 months after an exiled Iranian opposition group sparked a crisis by saying Tehran was hiding several massive nuclear facilities from the U.N. The allegations were later confirmed as true.
The signing ceremony took place at the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency's headquarters in Vienna.
Hinckley Gets to Visit
WASHINGTON (AP) - The man who tried to kill President Ronald Reagan in 1981 has won permission to unmonitored visits with his parents, a decision criticized by the former president's family.
U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman said John Hinckley Jr. may have six visits with his parents in the Washington area without staff from the mental hospital where he has lived for more than two decades. Each visit may last 12 hours. If they go well, he and his parents may be allowed two 32-hour overnight visits within 80 kilometers of the capital.
'Morning After' Pill
WASHINGTON (WP) - The emergency contraception or "morning after" pill marketed as Plan B should be available to women in pharmacies and supermarkets without a doctor's prescription, a panel of experts recommended yesterday to the Food and Drug Administration.
The panel voted 23 to 4 in favor of dropping the prescription requirement.
If the FDA accepts the recommendation, women who fear an unwanted pregnancy could take immediate protective measures on their own without consulting a medical professional.
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New WTC Half Empty
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The skyscraper that will replace the destroyed 110-story twin towers will have just 70 stories of occupied space but will still be the world's tallest structure, the leaseholder said Wednesday, two days before the official unveiling of the so-called "Freedom Tower."
In a speech to building industry leaders, developer Larry Silverstein said that an unoccupied section of the tower would support TV antenna on top and push the height to 1,776 feet (541 meters), symbolic of the date of U.S. independence.
Seventy floors were intended for offices, the 71st and 72nd levels would contain restaurants and the 73rd level would be a viewing floor, Silverstein said of the tower, about which only a few details were known.
Mbeki Visits Mugabe
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (Reuters) - South African President Thabo Mbeki was to fly to Harare for talks with President Robert Mugabe on Thursday after failing in his efforts to bolster the Zimbabwean leader in a dispute with the Commonwealth.
Mbeki increasingly appears to be the only prominent international defender of Mugabe, who is accused at home and abroad of rigging his 2002 re-election and of repression.
Presidential spokesman Bheki Khumalo said Mbeki had no plans to meet Zimbabwe's opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change.
TITLE: Keep France Secular, Chirac Says
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PARIS - Despite protests from Muslim leaders, France must outlaw Islamic head coverings, Jewish skullcaps and other obvious religious signs in schools and regulate them in the workplace, President Jacques Chirac announced Wednesday.
Such action, the French president said in a televised national address, is needed to reaffirm France's secular foundations. "It is not negotiable," he said.
Islamic head scarves, Jewish yarmulkes and outsized Christian crosses "have no place" in public schools, Chirac said, and he called on parliament, where his conservative government has a majority, to pass a law banning them ahead of the school year that starts in September 2004.
While widely expected, Chirac's dramatic proposal capped months of debate about mainly Roman Catholic France's struggle to hold together the multiracial, multicultural but often poorly integrated society it has become after waves of immigration from North Africa and elsewhere.
Chirac's proposals, part of a quickening government effort to thwart the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, also appeared aimed at undercutting support for the extreme right National Front, led by Jean-Marie Le Pen.
Le Pen, who placed second behind Chirac in elections last year, has capitalized on fears of immigration.
Chirac said secularism, France's cherished separation of religion and state, remains a cornerstone of French values, providing neutral ground for different religions to coexist in harmony.
Dalil Boubakeur, president of the French Council of the Muslim Faith, urged calm in response to Chirac's proposals.
TITLE: New Sars Case Suggests Laboratories Careless
TEXT: TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) - Taiwan's first SARS case in five months raised serious questions Wednesday about how carefully laboratories are handling the virus. The infected scientist ignored safety guidelines and waited six days before going to a hospital even though he had a fever.
Fears about the virus increased Thursday as Taiwanese health authorities revealed that two colleagues who had had close contact with the scientist are now in the United States. Singapore and Taiwan ordered 95 people into quarantine, including 19 people who had been on an airline flight with the man.
Separately in China, authorities have ordered all researchers to hand in SARS samples as a precaution.
China's Health Ministry told laboratories to send samples to "designated places for storage" and "demanded that all regions strengthen management of the SARS virus," the official Xinhua News Agency said.
The infected man, a 44-year-old Taiwanese researcher, had been studying SARS in the island's only "P4 laboratory" - a facility designed for the world's deadliest viruses.
Even though SARS is highly contagious, the scientist didn't wear a gown and protective gloves - basic safety gear required by World Health Organization guidelines, said Dr. Shigeru Omi, the WHO's Western Pacific regional director.
Officials suspect the scientist was exposed to the virus Dec. 5 when cleaning up contaminated liquid in his lab at the state-funded Institute of Preventive Medicine in Taipei, said Su Ih-jen, chief of Taiwan's Center for Disease Control.
TITLE: Houston Star Duo Inspire Team To Win over Cleveland
AUTHOR: By Tom Withers
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: CLEVELAND, Ohio - Steve Francis and Cuttino Mobley scored 18 points apiece and each made big 3-pointers down the stretch as Houston rallied for an 89-85 win over the Cleveland Cavaliers on Wednesday night.
Francis, fighting a cold the past few days, scored 11 points in the fourth quarter and the Rockets used a late 12-0 spurt to end a three-game losing streak.
"We've all felt every loss we've had in the last three games," said Francis, who added nine assists in 45 minutes. "We showed more spirit and will as far as guys not wanting to lose."
Maurice Taylor added 14 points, and Yao Ming 12 for the Rockets, who trailed 78-71 before going on their 12-0 run.
Cavs rookie LeBron James won the matchup of the NBA's last two No. 1 overall draft picks, outscoring Yao, but couldn't prevent Cleveland from losing for the 12th time in 14 games.
The Cavs played for the first time since their six-player trade with Boston, and they got a huge lift from new arrivals Tony Battie, Eric Williams and Kedrick Brown, who combined for 36 points, 15 rebounds and eight assists.
Cleveland's new guys haven't been able to practice with the team yet, and were force fed three plays during Wednesday morning's shootaround.
"They played real well," Cavs coach Paul Silas said. "They played hard and defended. We were in a big hole when they came in and they brought us back. They're going to help us win a lot of ballgames."
Afterward, Francis joked that he wasn't so sick that he needed to be helped off the floor.
"At least I wasn't as dramatic as Michael Jordan when he was sick," Francis said.
The Cavs, whose 34-game road losing streak is tied for the second longest in NBA history, are at Philadelphia on Friday.