SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #937 (5), Friday, January 23, 2004
**************************************************************************


TITLE: Bellona Says Watchdog Ignoring Dangers at LAES
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A Finnish monitoring organization tasked with ensuring that the Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant is safe has been turning a blind eye on corrupt and unsafe practices, international environmental organization Bellona says.
 
Bellona member Sergei Kharitonov presented the results of a Bellona study of plant safety at a news conference on Wednesday.
 Speaking at the Regional Press Institute, he said leaks of spent fuel are common and equipment crucial to the safety of the reactor is being stolen. Moreover, some staff are drunk on the job.
 "Alcoholism thrives [at the plant]," he said. "Staff do not undergo drug tests. There is a case detailed in my report of a person who had recently been treated for alcoholism being allowed to work with nuclear fuel," Kharitonov said.
 For seven years, Kharitonov was in charge of storage of spent fuel at the plant. He was fired in November 1997, just three days after he published an article in a Sosnovy Bor newspaper that criticized the plant's safety procedures and called for the suspension of its operating license.
 The Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant, or LAES according to its Russian acronym, is located in the town of Sosnovy Bor, 80 kilometers west of St. Petersburg.
 "[Jukka] Laaksonen, general director of STUK, wrote that the state of the plant is no cause for concern, although its own specialists had been coming over to Sosnovy Bor since 1997 to fix leaking cracks," Kharitonov said.
 "The role of the Finnish organization is very negative," he said. "The plant's managers and STUK share common interests."
 He did not reveal what these interests are.
 STUK has invested up to 7 million euros in work and safety equipment for the station since it started cooperating closely with the plant in 1992, STUK's Laaksonen said Thursday in a telephone interview. 
 It has never given cash to the station management, he said, but had spent about 500,000 euros annually to buy and install various types of safety equipment at the station.
 "I don't understand why he [Kharitonov] is criticizing us," Laaksonen said. "We have never been involved in any matters relating to LAES' operating license and we have never taken a position on the safety of the plant itself.
 "Our interest is to influence the improvement of safety, to cooperate with the plant on certain technical topics the plant's managers think we can support them with and that's all," he said. "And we are very satisfied that safety in general is improving, mostly thanks to measures taken by the plant itself - I don't know why he's blaming us.
 "We have always refused to take any position on whether to operate the plant or not to operate the plant and for how long. It is completely the matter of the Russian safety authorities," Laaksonen added.
 One of the recent incidents Kharitonov mentioned in his report occurred in August 2002, when employees installed 241 old circulators to regulate the water supply to Reactor No. 3. The reactor had just been repaired and was about to be reactivated. To conceal the age of the circulators, employees cleaned up the radiation in the circulators in a chemical section of the plant, a process which made them unusable. On Aug. 5, when the reactor was switched on, the circulators started failing one after the other.
 "Conditions were created that could have led to a nuclear disaster because water supply is an important measure of control [in the system]," Kharitonov said in his report.
 "This incident could be treated as an act of terrorism because it was done intentionally. ... [It showed] it is not necessary to use terrorist methods to commit sabotage. It is enough to install old defective equipment in important areas of the plant," he said.
 Quoting reports in the local media, Kharitonov drew attention to frequent thefts of non-ferrous metals, including sections of governmental communication systems and different sorts of pipes, sometimes with a total weight of several tons.
 The Russian Nuclear Energy Ministry called Kharitonov a liar.
 "I don't know what has been stolen from there," Nikolai Shingarev, spokesman for the Nuclear Power Ministry, said Thursday in a telephone interview. "People steal from any plant, but I can assure you, people steal much less from a nuclear power station than from any other site. Maybe they stole something there from storage, but it wouldn't be in such a way that it affected security.
 "From our point of view there are no violations [of security] at LAES," Shingarev said. "The majority of information [in the report] is unfounded. It is difficult, of course, to judge. This is specialists' business," he said.
 "I don't agree with allegations that there has been a cover up," he added. "This is an outright lie because we are open. The Leningrad Nuclear Plant has a web site [www.laes.ru] where anyone can check the radiation level there, what accidents have happened there, learn about the plant, how it works and its effect on the environment," he said.
 LAES managers have accused Bellona of hindering a government program to develop nuclear energy systems based on extending the operating life of the plant. The environmentalists act in favor of Western companies developing the same policy, the power plant's management said.
 "All that Kharitonov writes, in Bellona's report especially, should be viewed through the spectrum of different parties," LAES spokesman Sergei Averyanov said Thursday in a telephone interview.
 "Kharitonov is deluding neighboring states, in particular Finland and its parliament, in relation to our policy. Bellona is deliberately creating opposition to plans to extend the operation of block No. 1," Averyanov said.
 The Parliament of Finland plans to discuss the issues mentioned in Kharitonov's report on Tuesday.
 Kharitonov sued LAES for illegally firing him and won in December 1997. 
 A 27-year veteran of the plant, and one of those who helped contain the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, Kharitonov argued that he should not have been fired without at least two months' warning. The court agreed, citing the Labor Code, which stipulates that because of their exposure to dangerous levels of radiation, those who volunteered for the Chernobyl cleanup should be the last in line to be sacked.
 After the court hearing, Kharitonov was reinstated, but restricted to the plant's locker room for almost two years.
 Kharitonov has been documenting environmental hazards at LAES for years. In 1995, Kharitonov and members of another environmental organization, Green World Council, protested the plant's attempt to cram twice as much waste into its radioactive storage building as it was designed to hold. And in 1996, Kharitonov distributed photographs of the facility's cracked concrete walls that showed ground water seeping through the floor of the storage area. Environmentalists say the amount of radioactive material held in the storage facility is about 50 times that released in the Chernobyl disaster.
 LAES has four RBMK-1,000 Chernobyl-type reactors, including one that has been in service for more then 30 years, the operating life of which may be extended.

TITLE: Davos Eyes on Georgia
AUTHOR: By Lynn Berry
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: DAVOS, Switzerland - Before the three almost-oligarchs walked in out of a snowy night, Georgian President-elect Mikheil Saakashvili was addressing a small dinner at the World Economic Forum of about two dozen people, including some involved in a pipeline being built across Georgian territory and other potential investors.
 Saakashvili will be sworn in in Tbilisi on Sunday.
 
His voice growing hoarse, he continued making the case that he had been making all day Wednesday - at a press conference, in a panel discussion before hundreds of the political and business elite attending the annual forum, and in many private conversations and interviews - that Georgia is rooting out corruption and wants to become a good place to do business and a democratic role model for the entire Caucasus and Central Asian region.
 Earlier in the day, he announced that George Soros and the United Nations Development Program were creating a fund to provide money to pay government salaries and remove the temptation from police and government bureaucrats to take bribes and steal state funds. 
 "It is one thing to prosecute these people [who have been engaged in corruption] and another to change the system," he said.
 Saakashvili then moved on to his second major message - that repairing ties with Russia is essential but that it will not be easy after so many years of hostility between Moscow and Tbilisi during the rule of Eduard Shevardnadze.
 During the dinner, Saakashvili and Grigory Yavlinsky, the Yabloko leader, who was sitting across the table, traded thoughts on what had gone wrong between their two countries and what needed to be done. They talked about how Shevardnadze had provoked Russia to create an external enemy and how this had helped him hold onto power at home.
 Later, when asked to speak again to the whole group, Saakashvili borrowed a sound bite first spoken by his Russian dinner partner: "He [Shevardnadze] needed Russia as an enemy, I need Russia as a friend." 
 It was a phrase he would repeat Thursday morning to waiting journalists after having breakfast with presidential economic adviser Andrei Illarionov.
 From his arrival in Davos on Tuesday, Saakashvili, perhaps a little giddy from the company he is keeping at the age of 36, has delighted in listing the meetings he has had with various presidents, including Iranian President Mohammad Khatami. He also said he has met with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and U.S. Commerce Secretary Donald Evans. But at an opening reception, he said his most important meetings would be with Russian businessmen.
 "If there are serious economic relations, if Russian capital seriously enters Georgia, then this allows us to move from being guided by emotions and impulses to real actions. This is because, where there is serious capital, there is less place for adventurism and aggression."
 Saakashvili met with LUKoil CEO Vagit Alekperov: The discussions were "very preliminary," but "he wants to begin working in Georgian territory." He also met with Anatoly Chubais, head of Unified Energy Systems, which recently bought the energy distribution company in Georgia from its U.S. owner, and Saakashvili said he believes the electricity supply now will be better.
 At Wednesday night's dinner, just before the main course was served, Andrei Bugrov, managing director of Interros holding company, David Iakobachvili, chairman of the board of Wimm-Bill-Dann, and Vladimir Yevtushenkov, chairman of the board of Sistema, walked in to the hotel restaurant and sat down at an empty table.
 "Mr. Saakashvili is our big hope," Bugrov said in an interview afterward. He said the new Georgian president has the potential to ensure stability, which is good for business. "We would like to support him as much as possible."
 As for what interests Interros has in Georgia, he said the country has mineral deposits, manufacturing that could be updated and a good climate for agriculture. "If not a bread basket, it could be a fruit basket," he said.
 Saakashvili, who joined the three leading businessmen at their table for a while, said they had a good conversation. "They are interested, but we'll see how it works."
 "As a Russian nationalist, I am very happy that Mikheil Saakashvili has been elected, and that Shevardnadze is gone, which shows that Russia was right," said Sergei Karaganov, who heads the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, speaking Wednesday at a panel discussion on geopolitics that was introduced by Saakashvili.
 "Russia should stop its policy of negligence, or even negative negligence, and be helpful," Karaganov said. 
 Asked afterward how specifically Russia could help, his first suggestion was to "open the railroad, even if Georgia doesn't want it open."
 The railroad runs from Russia to Abkhazia, the separatist Georgian region on the Black Sea, but stops at the Abkhaz-Georgian border. Most freight between Russia and Georgia must now be moved by truck along the Old Georgian Military Highway, which is a rugged narrow road often closed by snow or avalanches.
 At the opening lunch Wednesday, Former President Bill Clinton called for global support for politicians who are willing to take great risks to promote democracy, such as Saakashvili.
 "Are you just going to pat him on the back?" Clinton said. "Or can we give him help in some systematic way so that all those other countries of the former Soviet Union want to get in line?"

TITLE: Victims Say Racism on Rise After Nationalist Elections
AUTHOR: By Ali Nassor
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Racists in St. Petersburg have gone on a rampage, intensifying violent assaults against ethnic minorities since nationalist politicians triumphed in the State Duma last month, victims say.
 
The campaign was marked by calls of "Russia for the Russians," suggesting foreigners should be thrown out of the country. The most visible foreigners are those with dark skins.
 But the city police accuse foreigners and human rights groups of exaggerating the magnitude of racial hate crimes, saying racist attacks are typical of any big city. 
 "I wouldn't say such crimes have reached the level of concern that you [foreigners] would like to believe," police spokesman Pavel Rayevsky said Wednesday in a telephone interview. "They are daily occurrences in big cities in the West." 
 Ethnic minorities, especially blacks and Asians, have tended to allege racism as a way of diverting attention from their involvement in crimes, he said.
 But at least two African men were in critical condition after being stabbed by organized groups of young white supremacists in two unrelated incidents within a 24-hour period since Sunday evening.
 Isaac Mwita, 23, a student of pre-university Russian-language courses who arrived in the country from Tanzania three months ago, was attacked by a group of five skinheads early Sunday evening. He said the "assault aimed at disfiguring and humiliating me with torture."
 Mwita said the skinheads could easily have killed him after removing his winter jacket, forcing him to lie on the ice-covered ground and holding him by his ankles and wrists. 
 But instead, one of the assailants stabbed him in what seemed a ritual way and left him writhing in agony. His cries for help were ignored by distant witnesses. 
 Mwita was stabbed more than a dozen times. The wounds were in a pattern - to his knees and elbows, two wounds in the ears and two wounds just above them, but he was not stabbed in the abdomen, where injury could have been fatal. He was admitted to hospital in critical condition.
 Rose Ngindu, 21, from Congo, who saw Mwita immediately after the incident, found a Nigerian male student sitting in a pool of blood near Ploshchad Vosstaniya on Nevsky Prospekt on Monday afternoon.
 The man's face was disfigured by wounds that clearly came from a knife and he could hardly utter the words "Nigeria" and "Lesnaya" in reference to the country he came from and the location of his hostel. Ngindu was assisted by onlookers to carry the man to a cab, which took him home.
 Eyewitnesses said the Nigerian had just been attacked by a group of about 10 skinheads who had kicked and stabbed him to within inches of his life.
 Hours earlier, three African students, including one woman, reportedly made a narrow escape by catching a cab when they were chased by a large group of skinheads near Palace Square.
 Ngindu, who has spent about a year in Russia while preparing to study for a degree in international relations, said she has decided to go back home because ethnic minority students are defenseless in the city.
 Quang Son, a first-year computer science student from Vietnam, has a 6-centimeter scar on his cheek he sustained last summer from being stabbed by skinheads who attacked him and a male compatriot. His friend Nam, who was severely injured, had to go home immediately.
 A random interview with 10 new students from developing countries in one city hostel revealed that all had suffered or witnessed violent racial attacks on the streets, but none reported the attacks to the police, citing their lack of trust in the law enforcers.
 Local musician Andrei Platonov witnessed a group of about 10 skinheads assaulting a man from Burundi in broad daylight on St. Isaac's Square on Victory Day last year.
 The man managed to break free of his assailants and rushed to two nearby police officers for assistance, but they shrugged him off, suggesting he should avoid such places on public holidays. Immediately after the police were called away, the group beat him again until he lost consciousness.
 Yury Vdovin, deputy head of the St. Petersburg branch of the international human rights organization Citizen's Watch, said local police tend to "protect the state from citizens and, make a saint of the government, which ... supports the rising wave of extremism, xenophobia and racism in a society dominated by the legacy of the communist-defined 'patriotism.'
 "It is like saying, 'we [the state] cannot do it openly, so let the young [extremists] do the job for us,'" he said.
 Vdovin said there are about 300 organized racist groups across Russia with about 20 in the Northwest region.
 But the police say there are only 50 individuals in the city who organize and incite hatred against non-Russians. 
 "We know them all, and they are under our close scrutiny," Rayevsky said. For example, a leader of the local fascist organization Shultz 88 was last month convicted for inciting racial hatred and advocating fascist ideology.
 But Vdovin said that case had been going on for years, amid debates whether the case deserved criminal proceedings.
 Congo student Arnold Obambi has his own evidence that the police don't take racial assaults seriously. He said they forced him to pay 1,000 rubles in damages to one of seven skinheads who assaulted him last summer and whom he injured in self defense.
 Obambi was arrested two weeks after the incident on charges of disturbing public order and causing bodily injuries to the "victim." The police suggested he should pay the sum to the "victim" to avoid a four- to seven-year jail term.

TITLE: Gerashchenko Not Registered
AUTHOR: By Caroline McGregor
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Central Elections Commission on Thursday refused to register Viktor Gerashchenko for the presidential election in March, ruling that the former Central Bank chief was not exempt from the requirement to submit 2 million voter signatures.
 
Gerashchenko said he was not collecting signatures because his nomination had been backed by one of the three parties that belong to the nationalist Rodina bloc.
 As one of the four political groups that won more than 5 percent of the State Duma vote on Dec. 7, Rodina has the right under election law to nominate a candidate without a signature drive. But the commission ruled that Gerashchenko should have had support from the entire bloc, not just one party.
 The Gerashchenko camp said it will contest the decision.
 "We are preparing to ask the Supreme Court to clarify what amounts to a contradiction of the law," said Sergei Butin, a spokesman for Rodina co-chairman Dmitry Rogozin, who has staunchly backed Gerashchenko's bid.
 The complication is that Rodina was cobbled together shortly before the Duma vote from three separate parties, and Gerashchenko was nominated by one of them, the Russia's Regions Party - not by a full Rodina congress. The documents he submitted to the Central Elections Commission at the end of December identify him as the candidate for Russia's Regions.
 With the growing realization that this could pose a problem, Rodina leaders released a statement late Wednesday on behalf of the three parties declaring that Gerashchenko had the bloc's full backing.
 Central Elections Commission chairman Alexander Veshnyakov responded to protests on behalf of Gerashchenko with a reminder that in late December he had encouraged Rodina to "fulfill all procedures required by law - and hold full party congresses [followed by] a conference of the whole bloc," Interfax reported.
 A thinly veiled undercurrent in this has been the antagonistic jostling for position between Rogozin, who has been named deputy Duma speaker, and Rodina co-chairman Sergei Glazyev, who has said he will run for president as an independent, though he has yet to register.
 Not only did Wednesday's statement, which Glazyev did not sign, give Rodina's blessing to Gerashchenko, it also explicitly opposed Glazyev's bid, barring him from using the bloc's symbol or regional branches to gather the 2 million signatures he needs.
 So far, only two of the 10 presidential hopefuls - Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party and Oleg Malyshkin of the Liberal Democratic Party - have officially registered as presidential candidates.
 Veshnyakov has been soberly bracing candidates for the possibility that even if they managed to collect enough signatures, not all will get them certified. He warned Thursday that paying voters for their signatures - a widespread tactic - constitutes a crime.
 Whether signatures are bought "with money, or with offers of a bottle of vodka, in any case, it violates the law," Veshnyakov said.
 Leading liberal candidate Irina Khakamada said she had well over 2 million signatures Thursday, a day after another liberal hopeful, Ivan Rybkin, said he too had reached 2 million.
 Putin's supporters said Thursday that they have collected more than 7 million signatures.
 The deadline for registering with election officials is next Wednesday.
 Butin said there will be no last-ditch drive for signatures for Gerashchenko. 
 Yury Korgunyuk, a political analyst at the Indem think tank, said this indicates Gerashchenko's own ambivalence toward his bid.
 "Gerashchenko has nothing, no forces pushing him forward," Korgunyuk said, adding that Glazyev, who is seen as able to tap strong popular support, likely faces a similar lack of means. After the Kremlin revoked its support for Rodina, "nothing has compensated for that. There is a fundamental lack of money."


TITLE: Doll Display Reflects Child's View of Siege
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: More than 70 dolls and soft toys that children played with during the Siege of Leningrad have gone in display at the city's Doll Museum.
 
"These dolls were probably the nicest part of our harsh and hungry childhood," Maya Rudnitskaya, who brought to the exhibition the two of her favorite dolls Ira and Yura, said Thursday.
 "Children are children in any situation," Rudnitskaya said. "And they play with toys even during wars."
 The exhibition is dedicated to the 60th anniversary of the end of the 900-day siege, which will be celebrated on Tuesday, and runs until March 7.
 Rudnitskaya, who was 10 when the siege began and lived right through it, has 66 items of clothing she made for her dolls during the long hours she spent in air-raid shelters in the exhibition. 
 "These dolls are dressed exactly as Leningrad children dressed in those hard times," Rudnitskaya said. "Their clothes are like the clothes we wore. So looking at the dolls you can see how we lived."
 Rudnitskaya's favorites have little rucksacks on their backs.
 When Leningrad children went to an air-raid shelter, they would carry some extra clothes with them in a rucksack in case their house was destroyed in a bombardment.
 "The rucksacks were an unavoidable feature of the time," she said.
 "I loved these dolls so much, that Ira even has a wig made of my own hair - the two plaits that my Mom cut off during the war," Rudnitskaya said.
 One doll in the exhibition saved the life of its young owner.
 When shrapnel from a bomb broke the window of the apartment where little Lyudmila was sleeping with her mother it smashed into the wardrobe and became embedded in the doll. The wardrobe stood next to the bed.
 The exhibition also features dolls that had been carried by entertainers who performed concerts to raise the spirits of Soviet soldiers on the front line.
 One such doll is Nastya, who also performed for wounded soldiers in Leningrad hospitals together with her owner, Klavdia Razdolskaya, a teacher at a puppet studio.
 Twelve other glove puppets in the exhibition were used for children's puppet performances during the siege.
 Rudnitskaya said she never lets anyone else play with her dolls because they remind her of the special childhood she experienced. 
 <i>See photos, pages vi and vii AAT. </i>

TITLE: Liberal Group Seeks Democrat for 2008
AUTHOR: By Francesca Mereu
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - A group of liberals including chess champion Garry Kasparov, Union of Right Forces leader Boris Nemtsov and journalist Yevgeny Kiselyov said Monday that they see no hope of challenging President Vladimir Putin in the March election and have formed a movement to find a &quot;democratic alternative&quot; in 2008.
 
&quot;We must have guarantees that the elections are a fight between different forces,&quot; said Kasparov, the head of the Committee 2008: Free Choice group.
 He said the president elected in 2008 should be a &quot;representative of people&quot; and not Putin's heir, as the Kremlin is believed to be planning.
 &quot;2004 is an era that is coming to an end. We will fight to have the opportunity for a choice [in 2008],&quot; he said.
 Kasparov, flanked by Nemtsov and journalist Sergei Parkhomenko, stressed that the group is not a party or a bloc planing to back a candidate for president but is only working to create a more democratic country. 
 &quot;We think it is necessary to create a large democratic front of those who share our apprehension about the state of democracy,&quot; he said.
 Political analysts expressed doubt that the group would be able to meet its goal.
 &quot;A group that aims to oppose Putin has to be homogeneous in its components. It should be comprised of a group of experts or politicians or journalists, but not all of them together,&quot; said Dmitry Orlov, the deputy head of the Center for Political Technologies think tank.
 The only thing that Committee 2008 will probably be able to do is &quot;give an analysis of society - no more than that,&quot; Orlov said.
 He said only political parties will be able to create a real opposition to Putin.
 Yury Korgunyuk, the editor of the political weekly bulletin Partinfo, agreed, adding that the country does not need &quot;loud announcements, but real facts.&quot; He pointed out that the group is just &quot;one of many organizations that have been created in Russia in the past 13 years.&quot;
 Asked whether the group will back liberal presidential candidate and Union of Right Froces co-leader Irina Khakamada in the March vote, Kyselyov, the editor of Moskovskiye Novosti, said opinion was &quot;quite divided&quot; on the issue.
 &quot;I think it depends on Irina Khakamada and what her program and her campaign are, but we are not a party,&quot; he said.
 The group said it will be financially independent of the oligarchs to guarantee its freedom.
 &quot;We decided to chip in $200 each. ... The most important thing is that the sponsor will not only be one person but, let's say, a lot of people putting in $200 apiece,&quot; said Irina Yasina, a member of the committee and the head of the Yukos-sponsored Open Russia foundation.
 Other members of the group include Yelena Bonner, the wife of Nobel laureate Andrei Sakharov; Dmitry Muratov, the editor of the weekly Novaya Gazeta; journalist Viktor Shenderovich; poet Igor Irtenev; and Soviet-era dissident Vladimir Bukovsky.
 
 n Central Elections Commission chief Alexander Veshnyakov said no more than three or four presidential candidates are likely to end up on the ballot.
 &quot;In practical terms, only two to three candidates, besides the president, are able to gather 2 million signatures,&quot; Veshnyakov told Itogi weekly.
 Eight of the 10 declared candidates have to gather 2 million signatures to register for the March election. The deadline for registration is Jan. 28.

TITLE: New Name For Agency
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW - Yury Levada, the country's top sociologist, said Wednesday that he will rename the VTsIOM-A polling agency he and his team of independent researchers founded six months ago after being ousted from state-controlled VTsIOM so no one would confuse the new agency with the original one.
 
Levada said VTsIOM-A has already won a reputation in sociological research and can operate under a different name without damaging its business.
 &quot;We have decided to get rid of the word 'VTsIOM' in the name so we won't be confused with someone else,&quot; Levada said by telephone.
 He refused to give the new name, saying he first wanted to finish getting the agency re-registed. An agency source said that the new name will be Yury Levada's Analytical Service.
 Levada and most of his 105 staffers left VTsIOM in September to protest the state's takeover of the agency. VTsIOM was revamped into a joint-stock company and given a new board of directors, a move Levada and his supporters believe was motivated by their opinion polls. The polls, among other things, indicated that public discontent was growing over the war in Chechnya.
 The government said at the time that the reorganization aimed to make the agency's finances more transparent.
 Valery Fyodorov, who succeeded Levada as general director of VTsIOM in September, said Wednesday that he was pleased with Levada's decision to work under a different name. 
 Fyodorov had earlier threatened to sue VTsIOM-A for copyright infringement.

TITLE: Mironov's Deputy Resigns As Speaker's Status Grows
AUTHOR: By Oksana Yablokova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Federation Council First Deputy Speaker Valery Goreglyad announced his resignation Tuesday, a day after Speaker Sergei Mironov said he would abolish the post as unconstitutional.
 
The reshuffle in the usually uneventful Federation Council is an attempt by Mironov to establish full control over the upper chamber of parliament, said Andrei Ryabov, a political analyst at the Moscow Carnegie Center.
 Although Goreglyad had held the Federation Council's No. 2 post, he had wielded about as much influence as Mironov.
 Goreglyad was one of the first senators appointed to the chamber in 2001, when its seats were redistributed to regional representatives instead of governors under a Kremlin move to solidify its control of the regions.
 At the time, Goreglyad was seen as the top candidate for the speaker's post. But the job ended up going to Mironov, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, and the post of first deputy speaker was created especially for Goreglyad, who is believed to be close with presidential deputy chief of staff Vladislav Surkov.
 There has been a struggle between Surkov and Mironov for control of the Federation Council, Ryabov said.
 Goreglyad said Tuesday that he was stepping down voluntarily but that he disagreed with Mironov's plans to get rid of his post. But &quot;the last word will be left to the Federation Council, which will either change the existing rules or leave them as they are,&quot; he told Interfax.
 Mironov said Monday that he would raise the issue of abolishing the post when the Federation Council convenes for its first session of the year next week. The constitution stipulates that the speaker have four deputies. There have been only three since last summer.
 Goreglyad said he will keep his seat as &quot;an ordinary senator,&quot; representing Sakhalin in the Far East.

TITLE: Convicted Bomber to Appeal
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: The lawyer for a man who was sentenced to life imprisonment for participating in apartment bombings that killed 246 people said Wednesday that the trial contained gross violations and human rights activists said the true guilty parties had not been found. 
 
Yusuf Krymshamkhalov was one of two men convicted this month of terrorism, murder, illegal possession and trafficking of explosives in the apartment blasts, which Russia blamed on Chechen rebels. The bombings were one of the justifications for Russia to send troops into Chechnya in 1999. 
 His lawyer Sharif Arifulov said at a news conference that he will file an appeal to have the verdict annulled and the case heard anew. The prosecutor had presented materials in support of his case that investigators had discounted and that he misinterpreted investigators' conclusions, he said. 
 Speaking at the same news conference, human rights activists argued the authorities used the trial to try to hide what really happened in 1999.

TITLE: Brewers Witness Sobering Figures, New Tastes
AUTHOR: By Alex Nicholson
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The news of steady 4 percent growth in beer production over 2003 might have been expected to have a sobering effect on Russian brewers - especially compared with the heady 10 percent output surge in 2002.
 
Yet as the Agriculture Ministry released its figures for last year, industry analysts were more upbeat, saying the real growth figure was about 6 percent.
 And they said that marketing and innovation, rather than simply increased capacity, would be crucial to profitability over the coming year.
 Beer was for years considered one of the safest bets for investors in the country, with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development even boasting in 2001 that it was financially involved in every fifth beer produced in Russia.
 A slew of bumper deals were struck in 2002, with Scottish &amp; Newcastle buying 50 percent of BBH, which controls No. 1 brewer Baltika, after Heineken snapped up the Bravo brewery in St. Petersburg for a cool $400 million.
 But while the market may still be growing, brewers appear to be damping down growth expectations and focusing instead on targeted sales campaigns.
 &quot;The period of romanticism on the beer market is over,&quot; said Alexander Troitsky, deputy head of the Russian Brewers' Union.
 While he said the slip into single-digit growth was expected, Troitsky slammed excise hikes in the sector of 47 percent over the past three years - at the same time as a powerful vodka lobby had kept the equivalent figure for hard liquor down to 35 percent.
 Russia's &quot;vodka tradition&quot; had pushed the country's No. 1 brewer, Baltika, to launch new low-end brews late last year to compete with bootleg liquor predominant in the country's poorer regions, said company spokesman Alexei Kedrin.
 &quot;Surrogate alcohol production continues unabated in the country,&quot; he said. &quot;Chemical concoctions sold under the guise of household chemicals are aimed at consumers.&quot;
 Despite positive sales in December, analysts said Baltika's lackluster results were a sign that it was behind the times.
 UFG consumer goods analyst Aleksei Krivoshapko dismissed the excise issue as &quot;rubbish,&quot; along with the Agriculture Ministry's assertion that low domestic malt and hops production was holding back growth.
 &quot;Growth has become dispersed,&quot; said Natalya Zagvozdina, consumer goods analyst at Renaissance Capital. &quot;Consumers have become more sophisticated, so producers need to offer them something new and interesting.&quot;
 Last year's brewing poster child was Sun Interbrew, which increased its market share from 11 percent to 14.5 percent, according to Zagvozdina. With brands in all price segments the company had focused on investing in its distribution chain and marketing activities.
 As average incomes grow nationwide, the premium and super-premium segments remain a safe bet, analysts said, with sales of beers priced between $1 and $1.30 per third of a liter set to increase by more than 15 percent over the year.
 And it is premium-end brewers like Tinkoff, founded by businessman Oleg Tinkov on money raised from selling on his Darya pelmeni brand, that are reaping the benefits.
 In Tinkoff's 2003 results, released Tuesday, the company sold 90,782 hectoliters of its brands, up by a factor of 15 on the previous year.
 &quot;Consumers are shifting toward expensive goods,&quot; said Tinkoff spokeswoman Oksana Grigorova. &quot;This is true of beer as well.&quot;
 Pyotr Chernyshov, general director of the Vena brewery in St. Petersburg, echoed this sentiment.
 &quot;The licensed sector is growing fastest of all, proving that the standard of living is rising in Russia, as people begin to consume more expensive beverages,&quot; Chernyshov said in a telephone interview on Thursday.
 &quot;The market share of Vena has also increased. We now occupy second place (18.5 percent) in monetary terms and third place (15.2 percent) in terms of volume,&quot; he said.
 However, the overall slow growth means that in the near future companies will have to resort to more aggressive advertising and marketing, analysts say. The growing competition will also have an impressive impact on the market. &quot;Breweries will have to spend more on marketing and advertising, and put more effort into promoting sales,&quot; Vena brewery spokeswoman Tatiana Antonchik said.
 
 <i>
Additional reporting by Angelina Davydova in St. Petersburg. </i>

TITLE: Workers Keep Director in Cold
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Tyomkin
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: A conflict reminiscent of the post-Soviet struggles between shareholders and workers at major industrial sites has flared up at Proletarsky Zavod, a major producer of equipment for the shipbuilding industry in St. Petersburg.
 
The IST Group, which holds 37.5 percent of shares in the factory, on Dec. 25 fired Proletarsky's general director, Valery Suslov, and tapped the chief engineer of Baltiisky Zavod, Vladimir Gaidamaka, as acting director on Jan. 15. However, as of writing, Gaidamaka could not assume his post.
 Suslov, for his part, refuses to step down as general director. 
 Gennady Lastochkin, chairman of Proletarsky's trade union said that on Wednesday some 200 factory workers blocked the staff entrance to the factory, not allowing Vladimir Gaidamaka to enter. &quot;We support the old general director, Valery Suslov. We think he is a capable person, in contrast to Vladimir Gaidamaka, who hasn't worked a single day at our factory,&quot; Lastochkin said.
 The IST Group began consolidating its shares in Proletarsky Zavod in 2002 and planned to include Proletarsky in the United Baltic Shipbuilding Co. along with shares in other shipbuilding factories such as Baltiisky Zavod, the Special Design Bureau for Boilers, the Research Institute for Shipboard Machine Building, Aisberg Design Bureau and Severnaya Verf.
 Igor Tsyplakov, general director of the United Baltic Shipbuilding Co. and chairman of the board of directors of Proletarsky Zavod, said that IST is not satisfied with Suslov's performance.
 Igor Pashkevich, a member of the factory's board of directors who headed the factory until May of last year, said that under Suslov's direction the factory's financial showing suffered.
 &quot;When I left the post of general director the factory's debts stood at about 40 million rubles, and now they are up to 400 million rubles,&quot; he said. 
 Tsyplakov said the new general director was voted in by 89 percent of those present at the shareholders' meeting, which also included representatives of the Property Ministry, a 30-percent stakeholder in the factory.
 But Suslov says he won't surrender to IST without a fight. The Research Institute for Shipboard Machine Building, which he controls, has filed a complaint with the arbitration court of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast demanding annulment of the sale of Proletarsky Zavod shares to the IST Group.
 Lastochkin claims Pashkevich sold a 14.3 percent share in the factory to IST without consent from other shareholders. 
 The arbitration court will hear the case on Feb. 4.

TITLE: Gref Plan Favors 13% VAT
AUTHOR: By Alla Startseva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Value-added tax should be reduced to 13 percent if the government decides to introduce special VAT accounts, Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref said Wednesday.
 
&quot;If the 'VAT accounts' system were accompanied by a significant VAT cut, then such a system could be set up,&quot; Gref told reporters after his first ever round table with more than 20 of the country's top foreign and domestic retailers.
 If a substantial cut does not take place, however, Gref vowed to continue fighting the introduction of VAT accounts, which would obligate medium and large retailers to pay a lump sum of tax in advance.
 He also proposed a new code to regulate the retail sector, which accounts for 20 percent of gross domestic product and 15 million jobs.
 &quot;Our main mission is the development of the economy, and we will reject any measures threatening the well-being of companies,&quot; he said.
 In President Vladimir Putin's drive to double GDP in 10 years, the government already reduced VAT from 20 percent to 18 percent on Jan. 1.
 A further cut has been under discussion since last year.
 The Finance Ministry has pushed the VAT accounts, arguing that levying VAT in advance and paying out refunds later would help prevent tax evasion.
 Gref's ministry has countered that VAT accounts would be bad for business. Without being accompanied by a tax cut, the accounts would &quot;seriously burden companies from the point of view of paralyzing working capital,&quot; Gref said, inevitably leading to higher retail prices.
 &quot;If all the risks were eliminated by cutting the VAT rate, then there wouldn't be any negative movement in prices,&quot; he said, adding that his calculations show that an additional 5 percent VAT cut would not hurt tax revenue.
 &quot;Thirteen percent is a deep cut that the government will certainly link to the increase in tax collection from the oil sector,&quot; said Alfa Bank chief economist Natalya Orlova. 
 At the round-table meeting, which is scheduled to take place twice a year, Gref and retailers discussed government tax innovations, new retail legislation and the consequences of abolishing the 5 percent sales tax this year.
 On Tuesday, Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov had called the tax cut a &quot;mistake,&quot; saying that companies that pledged to reduce prices by 5 percent had &quot;deceived the president.&quot;
 &quot;The mistake was not the tax cut, but maintaining unrealistically high taxes&quot; that the government is incapable of collecting, Gref replied.

TITLE: Pipeline Steers Clear Of Belarus, Ukraine
AUTHOR: By Simon Ostrovsky
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov has signed a decree approving the construction of a $5.7 billion gas pipeline that will skirt around Belarus and Ukraine in an apparent attempt to win Russia more leverage in its dealings with its two unpredictable neighbors.
 
The plan, approved Monday, envisions a pipeline with a capacity of 20 billion cubic meters per year that will run through northwestern Russia to Finland and then across the Baltic Sea directly to markets in Germany and the U.K.
 If construction is finished in 2007 as planned, Russia will not have to ship gas destined for Europe across the territories of Ukraine and Belarus, as is currently the case.
 &quot;Having a route through Finland would solve the problem of Russia being held hostage by its neighbors,&quot; said Christopher Granville, chief strategist at United Financial Group.
 But he cautioned that this rationale is not enough to justify building a pipeline of such an &quot;immense cost.&quot;
 Without alternative options for transport to Europe, Russia has supplied gas to Belarus at lower than market rates since 2002, in exchange for a promise of a controlling stake in Belarus' gas monopoly, Beltransgaz, according to Gazprom.
 Gazprom's acquisition of Beltransgaz was scheduled for last year but never happened. Gazprom cut its supply to the Belarussian market on Jan. 1.
 On Tuesday, Beltransgaz general director Pyotr Pyotukh met with Gazprom chief executive Alexei Miller and urged him to agree to the same low prices his company had previously enjoyed. The two men did not come to an agreement, forcing Beltransgaz to increase its supplies from two independent Russian gas companies, Itera and TransNafta, at higher prices.
 An agreement made by Itera last year to supply Belarus with 7.5 billion cubic meters of gas in 2004 will likely be over-fulfilled, Itera said. In January alone the company plans to ship 800 million cubic meters, or nearly 10 percent of the annual contract.
 The extra volume came as a pleasant surprise to Itera, said company spokesman Yevgeny Ostapov. &quot;But this is still a crisis situation, and we would like things to fall back into their usual places,&quot; he said.
 Gazprom hopes that the pipeline project will help it negotiate with Belarus and Ukraine even before it is finished. 
 Beltransgaz played down the role the new pipeline might play in negotiations.
 Although the project is not yet set in stone, Gazprom expects construction to begin in mid-2004.
 Gazprom's exports to Europe rose by 28 percent to $16.5 billion last year, due to higher gas prices there. The company supplies about a quarter of Europe's gas.

TITLE: High-Tech Oblast an Asset for WTO
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The Leningrad Oblast chapter of the Party of Life has proposed creating a high-technology trade and industrial zone in the Oblast, Interfax reported Wednesday.
 
This should help the country solve it's problems in light of planned accession to the World Trade Organization, the plan's author said.
 &quot;This will help solve the problem of the distance of large export-oriented plants from ports; a problem Russia faces with accession to the WTO,&quot; Ilya Baskin, chairman of the Oblast Party of Life chapter told journalists.
 Baskin said existing port development plans do not take WTO prospects into account. Ports are traditionally seen as loading and unloading points separate from industrial areas.
 Baskin said the trade and industrial zone, which could be called the &quot;New Rotterdam,&quot; would best be created in the area of Ust-Luga and Sosnovy Bor, home of the city's nuclear power station. 
 Proximity to the nuclear power station would afford the zone adequate power supply. The region also possesses developed rail and motorways.
 Baskin also discussed his concept for moving rail infrastructure from St. Petersburg's center in order to build housing on land occupied by sorting stations.
 A project involving transfer of the sorting station on the St. Petersburg-Moscow corridor to the Gatchina and Mga stations in the Leningrad Oblast, for example, would cost about $1 billion.
 Baskin noted that such initiatives would only be pursued with support from the federal government. A proposal has already been sent to the St. Petersburg administration, Baskin said.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: <b>Chechen Envoy Goes
 </b>

MOSCOW (AP) - President Vladimir Putin has dismissed his envoy for human rights in Chechnya, Abdul-Khakim Sultygov, Itar-Tass reported Wednesday.
 Putin has determined that Akhmad Kadyrov, who became president of Chechnya in a widely criticized election last October, bears all responsibility for human rights issues in the republic, Itar-Tass said.
 Sultygov last year gained attention by accusing nongovernmental human rights groups of committing "moral terror" and said they should be investigated for ties to international terrorist groups.
 
 
<b>Investigation Extended
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The deadline for investigation in the case against former St. Petersburg gubernatorial candidate Anna Markova has been extended until March, Interfax reported Tuesday.
 As Markova told Interfax on Tuesday, the prosecutor's office failed to file a charge after preliminary investigation. 
 Governor Valentina Matviyenko brought the case, arguing that Markova was insulting to Matviyenko and members of her family during televised election debates.
 
 
<b>Survivors Fly Free
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Pulkovo airlines announced Tuesday that between Jan. 25 and Jan. 31, 2004, Siege survivors will be able to purchase at no charge return tickets from any city to St. Petersburg, Interfax quoted a Pulkovo press release as saying.
 Holders of the medals "for the defense of Leningrad" and "inhabitant of besieged Leningrad" will be eligible to receive the free tickets.
 The special charitable offer is Pulkovo's way of celebrating the 60th anniversary of the breaking of the Siege of Leningrad.
 
 
<b>Siege Marathon
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The thirty-fifth Road of Life marathon will be held on Sunday, Interfax reported Tuesday.
 This year the marathon also celebrates the 60th anniversary of the breaking of the Siege of Leningrad.
 Mikhail Kochetkov, the marathon's director, said the race will start on Jan. 25 at 12:00 from the "Broken Ring" monument in the village of Vaganova. The route will lie along the legendary Road of Life across the frozen Lake Ladoga, which kept supplies flowing into and evacuees out of the city during the Siege.
 Participants can choose from four distances, including the full distance, half, 10 and 5 kilometers. The full marathon will run 42.195 kilometers.
 About 1,000 people are expected to participate.
 Participants may register on Jan. 24 at the Kalininsky district administration building. Health certificates are required for registration.
 
 
<b>16 Candidates for 207
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Sixteen individuals have submitted their applications to run in the repeat of State Duma elections in St. Petersburg's 207th electoral district, Interfax reported Tuesday.
 Jan. 20 was the deadline for submission of applications.
 Former gubernatorial candidate Anna Markova and former State Duma deputy Grigory Tomchin are among the self-nominated candidates.
 
 
<b>Standard of Living
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The average subsistence level in Leningrad Oblast during the fourth quarter of 2003 was 2,185 rubles, which is 15.1 percent higher than in 2002, Interfax reported Tuesday.
 According to a press release issued by the Leningrad Oblast government, the subsistence level for working citizens grew by 15.5 percent to 2,404 rubles, for pensioners by 15.7 percent to 1,637 rubles, for children by 13.1 percent to 2,139 rubles.
 The subsistence level is established by federal and local laws. <b>Railways Director
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The director of Oktyabrskaya Railroad, Gennady Komarov, officially retired on Thursday, Interfax reported.
 Gennady Verkhovykh was appointed acting director of Oktyabrskaya Railraod.
 
 
<b>No Tires Yet
 </b>

HELSINKI (SPT) - Nokian Tyres has not yet decided on projects in Russia, a company press release announced Wednesday.
 "Nokian Tyres is considering and preparing alternatives to increase our share of the rapidly growing Russian tire market. The projects and reports are still underway and final decisions have not yet been made," the press release said.
 Earlier the Leningrad Oblast government had announced approval of the project for the construction of a Nokian Tyres plant in the Vsevolozhsk region.
 
 
<b>Timber Deal Signed
 </b>

PETROZAVODSK (SPT) - Finnish JMC Finance Oy will invest 35 million euros in two timber plants and a furniture factory in Karelia, Interfax reported Wednesday.
 The deal, announced earlier, was officially sealed by the head of the Republic of Karelia Sergei Katanandov and JMC Finance Oy chairman Kalevi Laurila on Wednesday. 
 
 
<b>Silovye Fixes Finns
 </b>

MOSCOW (SPT) - Power equipment company Silovye Mashiny won a tender to retrofit the Loviisa Power Plant, a nuclear power station in Finland, Interfax reported Wednesday.
 As a result of the international competition, Finland's Fortum Power and Heat Oy and Silovye Mashiny signed a contract for retrofitting of the generators at the Loviisa plant, which is owned by Fortum.
 The contract is worth 3 million euros.
 The Loviisa plant, located in southern Finland, was built in the 1970s with assistance from the Soviet Union. There are already four Elektrosila turbine generators in operation at the plant. Elektrosila is a subsidiary of Silovye Mashiny.
 
 
<b>Swedish Cooperation
 </b>

MURMANSK (SPT) - Transborder cooperation between Sweden and Russia in the Barents Sea was the subject of discussion at the conference Industrial Partnership in the Barents Sea, held in Stockholm, Sweden.
 Nikolai Sigin, a spokesman for the Murmansk regional government told Interfax the conference was the first meeting between industry and government organized by the Barents Euro-Arctic Council and the Barents Region Council.
 The Interreg III, Barents 2010 project highlights industrial building in such areas as wood processing, mining and metallurgy, oil and gas extraction.
 
<b>
 Business Fights Tax
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Individual and corporate members of the St. Petersburg Chamber of Trade and Industry drafted an appeal to Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov on Wednesday to block the introduction of VAT accounts.
 An Interfax correspondent present at the Wednesday conference reported that the businessmen agree that the government needs to fight fraud in the VAT reimbursement procedure. However, they fear that transparent companies will be punished by the new system.
 "Business that relies on fraud will find other applications, while transparent and open business will be burdened with extra [work] and will become less competitive," the appeal said. <b>Antitrust Probe
 </b>

MOSCOW (Bloomberg) - The government has started an antitrust investigation into a trading company owned by Viktor Vekselberg and Leonid Blavatnik, who also hold stakes in TNK-BP and the country's second-largest aluminum-maker SUAL, Vedomosti reported Wednesday.
 The Anti-Monopoly Ministry began an investigation into prices charged by the United Trading Co. for caustic soda, an alkaline compound used to make chemicals, pulp and paper and to refine oil, Vedomosti said, citing a letter from the ministry.
 The trader, which controls about 80 percent of domestic sales of the chemical, doubled its prices and started demanding full payment before delivery, the newspaper said, citing officials at Arkhangelsk and Tsepruss pulp and paper mills.
 The ministry will hear the case on Feb. 11, it said.
 
 
<b>White Sea Oil Exports
 </b>

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Transportation Ministry said Wednesday it expected the White Sea port of Vitino to boost oil exports to 160,000 barrels per day this year, a fourfold increase since 2002.
 "Vitino is developing very dynamically and will load up to 8 million tons this year," said the head of the ministry's department on port activities, Serik Zhusupov.
 Vitino planned to boost oil exports to between 3 million tons and 3 1/2 million tons in 2003 from 2 million in 2002 as oil firms are actively looking for alternative export routes for their booming output. 
 
 
<b>Ukraine Trade Up
 </b>

KIEV (Prime-Tass) - The trade turnover between Russia and Ukraine rose over 30 percent on the year to approximately $15 billion in 2003, Ukraine's Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich told a government meeting Wednesday.
 "After having reviewed the results of the bilateral relations of the last year, we can see Russia as being the most important and strategic partner," Yanukovich added.
 Ukraine's trade turnover with Russia accounts for 30 percent of Ukraine's total foreign trade, Yanukovich said.
 
 
<b>Lufthansa Ticket Talks
 </b>

MUNICH, Germany (Bloomberg) - Lufthansa, Europe's third-largest carrier, confirmed Wednesday it is in talks with Aeroflot about selling seats on each other's flights.
 "Aeroflot would be an interesting code-sharing partner for us and we can confirm that we are in talks," said Sandra Kraft, a Lufthansa spokeswoman. "We already have good cooperation with Aeroflot."
 Lufthansa's aircraft maintenance unit, Lufthansa Technik, already carries out maintenance for Aeroflot's fleet of 18 Airbus 320 aircraft.
 Lufthansa and Aeroflot are negotiating code sharing, or an agreement to sell seats for each other, on routes from Moscow to five German cities, Deutsche Presse-Agentur reported Wednesday.
 The airlines will probably sign an agreement in February, DPA said.
 
 
<b>Port Capacity to Rise
 </b>

MOSCOW (Bloomberg) - Russia plans to build new ports and expand the capacity of existing terminals to boost exports of crude oil and fuel as the output increases for a sixth straight year.
 The country plans to double the overall loading capacity of its ports to 530 million tons per year by 2010, with about half of the total dedicated to handling oil and oil products. Loading at the country's ports rose 10 percent to 285 million tons last year. 



TITLE: Putin Inspires World Bank Support
AUTHOR: By Alex Nicholson
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - World Bank president James Wolfensohn wound down a fleeting two-day visit to Moscow on Wednesday, saying he was &quot;relaxed&quot; about the Yukos scandal and felt confident that President Vladimir Putin would not veer away from market reforms.
 
&quot;I do not think Putin is changing direction. I do not think there's a change in policy,&quot; Wolfensohn said at a news conference.
 &quot;If there is, I have been misinformed.&quot;
 The visit was brief compared to World Bank missions in the aftermath of the August 1998 financial meltdown.
 During the crisis, World Bank and International Monetary Fund talks were watched with baited breath, and both institutions wielded considerable clout in forging the nation's economic policy.
 Today the situation could not be more different.
 Soaring oil revenues have translated into a ratio of debt to gross domestic product that is healthier than France's.
 These days, the World Bank is in no position to put pressure on the government's economic agenda, said Chris Weafer, chief economist at Alfa Bank.
 &quot;Four years ago Russia needed the goodwill and the continued cooperation of organizations like the IMF and the World Bank to basically ensure that it survived,&quot; said Weafer.
 &quot;Now Russia has a normal relationship with these organizations. It no longer needs any special favors.&quot;
 Nonetheless, Wolfensohn told foreign businesspeople on Tuesday that despite the government's reduced need for credit, it was still very interested in social and infrastructure projects.
 An AIDS project, under which the bank will loan Russia $150 million over five years, was a particular priority, Wolfensohn said.
 At his meeting with foreign businesspeople, Wolfensohn heard opinions on the business climate, and the Yukos affair in particular, &quot;that ranged from positive to concerned,&quot; said Andrew Somers, president of American Chamber of Commerce, which organized the gathering.
 The arrest of Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky in October stunned the market and raised fears that the privatizations of the 1990s could be re-examined.
 So far the fallout has been limited to Yukos and its business interests, said Yevgeny Gavrilenkov, chief economist at Troika Dialog. &quot;We are not seeing evidence of campaigns against other businesses.&quot;
 Wolfensohn was diplomatic when answering a question on the same subject at Wednesday's news conference.
 &quot;You have a legal system and you have a government. Hopefully this will be dealt with in a transparent way,&quot; he said.
 Wolfensohn compared the Yukos case to the Enron investigations in the United States, a parallel which Putin has also drawn. Many analysts, however, have pointed out that unlike Khodorkovsky, Enron managers were granted bail.
 Although he said he was relaxed about the Yukos affair, Wolfensohn said he expected court hearings would inspire a media feeding frenzy to rival the murder trial of American football player O.J. Simpson.
 On the subject of the economy, Wolfensohn said that he had confidence in Putin and his government's reform plans.
 He warned, however, that the country needed to diversify its economy away from oil exports and provide incentives for smaller businesses.
 &quot;I don't think there is any mystery about what needs to be done. Everyone agrees on what needs to be done. The question is doing it,&quot; he said.
 More than 3 percent of the country's forecast 7 percent GDP growth this year will be generated by oil, Alfa Bank's Weafer estimated.
 &quot;You still have a situation where 30 million people are living below the poverty line,&quot; Weafer said. &quot;This is not consistent with the improved status that the macro numbers have allowed Russia.&quot;
 During talks at Putin's country residence Tuesday, the two men discussed Russia's new relationship with the World Bank, Wolfensohn said.
 In official statements Tuesday Putin said that Russia would participate more actively in the bank's operations.
 Wolfensohn praised Russia's record of debt relief for poorer nations and added that he believed Putin was open to restructuring its $6 billion to $8 billion share of Iraq's $120 billion debt.

TITLE: Chubais, Kukes Are Respected
AUTHOR: By Denis Maternovsky
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - While Russian companies in general are not particularly well respected internationally, Russian executives Anatoly Chubais and Simon Kukes have a good reputation among colleagues, a new study by consultant PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Financial Times says.
 
The sixth annual World's Most Respected Companies survey is based on the opinions of more than 1,000 CEOs in 20 countries, including Russia.
 Respondents were asked to name the world's most respected companies and managers, as well as the most respected companies by sector and by country.
 In addition, 90 media commentators and nongovernmental organizations were asked to rank companies by integrity, corporate governance and social responsibility.
 Overall, the rating is heavily dominated by U.S. companies and managers - seven out of the top 10 &quot;most respected&quot; companies and business leaders are American.
 General Electric retained its position as the leading company worldwide, while Microsoft's Bill Gates was once again named top manager.
 No Russian company made it to the list of the 72 &quot;world's most respected&quot; firms. Unified Energy Systems' Chubais, No. 54, and Yukos' Kukes, No. 57, were the only two Russians in a ranking of 64 business leaders.
 Energy firms Gazprom, UES, LUKoil and Yukos, along with the Baltika brewery, were named Russia's top five &quot;most respected&quot; concerns.
 The other companies on the Russian country list were TNK, Sberbank and Vimpelcom.

TITLE: Official: Resource Rent Not Due Yet
AUTHOR: By Valeria Korchagina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Squeezing oil and gas majors for so-called &quot;rent&quot; on natural resources is unlikely in the near future, a senior official said Wednesday.
 
&quot;I am absolutely convinced that it is impossible to do [that] now,&quot; said Anton Danilov-Danilyan, head of the presidential administration's economics department, Interfax reported.
 The issue of removing a larger share of oil profits has recently become a hot topic for politicians across the spectrum, including President Vladimir Putin.
 Putin has said that while oil companies in other countries pay 80 percent of their profits in taxes, in Russia that figure is only 50 percent. That estimate is accurate, according to a report released Wednesday by Renaissance Capital. &quot;Since 2000 the aggregate taxes paid have been $48 billion, against net income of $41 billion, or roughly a 54:46 split,&quot; the report said.
 The country's leadership is still undecided on how to boost this ratio in favor of the government, Danilov-Danilyan said. Even in the past, he said, authorities were unable to maximize revenues from the oil industry.
 &quot;In the Soviet Union there were over 100 oil producing divisions. A number of research organizations tried to calculate [their] aggregate rent. ... But even under the planned economy, it did not work,&quot; Danilov-Danilyan said.
 But he also blamed the oil majors themselves for not being transparent enough: &quot;This is why today we do not understand the procedure for imposing rent.&quot; Any sound ideas for a working mechanism are welcome, he said, even if they come from Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov.
 One way to increase the state's oil revenue could be a tax hike. Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref said last year that taxation of the oil sector could increase by about $3 billion in 2004.
 Danilov-Danilyan ruled out radical measures. &quot;If you hit everyone on the head simultaneously, it would lead to nothing but a worsening of the investment climate,&quot; he said.

TITLE: No Straying From the Path of Reform
AUTHOR: By Dmitry Medvedev
TEXT: More than 55 percent of the Russian electorate took part in December's parliamentary elections. The results stunned many observers. They seemed to reflect serious changes in the country's political landscape.
 
The political forces that dominated the 1990s were considerably weakened. The Communists, who had almost half the 450 seats in the State Duma between 1996 and 1999, now have only 52. The conclusion is obvious: Russia is gradually bidding farewell to communism. But what is going to replace it? The main opponents of the Communists, the &quot;traditional&quot; liberal parties - Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces (SPS) - fared even worse, winning fewer than 10 seats. Another surprise was the gains made by nationalist and ultra-nationalist parties, notably the Liberal Democrat Party (led by Vladimir Zhirinovsky) and the Rodina bloc, which both received 36 seats.
 What does this mean? Will tomorrow's Russia become less liberal? Will it turn away from the path of democracy and market reform, and towards nationalism and authoritarianism?
 Such fears are unjustified. In fact, the elections reinforced the political base for continued democratic and economic reforms. Today, the conservative-centrist factions of the United Russia party have a constitutional majority of 300 votes in the new Duma. This party has been the main source of political support for President Vladimir Putin in recent years. Political stability - one of our main achievements of recent years - has been confirmed and legitimized by the Russian people.
 This is extremely important for the economy. Russia's need for long-term investment, including from overseas, can hardly be satisfied without clear ground rules for the economy. In recent years, helped by the Duma's conservative-centrist majority, Putin has secured the adoption of laws essential for market reforms. These have eased the tax burden, liberalized hard currency regulation and brought in pension, customs and land reforms.
 Judicial reforms are particularly important. An independent and competent judiciary, protecting the rights of everyone, is an essential part of a prosperous society. The importance that people attach to the judiciary helps explain why the Yukos case became such a talking point for Russian and foreign media just before the polls. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, head of the oil company, was accused of tax evasion and taken into custody. But whatever the outcome, one point should be noted: This is not a story about prosecutors &quot;hounding businessmen&quot;, but about equality before the law for everyone, however wealthy.
 And that is part of the reason the centrists won. They took up the presidential policy of bolstering stability and creating equal, transparent and just conditions for economic life and made it their political platform. In effect, they took the initiative from Russia's traditional liberal parties.
 Naturally, the liberal wing's defeat is no cause for unqualified joy, as all the significant political parties should be represented in the Duma. Besides, the liberal reforms need the support of the greatest possible range of political and public forces. One can only hope that the liberals will not leave the political scene, not least because millions of Russians share their aims.
 But if they are ever to make a comeback, they will have to wake up to the fact that Russian liberalism needs to become more socially aware. The economic reforms of the 1990s have failed to attract everyone to the market economy. Tens of millions of people have been left on the sidelines. Today, 31 million people have incomes below the subsistence minimum. The fact that only a year ago this figure stood at 37 million is a source of hope. At the same time, the subsistence minimum in Russia of 2,121 rubles ($74) a month is very low. Politicians will have to pay far more attention to the problem of poverty.
 Social programs could help, but they will not be the most important means of overcoming poverty. A competitive economy should do this primarily with the help of the market - through the modernization of production facilities, the creation of new jobs and the development of competition. This is a key point of the conservative-centrist program.
 The first post-election year should show how effective and successful the conservative-centrist policies have been. The year 2004 will be when the enthusiasm and hopes generated by the Duma elections will be at their strongest. Russia needs to make good use of this time.
 
 <i>Dmitry Medvedev is head of the presidential administration. This comment first appeared in the Financial Times. </i>

TITLE: End to Rich Pickings In State Duma
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: The triumphal march of the victors continues. Betraying no fear of responsibility, United Russia boldly put its members in charge of all 29 committees in the State Duma. 
 
United Russia's decision was symptomatic in the sense that it was psychological - the decision of people who have risen to power yet have a very unsophisticated understanding of power.
 Just last year the new lords of the manor still had rather humble appetites, much like the Soviet bureaucrats in the early 1990s who first sampled the delights of the market economy, selling off their motherland for a Parker pen. The Magadan builder Vladimir Pekhtin became head of the Unity faction in the Duma, meaning that the budget must now include money to build a power plant in Magadan. Vyacheslav Volodin headed up the pro-Kremlin Fatherland-All Russia faction, which meant that he would be making the rounds in Moscow telling everyone concerned what decision the Kremlin had made regarding the Moscow Margarine Plant.
 Now the party's plans are bigger than margarine, and those twenty-nine Duma committees are just the beginning. 
 United Russia is also driven by economic concerns. The party's victory at the polls last December may have benefitted the Kremlin, but it left the Duma without a seat at the table.
 Judge for yourself. The previous Duma was a trading floor where no one - the Kremlin, the Communists or the oil barons - enjoyed a clear majority. It was a supermarket where, as deputies admit off the record, the price for a single vote sometimes exceeded $10,000.
 And that was just for votes on legislation affecting business. What about the budget? Word has it that the Finance Ministry was prepared to shell out $1 million for one deputy's vote in favor of the proposed budget. Not in cash, of course. By earmarking, say, 300 million rubles for bridge repairs in the deputy's home district. Skimming that money off through friendly contractors was the deputy's problem.
 Now the Klondike is closed. The process of passing new laws has been relocated from the Duma to the Kremlin, and the special-interest money will follow. This might be a result of the parliamentary election, or it might help to explain the outcome. With the pickings increasingly slim in the Duma, deputies might begin to look elsewhere.
 Russian voters didn't give United Russia all of the keys to the Duma, however. Even Alexander Veshnyakov, head of the Central Elections Commission, admitted that the tally at some polling stations had been distorted. The Communists and democrats say the ballot boxes were stuffed to the tune of six to 10 percent.
 If vote-rigging occurred, it was a response to low voter turnout above all. And it was only natural that the Kremlin's favorite party should reap the benefits. If the Communists are correct in their calculations, without vote-rigging the Duma would have looked like this: United Russia would control 30 percent of the seats; the Liberal Democrats, or LDPR, and Rodina would have 17 to 20 percent each; and the Union of Right Forces and Yabloko would probably have squeaked by with five percent a piece. This breakdown would not have turned the Duma to the right, but it would have made it less manageable, because the LDPR and Rodina would have been loose cannons.
 So the party of power skimmed off all the cream, but it also took on full responsibility.
 Who will be blamed when something goes wrong? The right? They're not even represented in the Duma. The Communists? They don't decide anything. The oligarchs? If the prosecutors keep working at this rate, in a year or two the oligarchs will all be in jail or in exile, and their property will be seized by the regime.
 Chances are, however, that the party of power won't be held to account for the state of the nation. After all, what could go wrong when the country is run by such loyal, devoted supporters of the president?
 
 <i>Yulia Latynina is a columnist for Novaya Gazeta. </i>

TITLE: Lies, Damned Lies and Police Statistics
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalyov
TEXT: When the State Duma passed amendments to the Criminal Code's section on self-defense in February 2002, it seemed as if a big step had been taken toward developing civilized legislation in the country. Just a few new lines in the code meant more than 2,000 people who were jailed for killing their attackers in self-defense were freed. 
 
&quot;Any sort of [physical] harm caused to an attacker is not a crime,&quot; the amendment says. 
 The Yabloko deputies who wrote the law hoped that the number of assaults and robberies would fall significantly after the amendment came into force because potential attackers would be aware they could be killed by their victims. 
 It is not clear if the deputies' expectations were realized. 
 The reason for this is simple - as the police lie when they report statistics on the crime rate, no one can tell what the true crime rate is. 
 The police fairytales differ sharply from the reality on the streets of St. Petersburg. For instance, this week city police reported that the number of street robberies fell 35 percent compared to 2002. 
 If I was under six years old I might have believed it. At least three friends of mine have been attacked on the city streets at night. One was robbed, another was threatened with a knife, a third was beaten up in his yard. In none of these cases did the police arrive to file an official report, although when called they had promised to. 
 I have heard stories about the police ignoring rape cases because they &quot;do not want to make the city look bad.&quot; 
 The St. Petersburg Times receives phone calls from foreign businessmen, diplomats and tourists, complaining that police on patrol steal their money while checking documents on the streets and in metro stations. They have learned to cross the road when they see a police patrol coming.
 When stories like this appear in the Russian-language media, officials call suspects not &quot;police,&quot; but &quot;people wearing police uniforms.&quot; 
 For this reason I was extremely happy to read this week that Governor Valentina Matviyenko will give patrolmen a 60 percent pay increase this year. I should therefore expect to get fewer phone calls complaining about police behavior, but to be honest I don't have much hope that this will happen. 
 The police had some bad results last year, according to an official report on a meeting of the city's top police officers this week. They are not happy that in some city districts &quot;the number of arrests made in drug cases has dropped almost 25 percent.&quot; 
 Knowing how careful the police are about their statistics and being familiar with stories of how law enforcers fabricate crimes by planting drugs in people's pockets during a routine check of documents, this is quite worrying. I expect the number of reported drug arrests to soar, not because the problem has gotten any worse, but in order to furnish the right numbers for police bosses.
 In the next two years the police are due to be reformed. The main goal of the reform is to centralize management and make it fully subordinate to federal authorities. At the same time the Interior Ministry plans to allow regions to form their own police units to protect people from such crimes as robberies and assaults, while the federal part will concentrate on &quot;serious issues&quot; such as terrorism and drug dealing. 
 This reform sounds to me like an attempt by a family to rearrange the furniture in their apartment because they got bored or don't have enough money to repair it. The layout will be slightly changed, but the contents will remain the same. 
 The police do need reform, but of a different kind. Officials at all levels of the national law enforcement system should stop lying and try to get a better picture of how the police themselves are part of crime statistics. This is the only way to improve the public image of the police, who are frequently referred to as &quot;criminals in uniform.&quot; People have no hope of any credible help from those who are supposed to protect them: The only thing people expect from the police is trouble. 
 Only after the police stop lying will the deputies be able to find out if their amendments are working.

TITLE: trying to solve a musical riddle
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Seva Gakkel, the man who helped to bring to St. Petersburg an array of Western artists from Tindersticks to Bryan Ferry to Paul McCartney, stumbles when asked about his job title.
 
&quot;What I do has no specific name, probably I can be called an 'artistic director,'&quot; said Gakkel who has been working with the local promoters Sound Lab for the past three years.
 &quot;I choose from what comes into my sight according to my taste and then suggest this to the company. First, it should be interesting to the city and, of course, profitable. What is this job called, though, I don't know.&quot;
 A cellist and an integral part of the 1980s classic lineup of the influential local rock band Akvarium, Gakkel ran the pioneering alternative-rock club TaMtAm from 1992 to 1996, when the venue was shut down.
 &quot;I am interested in having interesting things happening in this city,&quot; said Gakkel.
 &quot;We haven't seen and heard many things, and even though quite a lot happens here, it's a dribble compared to big European or American cities.&quot;
 Gakkel's first major project was bringing Peter Hammil, the former mainstay of the U.K. 1970s prog band Van Der Graaf Generator, in 1995. As the concert was approached Gakkel found out that he had difficulty selling tickets.
 &quot;It was a project of my own - I had no support from any financial structures, and I was too self-assured,&quot; he said.
 &quot;There was an illusion that if a musician of such stature comes for the first time, the people just must go to see him.&quot;
 Gakkel said the local public still probably cannot afford to go to many concerts by western acts, usually costing between 500 and 1,500 rubles ($17.43 to $52.27). 
 &quot;When I got the proposition from the Sound Lab in 2001, I thought that people have much more money and they could afford to go to many more concerts. It turned out that it wasn't so,&quot; he said.
 &quot;For instance, with Nick Cave [in 1998], it seemed to me absolutely impossible that such a concert would draw only the two thirds of the venue. It seemed that whatever price tickets were, it would be a packed theater. It wasn't.
 &quot;If you have no sponsorship, there's always a risk however big the name is.&quot; 
 Gakkel said there is no way to predict whether an act will be a success, however popular it might be in the West. Poor ticket sales for a Philip Glass show last November came as a surprise to both promoters and musicians.
 &quot;It always seems that a musician who is interesting to you, one who you have known for 15 or 20 years, should be well-known to everybody who was into music, to the people of your generation and to the people who are 10 years younger than you,&quot; he said.
 &quot;And for an artist who comes to Russia for the first time, it seems that the interest should have been higher.&quot;
 Gakkel said there is no way to make tickets less expensive.
 &quot;The budget consists of several components, such as the artist's fee, renting a venue, sound and light equipment, etc, etc, so it happens that a ticket in no way can be cheap, otherwise it's a dead loss,&quot; he said. 
 &quot;Also a possible profit is included in the price which makes the ticket even more expensive. So with Philip Glass we faced quite a difficult situation.&quot;
 But money seems not to matter much when the acts corresponds to the local public's tastes. Jethro Tull, the U.K. prog band whose heyday was in the 1970s, was a great success when came to St. Petersburg last April.
 &quot;Jethro Tull was the most profitable concert of all,&quot; said Gakkel. &quot;King Crimson was no sellout [in June], but the company managed to make some money.&quot;
 The important question of what the local public really likes remains a mystery, according to Gakkel.
 &quot;I don't know anything about it, I can only guess,&quot; he said.
 &quot;Take, for instance, Bryan Ferry at the Philharmonic [in 2000]. He is not a pop artist at all, he's popular, but his music can be seen as alternative to a certain degree, it's not mainstream rock and roll anyway, but - probably because he has music videos - it was a sellout.&quot;
 Gakkel said he bases his choice on his musical erudition and taste.
 &quot;I don't have a good knowledge of current music, so I react mostly to the names that I know well enough,&quot; said Gakkel.
 &quot;It happened so that the Sound Lab works with more or less well-known artists. They're usually not big rock or pop stars, but somewhere in the middle.&quot;
 &quot;Whitney Houston, Robbie Williams and other mega stars come to the city, say, five times a year, but I'd like to have not so big acts playing here at least twice a month.&quot;
 Gakkel avoids making judgements on the rest of the local promoters, claiming he is not interested in the business aspect of the work.
 &quot;For me it's by no means a business,&quot; said Gakkel.
 &quot;For me it's interesting from the point of view of a musician, and it's also sort of post-TaMtAm phase for me. It's like filling a cultural gap to me. I didn't personally need TaMtAm club, because I wouldn't ever go to such a place, but I thought it was important that there would be such a place in the city.&quot;
 &quot;I thought about musicians [when managing TaMtAm]. Here I also think about musicians. To make it so that his or her coming to the city would be a positive experience to the maximum degree. So that musicians that are interesting to me should want to come to this city.&quot;

TITLE: new mag: we're here, we're queer
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: While gay men risked imprisonment a decade ago, now they dance at nightclubs in St. Petersburg and Moscow, and surf Russian-language websites. Yet unlike in the West, they can't stop by the nearest kiosk to leaf through a rack of gay-oriented publications.
 
That's why Ed Mishin launched KVIR, or &quot;queer,&quot; Russia's only gay magazine. The glossy monthly for gay men may not yet be sold on street corners, but it can be found in clubs, saunas and bookshops from Moscow to Vladivostok, and has a circulation of 15,000.
 This New Year issue boasted a tanned model in a silver fox fur on its cover, and featured interviews with Russians in drag alongside shots of scantily clad models in Santa Claus hats. The issue also offered more serious articles, from a review of a book on homosexuality to a calendar of historic dates connected to gay issues. 
 Despite the magazine's colorful format, however, the back cover and inside front cover do not carry advertising. According to Mishin, who formerly worked as a technology journalist, this is because local firms are reluctant to associate themselves with a gay publication.
 Even international businesses that advertise in Western gay magazines believe that advertising in KVIR could harm their image because they assume that Russians have a &quot;totally different attitude to gays,&quot; as Mishin put it.
 But in Mishin's opinion, the difference between Russian and western attitudes isn't so much social as commercial. Just like Russians, he said, most people in the West have a &quot;rather cautious and strained attitude&quot; to gay people. However, while Russian businesses would not advertise in a gay magazine, Western advertisers are much more likely to do so because &quot;they consider that the gay audience is more loyal and well-off.&quot;
 Indeed, the typical KVIR reader is between 30 and 35 years old and makes an above-average income, Mishin said. A magazine survey shows that KVIR readers are also 20 percent more likely to have a car, apartment and credit card than the average Russian. Despite problems with advertisements, some companies have cottoned on to the magazine's potential; recent editions carry ads for tours to India and Spain, hair removal and dental clinics, and a security firm that sells keyless &quot;invisible locks.&quot; 
 The editor elected to create an &quot;information and entertainment magazine&quot; after watching several erotic gay magazines spring up and close down in the 1990s because of low advertising revenue. Nevertheless, the magazine's arty shots of naked men, which Mishin calls &quot;erotic only at a stretch,&quot; shock more than a few. Distributors generally pigeonhole the magazine as pornography, but are reluctant to sell it alongside heterosexual sex mags in city kiosks. 
 First published in August, the magazine has yet to make a profit, not to mention break even. But one-off donations at a fundraising event in November covered publication expenses for at least &quot;two months,&quot; Mishin said.
 The publication grew out of Gay.ru, a web site about gay issues and events that Mishin founded in 1997, and is only part of Mishin's efforts to improve gay life in Russia. The editorial office is part of a small center called &quot;Together&quot; (or &quot;Ya Plyus Ya&quot; in Russian) near Patriarch's Ponds in Moscow, which includes a meeting room for regular discussion groups and psychological consultations for gays, lesbians and bisexuals. 
 Plans for next year include a free telephone help line and, more ambitiously, the opening of a gay community center, where Mishin envisions people coming to &quot;have a coffee, see what new books have come out, watch a film, have an appointment with a psychologist and just meet people.&quot; 
 While gay activities in Russia are largely confined to nightlife, Mishin is determined to widen the boundaries. &quot;According to our surveys,&quot; he said, &quot;[only] around 7 percent of our readership goes to clubs. The other 93 percent don't go. For most people it's not interesting.&quot;
 What Russians need, Mishin believes, is a new gay role model. For many, gayness is synonymous with figures like Boris Moiseyev, a camp pop singer. Mishin sees his role as persuading Russians - and not just gays - that homosexuality is not always accompanied by show business or transvestitism. 
 &quot;When people find out not that someone like Boris Moiseyev is gay, but that a friend or an uncle is gay ... then most people start to change their attitude to gay people right away,&quot; he said.
 &quot;When people come to our support group, they often say in the feedback session that the most important thing that they got out of the group was the realization that it's possible to be gay and normal,&quot; Mishin went on. &quot;They say, 'I saw normal people, and it just astounded me.'&quot;

TITLE: chernov's choice
TEXT: Local promoters Svetlaya Muzyka, or Light Music, said that week that they are redirecting their concerts of western acts from Red Club to PORT.
 
Over the past couple of years Svetlaya Muzyka promoted gigs by many acts, including such bands as Devics and Brazzaville, with many being sell-outs.
 According to the promoters, there has been no conflict with the club. 
 &quot;We will be bringing bigger acts, and PORT is a more spacious venue,&quot; said Svetlaya Muzyka's spokeswoman.
 It's bigger indeed, but PORT is notorious for its long and painstaking weapons checks - the procedure that helps to build intimidating lines outside and send some possible listeners to seek consolation in beer in the nearby grungy pub Tsinik.
 Red Club's spokesman said Wednesday that he had no information about the changes.
 Svetlaya Muzyka has taken a backseat since the lukewarm Bertrand Burgalat's gig at Red Club in December.
 The closest event that it will be promoting is a concert of Germany's seminal industrial band <strong>Einsturzende Neubauten</strong>. The concert that will take place at PORT is part of the band's world tour to promote &quot;Perpetuum Mobile,&quot; its first studio album since the 2000 &quot;Silence Is Sexy.&quot;
 Nevertheless, the next interesting western concert will probably be that by <strong>Refree,</strong> the project of Barcelona's folk-pop songwriter Raul Fernandez. Refree, which played in Moscow in October 2002 and is known there as &quot;Catalonia's Radiohead,&quot; released its sophisticated, critically acclaimed second album &quot;Nones&quot; in October.
 The band will perform on Feb. 7 neither at Red Club nor PORT but in Fish Fabrique, the underground cafe which seldom sees western artists performing.
 <strong>Markscheider Kunst,</strong> the local band which blends African and Caribbean rhythms with rock, will perform at Red Club on Friday.
 The concert has been put together to celebrate the band's singer and guitarist Sergei &quot;Yefr&quot; Yefremenko's 32nd birthday.
 According to Yefremenko, the show will also probably feature such bands as Pep-See, Billy's Band and &quot;whoever else is in town&quot; as special guests. The celebration will be continued with an all-night Latin party featuring DJ Nguba, aka Markscheider Kunst's guitarist Vladimir Matushkin.
 Matters are made a little more complex by the drum 'n' bass party headlined by British <strong>DJ SS,</strong> which was taken from Tunnel &quot;for technical reasons&quot; - and right into Red Club the very same night.
 The Britpop festival promoted by Alexei Gelter of <strong>Wine</strong> last week was a success but Wine itself appeared with a new lineup that had three unknown young musicians who played some songs for the first time. It also extended the frontiers of &quot;Britpop&quot; probably a bit too wide as Wine happily covered everything from Bob Dylan's &quot;All Along the Watchtower&quot; to The Sex Pistols' &quot;Anarchy in the U.K.&quot; Wine will appear next at City Club on Saturday.
 <strong>Pyotr Mamonov,</strong> formerly of Moscow art-rock band Zvuki Mu, will come to the city late this week with his one-man theatrical performance called &quot;Shokoladny Pushkin&quot; (Chocolate Pushkin).
 The posters claim that the show will be a &quot;farewell performance.&quot; Mamonov will perform at Vyborgsky Palace of Culture, located at 15 Ulitsa Komissara Smirnova, near Metro Ploshchad Lenina, on Thursday. Call 542-8657.
 
 <i>- By Sergey Chernov </i>

TITLE: a new high point in caucasian cuisine
AUTHOR: By Joseph James Crescente III
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: If Noah, of ark fame, were to find himself in contemporary St. Petersburg, he might look for something to remind him of Mount Ararat, the name of the mountain in Armenia he settled upon following his legendary journey. He could do worse than stop for dinner at Kilikia, a veritable haven for St. Petersburg's community of the Armenian diaspora. It is estimated that three of every four Armenians live outside of Armenia, which some emigrants have dubbed its &quot;head office.&quot; Kilikia is named after an Armenian dominated section within Turkey and opened about a year ago in what used to be Platinum on Gorokhovaya Ulitsa. 
 
Upon entering, my companions and I were seated in the only hall that was open (when busy, six halls are in operation). It is a dimly lit room, which feels like a vault, with a basic, wooden interior. It was difficult to read the menu before our waitress lit a candle. The chill-out music, a little loud at times, would occasionally stop between songs for extended pauses. That's when we realized that besides the waitresses and our table, everyone else in the room was speaking Armenian - a good sign in an ethnic restaurant.
 The menu is huge, meat-heavy and very Armenian. We decided to try an Armenian dry, red wine, Areni (0.75 liter bottle for 500 rubles or $17.35). It was unusually described on the bottle as a &quot;slow&quot; wine, which we assumed was to be the intended effect. I started with the soup, &quot;Pity,&quot; (80 rubles, $2.75) which was a standard broth filled with chunks of lamb, potatoes, chickpeas, tomatoes and herbs. It was served piping hot, and was a nice departure from the world of borshch and solyanka. My female companion had the mushrooms julienne (50 rubles, $1.75), which was served up perfectly, evenly melted with equally portioned ingredients. My male companion sunk warmed chicken livers down his throat (120 rubles, $4.15), served soft and drenched in creamy gravy. He was satisfied. Together, we shared a mozzerella salad (70 rubles, $2.45) and Khaurma (80 rubles, $2.75). The mozzerella salad was standard, served with tomatoes and oil and vinegar. The Khaurma is an Armenian appetizer consisting of cold, chewy, salted chunks of beef, greased with fat and served with raw onions. I can't say that I'm usually a big fan of such things, but I ate more than half of the plate.
 We agonized over what to order for our main courses since the selection is enormous. It took a few recommendations from our server, and a joint decision to walk the Armenian path, to make the decisions. We agreed to share the Armenian pizza (150 rubles, $5.20). Distinctly Armenian, it is a distant cousin to the Italian variety. Light on the sauce, and heavy on the cheese, spice, herbs, onions, and <i>basturma</i>, a salted pork, it was a flavorable diversion from the standard slice. 
 Informed that we would be fools to not order a shashlik, one of my companions took the plunge Out of the nearly twenty possibilities, he ordered the pork neck kebab (150 rubles, $5.20). The Caucasian staple was served with herbs, raw onions, salad and a spicy red sauce. He thought it was as good as you can expect from an indoor-cooked kebab. He was pleased that they didn't skimp on the onions. My female companion tried one of the tava vareities (<i>tava</i> is the Armenian name for a shallow, black bowl made by hand). Her <i>tava</i> dish (170 rubles, $5.90) was a beef stew served with sweet peppers, onions and tomatoes. It arrived sizzling and greasy, and while it took her awhile, she scarfed down the entirety of the enormous portion. She was impressed and not only with her appetite. I ended up ordering a sturgeon filet (200 rubles, $6.95). Served like a steak, it was fishy and tender and served on a bed of potatoes and mushrooms in cream sauce. It was my first trip to the sturgeon table, and won't be my last.
 After all of that food, we couldn't think about dessert, much less keep our heads up. We had finished our bottle of wine, and everyone agreed that no-one felt a trace of alcohol in our systems. It had gone down well with all of the dishes we had tried. As soon as we finished the last bite we got the check and bolted in order to walk off the dinner. However, the dessert menu does boast a number of Armenian creations.
 The service was great, friendly and quick to make recommendations. Most of the portions were enormous, and nothing seemed overpriced. The Armenian community is everywhere, having been dispersed and divided over the centuries. If you're looking to sample some of its national dishes, or check in on the local community, Kilikia seems to be this city's Armenian &quot;head office.&quot;
 
 <i>
Kilikia, 26/40 Gorokhavaya Ulitsa. Tel. 327 2208. Open daily from 12.00 until the last guest leaves. Menu in Russian only. Credit cards accepted. Dinner for three with alcohol: 1,570 rubles ($54.50). </i>

TITLE: music played on as artists died
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: If a member of Leningrad's Bolshoi Symphony Orchestra didn't show up at a rehearsal during the first months of 1942, fellow musicians would begin to feel a familiar nauseousness. They knew that nobody would pick up the phone when they rang the absentee - and that a rescue brigade sent to their home would find the musician dead. 
 
With winter temperatures lower than minus 30 degrees Celsius and no electricity or heating during the second winter of the siege of Leningrad, the orchestra's pianist Alexander Kamensky kept his hands warm by placing two scorching bricks on both sides of the instrument to radiate some heat. The conductor Karl Eliasberg was so weak he was driven to rehearsals on a sledge.
 The Bolshoi Symphony Orchestra held its first rehearsal during the 1941-44 Siege of Leningrad on March 30, 1942 performing throughout the Siege and eventually transforming into the Academic Philharmonic Orchestra that plays today. The first rehearsal lasted for 20 minutes as everyone was too weak to continue. Oboeist Ksenia Mattus compared the conductor's hand to a wounded bird falling out of the sky.
 The original idea behind the creation of the orchestra was to bring hope to Leningraders living without electricity and heating. At that time the only sound coming out of street-mounted loudspeakers were air-raid warnings and subsequent all-clear signals.
 &quot;The Leningrad authorities wanted to give the people some emotional stimulation so that they could feel cared for,&quot; recalls trombonist Viktor Orlovsky, 84, one of just three surviving musicians who performed at the Leningrad premiere of Dmitry Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony on Aug. 9, 1942. 
 Being an artist during the siege was both an overwhelming and heart-breaking experience. &quot;The halls were always packed, at every performance, which I thought was extraordinary,&quot; Orlovsky recalls. &quot;During the hardest period of the blockade, when people's daily ration dropped to 125 grams of bread, some would exchange their daily meal for a ticket to our concert .. .&quot;
 Olga Prut, director of &quot;The Muses Weren't Silent&quot;, a St. Petersburg museum focusing on arts during the siege, said the phenomenon of the enormous popularity of arts in blockade Leningrad was much more than natural battling with fears, hunger and loneliness.
 &quot;Nobody listens to music with such depth as those destined to die,&quot; she said. &quot;Music performs a miraculous transformation on a concentration camp prisoner or the hopelessly ill, from a slave into a free man. It is an emotional revival.&quot; 
 Many Leningraders who didn't have a radio at home would gather on streets to listen to the music coming from the loudspeakers. It was not escapism, it was affirmation, an opportunity to raise over physical weakness, fears, uncertainty and starvation.
 In his memoirs, pianist Kamensky recalls being asked to perform for the dying mother of a woman in the besieged city. They didn't have a radio at home, and the mother was too weak to go outside. He came to their flat and played. &quot;What happiness, happiness,&quot; the dying woman said. 
 Although the members of the orchestra did receive additional rations to be able to go on stage and perform, their physical condition wasn't much better than that of an average citizen. 
 Orlovsky remembers cutting the edges of his <i>valenki </i>(felt overshoes) to be able to stick his swollen feet in them. The musical instruments suffered a lot, too.
 &quot;Oboeist Ksenia Mattus called her instrument distrophic, and some parts of it were barely held together after the first winter of the siege,&quot; Prut said. &quot;When she found a craftsman to fix it, Ksenia was asked to find him a cat in return.&quot; 
 Orlovsky once found out the orchestra had some unlikely admirers. The Germans were close enough to the city to be able to catch the Leningrad radio signals that carried many of the orchestra's concerts. The musicians who performed to lift the spirits of blockade survivors appeared to have supported the emotional state of their enemy as well. &quot;Of course, we had a diverse repertoire, we played some Bach and Wagner,&quot; Orlovsky said. &quot;And some German prisoners of war admitted they couldn't wait to listen to us, they needed the music just as much as the Russians. I didn't feel frustrated when I found out. Of course I knew they weren't all fascists.&quot;
 The orchestra gave 300 performances during the 900 days of the Siege of Leningrad but the performance of Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony was indeed special and highly symbolic. Hitler had planned a banquet in Astoria Hotel on Aug. 9, 1942, the very day of the performance. But not only hadn't the Germans entered the city, not a single bomb fell on the Philharmonic on that night although the hall was lit up. &quot;There were no curtains, and the light was coming out of the windows,&quot; Orlovsky recalls. &quot;People at the audience were screwing up their eyes as they got used to life without electrical light ... everyone was dressed up and some even had their hair done, the atmosphere was so festive and optimistic it felt like a victory.&quot; 
 Eliasberg received one bouquet of flowers from a teenage girl who said her family did this because &quot;life had to go on as usual whatever happens around.&quot; 
 The musicians hadn't known that the Soviet Army developed a special secret operation &quot;Squall&quot; specifically to protect the building during the performance of the Seventh Symphony, also known as the &quot;Leningrad Symphony&quot;. Information about the operation was made public only 20 years after the event, and the orchestra themselves hadn't known until then.
 &quot;The operation was carefully prepared, with information gathered about dislocation of the German forces and their strategic spots, air bases and attack plans,&quot; Prut said. 
 Many years after the end of the war the conductor Eliasberg was approached by a group of German tourists, who once were on the other side of the barricades listening to his orchestra playing Shostakovich. They came to town specifically to tell the musician that back then on Aug. 9 1942 they had known they would never take Leningrad. Because, they said, there was a factor more important than starvation, fear and death. It was the will to stay human. 
 
 <i>
The Muses Weren't Silent Museum, 4/6 Naberezhnaya Reka Pryazhki. Tel. 114 4118. Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7 will be performed at the Shostakovich Philharmonic on Jan. 27. </i>

TITLE: shostakovich: siege symbol
AUTHOR: By Matt Brown
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Few works of art of the last century are as indelibly linked to a specific historical tragedy as Dmitry Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7 - also known as the &quot;Leningrad Symphony.&quot; 
 
Born in St. Petersburg in 1906, Shostakovich's life and work was bound up with the Soviet century. He entered the Petrograd Conservatory in 1919 and, over the next half century he created a series of dazzling and original works, including 15 symphonies between 1925 and 1971.
 His daring compositional techniques clashed with Communist Party ideologues in 1930 when his opera &quot;The Nose,&quot; based on Gogol's story, was condemned as bourgeois and decadent. His opera &quot;Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk&quot; was produced in 1934 but quickly closed. Two years later an infamous Pravda article headlined &quot;Chaos Instead of Music&quot; possibly authored by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin himself signaled dangerous times for the composer at the height of the &quot;Terror&quot; of show-trials and purges. He was officially denounced. 
 In 1937, Symphony No. 5, sub-titled &quot;A Soviet Artist's Practical Creative Reply to Just Criticism,&quot; Shostakovich ostensibly returned to the Party line - although critics later detected musical &quot;double-speak&quot; in the work. An echo of the funeral march from Mahler's Symphony No.1 lay behind triumphalist Soviet anthems to strike a sad but exquisite note of dissent.
 After the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, as the German army advanced on Leningrad, Shostakovich, like many artists in Russia, rallied to the cause. Adolph Hitler had vowed to destroy the city and famously proposed drinking a toast to its fall on Aug. 9 1942 in the Astoria Hotel on St. Isaac's Square (opposite the former German Embassy.) The Nazi leader enacted a tactic of siege and bombardment intended to strangle the city in a year. Shostakovich enlisted as a fireman, composed marches for the troops on the defensive line and began a new symphony, his seventh, in September 1941 - as the bombs began to fall. 
 Later that year he was evacuated to Samara (then known as Kuibyshev) where he completed the symphony in time for its premiere there in March 1942. He dedicated it to his home city at its darkest hour. Its Moscow premiere later that month was broadcast around the world and was immediately received as a hymn of defiance against aggression and a key rallying cry in the Allied Powers' struggle against the Nazis. 
 Shostakovich tempered martial themes with melancholy to produce a moving and complex work that spoke not just of the siege but of Leningrad/St. Petersburg's tragic beauty.
 In a show of powerful steadfastness against Hitler's plans the &quot;Leningrad Symphony&quot; was first performed in the city on Aug. 9 1942 - at the height of the siege - by a military collective of those musicians not dead or evacuated in the bomb-damaged Grand Hall of the Philharmonic. The siege was not broken for another two years but the symphony remained a symbol of the city's resolve. 
 Shostakovich was again denounced in 1948, halting his composing until after Stalin's death in 1953. But when he died on Aug. 9, 1975, Shostakovich was hailed as the 20th Century's greatest symphonist. That year the Philharmonic was named in his honor. Every January, to mark the breaking of the siege, Symphony No. 7 is performed there in honor of the people of Leningrad.

TITLE: the word's worth
TEXT: 
 Remont santekhniki: Plumbing repairs, an expensive, time-consuming, intrusive process to fix broken plumbing; can be translated as &quot;the seventh circle of hell.&quot;
 </i>

 
If I were to write an up-to-date, truly useful Russian-English phrase book, right after the most basic sentence all foreigners should know - &quot;My papers are in order&quot; (<i>&quot;Moi dokumenti v poryadke&quot;</i>) - the next phrase would be &quot;I need a plumber right away!&quot; (&quot;<i>Mnye srochno vyzvat santekhnika!</i>&quot;) In my apartment, water is always flowing where it shouldn't and not flowing where it should.
 
Should this happen to you (and it will, believe me) call your local <i>remontno-ekspluatatsionnoye upravleniye</i>, or REU, (housing maintenance and repair administration) right away. They are commonly referred to as <i>kommunalshchiki</i> (the utilities folks). 
 The dispatcher will ignore your first 10 calls, so call early and call often. If you are lucky, he will say: <i>&quot;Ya prinyal vashu zayavku, i slesar pridyot sevodnya posle obyeda&quot;</i> (&quot;I've taken your order and the plumber will be there after lunch today&quot;). <i>Slesar</i> is an all-purpose word that means anything from plumber to locksmith to repairman. <i>Santekhnik</i> is a more specialized professional, trained to deal with broken pipes and leaky toilets. All are hired based on their capacity to consume enormous amounts of alcohol and still tell a wrench from a hacksaw. <i>Posle obyeda</i> means any time between 2 p.m. and the end of the following week. Prepare to wait.
 If you are suffering from nothing more than a leaky faucet, you can say: <i>kran na kukhnye techyot</i> (the kitchen tap drips). If the drip is a torrent, you can say (to get more prompt service): <i>iz krana silno techyot! </i> (the faucet is gushing!). Hopefully, the plumber will just have to change the washer (<i>zamenit prokladku</i>) and not put in a new faucet altogether (<i>pomenyat kran</i>). To do either he'll have to turn off the water, so it is good to know (having asked your landlord ahead of time) where the turn-off valves are (<i>gde ventili chtoby perekryvat vodu?</i>). In my apartment, built during more communal times, the turn-off valves are in the apartment next to mine, accessed through the next <i>podyezd</i>. This makes simple home repairs a nightmare of negotiation and coordination. 
 Let's say that you come back from a delightful Christmas vacation in a placid western suburb to discover the absolute worst plumbing crisis known to post-Soviet man: <i>trubu prorvalo</i> (a pipe burst). This is at least a three-day crisis. Day one: Call the plumber, who determines the nature and scope of the disaster and writes a shopping list of plumbing supplies for you to buy. Day two: Go to the <i>stroitelniy rinok</i> (building supplies market) with the shopping list and buy mysterious items. Day three: Empty out three storage spaces and give up your apartment to two drunken plumbers who will enrich your vocabulary of Russian obscenities and drench your carpets before finishing the job. 
 And then there's Day four: Go to the downstairs neighbors and find out the damage there. <i>Zalili (ili zatopili) sosedey</i> (we flooded the neighbors) is one of the most chilling phrases in the Russian language. Not only will you have to pay for your repairs, you'll have to pay to repaint, re-wallpaper and refit whatever your gushing pipes ruined below you. You will discover that just before the holidays your neighbors finished <i>yevroremont</i> (European-style remodeling), and you will have to pay to fly in three Italian kitchen remodeling specialists. 
 
 <i>
Michele A. Berdy is a Moscow-based translator. </i>

TITLE: Study: Sleep Holds the Key to Creativity
AUTHOR: By William McCall
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: Bethesda, Maryland - For the first time, scientists say they have proved what creative minds have known all along: that our sleeping brains continue working on problems that baffle us during the day, and that the right answer may come more easily after eight hours of rest.
 
The German study is considered to be the first hard evidence supporting the commonsense notion that creativity and problem-solving appear to be directly linked to adequate sleep.
 Some researchers said the study provides a valuable reminder for overtired workers and students that sleep is often the best medicine.
 &quot;A single study never settles an issue once and for all, but I would say this study does advance the field significantly,&quot; said Carl Hunt, director of the National Center on Sleep Disorders Research at the National Institutes of Health . &quot;It's going to have potentially important results for children for school performance and for adults for work performance.&quot;
 Sleep has long been thought to improve creativity. Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards said the riff in &quot;(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction&quot; came to him in his sleep, while the 19th-century chemist Dmitri Mendeleev literally dreamed up the periodic table of elements.
 Scientists at the University of Luebeck found that volunteers taking a simple math test were three times more likely than sleep-deprived participants to figure out a hidden rule for converting the numbers into the right answer if they had eight hours of sleep. The findings appear in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.
 Jan Born, who led the study, said the results support biochemical studies of the brain that indicate memories are restructured before they are stored. Creativity also appears to be enhanced in the process, he said.
 &quot;This restructuring might be occurring in such a way that the problem is easier to solve,&quot; Born said.
 Born said the exact process in the sleeping brain for sharpening these abilities remains unclear. The changes leading to creativity or problem-solving insight occur during &quot;slow wave&quot; or deep sleep, which typically occurs in the first four hours of the sleep cycle, he said.
 The findings also may explain the memory problems associated with aging, because older people typically have trouble getting enough sleep, especially the kind of deep sleep needed to process memories, Born said.
 History is rife with examples of artists and scientists who have awakened to make their most notable contributions. Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote the epic poem &quot;Kubla Khan&quot; after a long night of rest. Robert Louis Stevenson credited a good night's sleep with helping him create scenes in &quot;The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.&quot; And Elias Howe came up with his idea for the sewing machine after waking up.
 Other researchers have long suspected that sleep helps to consolidate memories and sharpen thoughts. But until now it had been difficult to design an experiment to demonstrate it.
 Born and his team &quot;have applied a clever test that allows them to determine exactly when insight occurs,&quot; Pierre Maquet and Perrine Ruby at the University of Liege said in an accompanying commentary.
 Maquet and Ruby said the study should be considered a warning to schools, employers and government agencies that sleep makes a huge difference in mental performance.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: <b>Bush Begins Campaign
 </b>

WASHINGTON (NYT) - Three years to the day after taking the oath of office, U.S. President George W. Bush began his re-election campaign Tuesday night with a State of the Union address that blended potent reminders of his role as commander in chief of a nation at war with pledges to confront the range of domestic issues that his Democratic rivals hope may keep him from winning a second term. 
 Last year, Bush started his annual message to Congress and the nation with nods to his domestic agenda, but he reserved the climax for a litany of charges against the Iraqi regime. This year, Bush reversed that order and began by asserting: "Because of American leadership and resolve, the world is changing for the better." 
 That boast reflects polls that show U.S. citizens approve of Bush's conduct of the war on terror and continue to see him as a strong leader. 
 
 
<b>Music Industry Sues
 </b>

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The U.S. music industry on Wednesday said it is suing 532 people identified only as "John Doe" in anti-piracy lawsuits.
 The Recording Industry Association of America , which has been fighting the digital piracy it blames for a three-year slump in CD sales, said it filed four separate suits against 532 users of undisclosed Internet service providers.
 The RIAA has been unable to sue suspected individual song swappers since mid-December, when a federal appeals court ruled that Internet Service Providers did not have to release names of users.
 
 
<b>Kerry Works Overtime
 </b>

PEMBROKE, New Hampshire (AP) - Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry is going personal, working overtime to connect with voters while trying to counter his aloof image and capitalize on his success in Iowa.
 Less than three months ago, Kerry's political obituary was written in some quarters. The four-term Massachusetts senator trailed fellow New Englander Howard Dean. But his win in Iowa on Monday reshaped the presidential race and gave him the momentum heading into New Hampshire's primary next Tuesday.
 
 
<b>Cambodian Shooting
 </b>

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) - Gunmen assassinated a prominent Cambodian labor leader linked to the main opposition party Thursday.
 Chea Vichea, president of the Cambodian Free Trade Union of Workers, was shot at least two times in the chest at close range.
 Chea Vichea helped organize unions at garment factories and negotiate labor disputes. He was closely associated with the opposition Sam Rainsy Party.
 
 
<b>Deportee to File Suit
 </b>

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A Canadian expelled by the United States to Syria as an al-Qaida suspect plans to sue the U.S. government Thursday for sending him to be tortured, his lawyers said Wednesday.
 In September 2002, the U.S. deported Syrian-born Canadian computer technician Maher Arar to Jordan for two weeks and then to Syria where he said he was tortured while in a Damascus jail for almost a year.
 Arar, arrested in New York between international flights, will sue U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and other officials in Brooklyn federal court Thursday, the Center for Constitutional Rights said. 



TITLE: Zimbabwe Tour May Be Canceled
AUTHOR: By Krystyna Rudzki
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON - England is considering calling off its cricket tour of Zimbabwe later this year in protest at the regime of President Robert Mugabe. 
 
The England Cricket Board on Wednesday received a report on the security and moral issues of the November tour, written by former vice chairman of Sport England, Des Wilson. 
 &quot;The safety and security of a touring party can in today's circumstances no longer be the only factor in deciding whether to or not to proceed with a controversial tour,&quot; Wilson concluded in the 17-page report. 
 The ECB board will discuss the paper at its board meeting next week. 
 British newspapers said the tour was all but certain to be called off. 
 England boycotted a World Cup match held in Zimbabwe last February. The Zimbabwe Cricket Union said England promised then to tour in November 2004. 
 &quot;We are aware of media speculation concerning England's tour to Zimbabwe, but there has been no formal advice from the ECB to clarify the matter,&quot; ZCU chairman Peter Chingoka said. &quot;Obviously we expect the tour to go ahead.&quot; 
 The ECB's director of corporate affairs, John Read, said the &quot;very thorough&quot; paper did not mean the Zimbabwe tour would be canceled. 
 &quot;The thing to stress is that the ultimate decision will be the responsibility of the management board, and no decision has yet been made,&quot; Read said. &quot;As things stand at the moment it is our intention to go.&quot; 
 British Prime Minister Tony Blair's official spokesman said the ECB had asked for advice on touring Zimbabwe. 
 &quot;What we will do is give them an objective assessment of the situation, both the political situation and the security situation, both of which have deteriorated since last year,&quot; said the spokesman, speaking on the condition of anonymity. &quot;But it will be a matter for the ECB, as it was last year.&quot; 
 Since last year, when England forfeited its World Cup match, Mugabe has become increasingly isolated. Zimbabwe has withdrawn from the British Commonwealth and faces its worst economic crisis since independence in 1980, with acute shortages of food, gasoline, medicine and other essential imports. 
 Economists blame the crisis on corruption, reckless economic policy and a regime of violent repression, including the seizure of thousands of white-owned farms for redistribution to blacks. 
 Zimbabwe hosted five World Cup matches in 2003. Since then, it has completed a home series against West Indies and toured England last year. Australia, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh are all scheduled to tour Zimbabwe before England's visit. 
 &quot;Having honored our word that we would tour the UK, we naturally expect England to reciprocate by touring Zimbabwe,&quot; Chingoka said. 
 &quot;There is no doubt that relations between the boards and other nations were strained by England's refusal to play the World Cup game in Harare. It would be extremely disappointing from our point of view if England were to now revisit its position on this tour.&quot; 
 Chingoka said a boycott questioned the &quot;honor and spirit&quot; of the bilateral series and would affect the development of cricket in Zimbabwe. 
 Former Zimbabwe fast bowler Henry Olonga wore a black armband as a protest against Mugabe during the World Cup. He then retired from the international game and works as a commentator in England. 
 &quot;I still believe that cricket is a great sport that can offer a lot to Zimbabwe in the way of lifting the country's spirits, but at this moment in time it is not a priority,&quot; Olonga wrote in The Times of London. 
 &quot;If a cricket tour's cancelation can highlight this corruption to the rest of the world, then that's a good thing.&quot; 
 The ECB's review cited ethics and morality, rather than security reasons for not touring. 
 &quot;Can we tour this country knowing what we do about its stance on human rights and the suffering of its people?&quot; Wilson wrote. 
 &quot;If the behavior of the regime is contrary to all that sports stands for in terms of the way human beings should behave towards one another, and is judged to be extreme in its unacceptability ... the governing body should with humility and great thought to the consequences of its actions accept that it cannot justify ignoring the cause for such widespread international and home country concern.&quot; 
 Cricket Australia said it had yet to discuss its proposed tour of Zimbabwe in May and June but was likely to leave moral questions to the government, said spokesman Peter Young.

TITLE: Ukrainian Tops in Washington
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON - Too bad Alexei Ponikarovsky can't play all of his games in Washington. 
 
Ponikarovsky has scored just seven career National Hockey League goals, but four have come against Olaf Kolzig on the road. The Ukrainian left wing got two in the third period Wednesday night, giving the Toronto Maple Leafs a 3-2 victory over the Capitals. 
 &quot;It's just weird,&quot; said Ponikarovsky, who has played just 83 games over four seasons. &quot;You just play, get chances and score goals.&quot; 
 Ponikarovsky's slap shot from just inside the blue line trickled between Kolzig's legs to break a 1-1 tie 3:43 into the final period. Ponikarovsky made it a two-goal lead at 8:28, finishing off a nice one-two with Tomas Kaberle. 
 Ponikarovsky scored his first NHL goal against Kolzig and the Capitals on Feb. 1, 2001. He has scored four goals this season, including three in Washington. 
 &quot;Yeah, he seems to enjoy playing in this rink,&quot; Toronto coach Pat Quinn said. &quot;I like that he's starting to shoot the puck. He never did shoot the puck before. The first goal that he had maybe wasn't one of those things that was a work of art, but he put it at the net.&quot; 
 Kolzig certainly doesn't care to have a little-known nemesis. He answered questions after the game in his usual calm demeanor, but he flung his equipment bag against the wall in a rage of temper as he walked into the hall, then kicked hard against the door of the dressing room. 
 Coach Glen Hanlon, an ex-goaltender, said Kolzig can't be faulted for the shot that went between the pads. 
 &quot;It was spinning and it just dove down hard. It was a quail coming down on him,&quot; Hanlon said. &quot;Was he in the right spot? Yeah. You can't do anything differently. He just didn't stop it.&quot;
 Trent Whitfield and Peter Bondra scored for the Capitals, whose season-high five-game point streak ended. Bondra's power-play goal with 5:40 remaining made it a one-goal game. 
 Craig Johnson scored his second goal of the season for the Maple Leafs. Ed Belfour made 21 saves, one night after beating the New York Islanders 2-0. Belfour made a nice stop on a breakaway by Bondra midway through the third. 
 After a scoreless first period, Whitfield put Washington on the board by converting a crossing pass from Josef Boumedienne with the teams skating four-on-four. It was Whitfield's second goal of the season, scored one week after his first against Calgary. 
 Johnson tied it a little more than two minutes later, falling down as he reached around a defender to poke in a rebound.
 
 <strong>
Detroit 2, Anaheim 2</strong> 
 Petr Sykora scored in the final minute of the second period and set up Vinny Prospal's goal with one minute left in the third to rally the Ducks to a 2-2 draw with the Detroit Red Wings on Wednesday night. 
 
&quot;Lately we've been getting ties and going away with a pretty empty feeling because we've let games slip away that we felt we could have won,&quot; Anaheim captain Steve Rucchin said. &quot;But tonight we were on the other end of that and were able to battle back. So we should feel pretty good about ourselves.&quot;
 
 <strong>
Vancouver 5, Tampa Bay 4
 </strong>Down by two goals and winless in seven home games, the Vancouver Canucks never thought they were out of it. 
 
Markus Naslund scored his second goal of the game with 20.5 seconds left in overtime and the Canucks rallied twice to beat the Tampa Bay Lightning 5-4 Wednesday night. 
 Vancouver fell behind 3-1 and 4-3 but still managed to win at home for the first time in over a month, thanks largely to a four-point night from their captain. 
 &quot;We battled tonight and we all felt we were going to come back even when we were down 3-1,&quot; said Naslund, who also had two assists. &quot;I saw a change in our team and hopefully this is a nice turnaround for us.&quot;

TITLE: U.S. Legislators Join Forces To Rid Sports of Steroid Use
AUTHOR: By Steve Wilstein
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: One of the few proposals that got Democrats on their feet cheering in President George W. Bush's State of the Union address Tuesday was his call to rid sports of steroids. 
 
That bit of bipartisanship is essential for Congress to pass legislation that would ban over-the-counter sales of steroid precursors and step up the fight against dangerous performance-enhancing supplements. 
 A bill like that should be a slam-dunk for Bush's early signature. In an election year, it would seem good, safe politics to stand strong against steroids. Still, bills have a way of moldering among other priorities. The problem of drugs in sports has been going on for many years with no staunch leadership in Washington to deal with it. 
 Republican Congressmen John Sweeney of New York and Tom Osborne of Nebraska offered a bill in the House more than a year ago that would reclassify androstenedione and other steroid precursors as controlled substances that cannot be sold over-the-counter. 
 &quot;These substances have the same effects and dangers as steroids,&quot; said Osborne, who coached Nebraska to national football championships in 1994 and '95. &quot;And their side effects pose far greater risks for young people than they do for adults.&quot; 
 Two similar bills sit in the Senate, one by Senator Dick Durbin, the other co-sponsored by Senators Joseph Biden and Orrin Hatch. 
 Hatch's name is particularly significant because he is the godfather of the 1994 federal law that allowed all manner of &quot;dietary&quot; pills, potions and lotions to escape FDA approval. Coincidentally, the supplement industry in Utah - Hatch's home state - is substantial. 
 Bush's signature on some final resolution of the bills in Congress would be a huge victory for anti-doping forces. 
 Yet Bush didn't mention any of those bills in his speech. Instead, he tossed the ball back to sports leaders and athletes. He stated the case broadly when he told Congress that to help children make right choices, they need good examples, and he called on major sports leagues to implement stringent drug policies. 
 &quot;Athletics play such an important role in our society, but, unfortunately, some in professional sports are not setting much of an example,&quot; the president said. 
 &quot;The use of performance-enhancing drugs like steroids in baseball, football and other sports is dangerous, and it sends the wrong message - that there are shortcuts to accomplishment, and that performance is more important than character. 
 &quot;So tonight I call on team owners, union representatives, coaches and players to take the lead, to send the right signal, to get tough, and to get rid of steroids now.&quot; 
 The sentiments, aimed unambiguously at his former co-owners in baseball and the reluctant players union, may be the best Bush can do from his bully pulpit besides pushing for stricter controls of over-the-counter supplements. 
 Baseball, which will start testing players this spring, has made progress but is still a long way from a tough policy to stop steroids. 
 Between 5 and 7 percent of anonymous player tests last summer turned up positive. But under the policy negotiated in the last labor agreement, no player would be punished unless he is caught at least two more times. Littering carries a stiffer fine than a player starting the season juiced up on steroids. 
 Bush's rhetoric gives the anti-doping fight more ammunition and credibility. 
 Dick Pound, chairman of the World Anti-Doping Agency, said it was &quot;as close to a home run as you can get on this issue.&quot; 
 The significance of the president speaking out against steroids so forcefully on such an occasion as the State of the Union address, Pound said, is immense. 
 &quot;It's never been said before by someone in his position,&quot; Pound said. &quot;He's saying this is a real issue, a national issue. He understands clearly that professional athletes have an inordinate influence on the young people in this country. Kids listen to the athletes. Maybe some athletes will listen to the president.&quot;

TITLE: Patriots Favored for the Super Bowl
AUTHOR: By Jimmy Golen
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: FOXBORO, Massachusetts - Two years after their only Super Bowl victory, the New England Patriots are heavy favorites with an established quarterback and little controversy. 
 
How things have changed. 
 The Patriots engineered one of the game's biggest upsets in 2002, beating the St. Louis Rams and an offense known as the &quot;Greatest Show on Turf&quot; 20-17 on Adam Vinatieri's 48-yard field goal as time expired. 
 Tom Brady led New England on a methodical drive to set up the game-winner and earn Super Bowl Most-Valuable-Player honors, capping a season that he started as the backup to Drew Bledsoe. 
 &quot;That first year, that first Super Bowl, I don't know what the heck was going on,&quot; Brady said this week after the Patriots won their second American Football Championship title in three years and earned the right to play the Carolina Panthers in Houston on Feb. 1. 
 &quot;I mean, from the first game I started right on through, so much had changed. And to really realize and put things in perspective is hard to do because I was figuring, 'Oh, yeah, this is kind of what I expected to happen.'&quot; 
 If Brady expected it, he was the only one. 
 After going 5-11 in 2000, the Patriots had a rough start to the next season. 
 Quarterbacks coach Dick Rehbein, 45, died of heart failure in training camp. Wide receiver Terry Glenn missed most of the season because of injuries and suspensions. The Patriots lost their first two games; Bledsoe was knocked out of the second one with a hit that filled his chest with blood. 
 Brady, a sixth-round draft pick who jumped from No. 4 to No. 2 on the depth chart in training camp, came in and helped New England improve to 5-5 by the time Bledsoe was ready to return. Coach Bill Belichick went against conventional wisdom and kept Brady as his starter. 
 And when the Patriots won the last six games of the regular season, Belichick was rewarded. 
 In their first playoff game, a sloppy, snowy affair that was the finale for the old Foxboro Stadium, Brady appeared to doom New England's chances when he coughed the ball up late against the Oakland Raiders. But referee Walt Coleman invoked the now-infamous &quot;Tuck Rule&quot; and declared the play an incomplete pass instead of a fumble. 
 Brady led the Patriots into position for Vinatieri's 45-yarder that sent the game into overtime. Once there, Vinatieri kicked a 23-yarder to win it. 
 The outcome did little to convince the Raiders they lost to a better team. 
 Brady hurt his ankle in the first half, and this time it was Bledsoe who came on in relief to lead the Patriots. Troy Brown scored two touchdowns on special teams in a 24-17 victory that sent New England to the Super Bowl. 
 When the Patriots arrived in New Orleans, no one knew how seriously Brady was hurt or whether Bledsoe would get his starting job back. It wasn't until the Wednesday before the game that Belichick said Brady would play. 
 The Rams were 14-point favorites, and New England was supposed to be overmatched against the team that won the Super Bowl two years earlier. Brady was in his second year, with less than a full season of starting behind him; Rams quarterback Kurt Warner was the Super Bowl MVP in 2000. 
 But the Patriots' defense forced three turnovers and turned them into two touchdowns and a field goal. The only other score they needed was Vinatieri's game-winner. 
 This year, it is New England that goes into the game as the betting favorite. The Patriots are riding a 14-game winning streak. 
 &quot;I see the same things,&quot; said Panthers tight end Jermaine Wiggins, who was with the Patriots two years ago. &quot;Everybody's already saying, 'Carolina Who?' It's all about New England, New England.&quot; 
 But Belichick refused to get caught up in the comparison. Asked about the similarity between Carolina this year and the Patriots from 2002, he pointed to the only one that mattered. 
 &quot;They won a lot of games and they are in the Super Bowl,&quot; he said.