SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #941 (9), Friday, February 6, 2004
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TITLE: Cadet Training Prepares Students to Be 'Real Men'
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: With parents of teenage boys worried about them falling prey to drugs and about the state of their sons' health, St. Petersburg school No. 145 has given its pupils an opportunity to be "real men" - it runs military-style cadet classes.
 
"My son has changed a lot since he joined the cadets' class," said Olga Kurbatova, mother of Fyodor, who studies in the 11th grade of the school.
 "I raise my sons on my own and I was desperate to make up for the lack of a male role model for my boys, and now the school has provided one," she said.
 The school organized its first cadet classes in 1998.
 School director Isabella Yegorova said the decision to create cadets was made because the school felt it needed something new to make it more attractive as an educational institution.
 "We also noticed that modern young boys often lack the masculinity of previous generations, who were brought up according to certain ideals," she said.
 "We wanted to give our students a chance to counteract that trend in society, and to bring up real men," Yegorova said.
 The young cadets not only act different to other boys of the same age, they also look very smart in their impressive uniforms and create the impression of focused and purposeful people. 
 Yegor Stepovik, 14, a ninth-grade student, said that he has become more disciplined and responsible since he started attending cadet classes.
 "We became much more independent, even in little things that we learn such as ironing our own clothes and taking care of our appearance," Stepovik said, adding that previously he had relied on his parents for those things.
 "All that increases our self-esteem, and makes us strong and purposeful," he said.
 The cadets' school day starts at 8:30 a.m. when all the students of four cadet classes from the eighth to 11th grade gather for a morning roll call. They check each others' dress and greet their officer.
 Their regular school day includes military training and the boys do their homework at school, going home at 6 p.m. several hours later than their non-cadet schoolmates.
 Once a week the cadets spend a day at the St. Petersburg Communications Military Academy, with which the school cooperates.
 At the academy, they take classes that include hand-to-hand combat and physical education. In addition, they also study military history and radio electronics.
 In summer, cadets spend two weeks at a military camp. They say it is one of their best and most useful experiences.
 "Parents say they can't recognize their sons when they come back from the camp," said Tatyana Bokova, the school's deputy director. "They say their boys start washing dishes, cleaning their rooms, making their beds, and generally helping around the house," she said.
 Sergei Yanchin, 17, student of the 11th grade, who comes from a military family, said he took the cadet course because he wanted to try himself out before entering a military college.
 "Now I see that I've chosen the right profession," he said. "I chose it because it makes people physically stronger, because military people still present a separate and unique layer of society."
 Lieutenant-Colonel Valery Zubanin, military curator of the school's cadets and a staffer at the academy, described the collaboration between the school and academy as "an excellent one."
 "This program helps to bring up very well-balanced people," he said.
 Zubanin said students of regular cadet schools, where students live as well as study, tend to become rough-edged people and sometimes are cruel to each other.
 "But these boys, who combine living in a family, studying in a regular school and learning the specifics of military life, turn out to be more culturally and socially adapted to life and have a positive regard for each other," Zubanin said.
 Cadet classes are very effective in protecting the young generation from drugs and the negative influence of the street, he added.
 "These students are always busy and they have other things to do rather than doing drugs or other negative things.
 "Drugs are more of a risk for children who have nothing to do," Zubanin said. "This is happening now more and more because various sport organizations and studios today demand payments that many families just can't afford."
 Bokova said their cadet students also take psychology classes where they learn to be tolerant and respectful of others.
 "We teach them that in order to cope with many of life's difficulties. People, and men in particular, should know how to take themselves in hand, to be patient and tolerant." 
 Ivan Korskov, 15, said cadet classes had taught him to be less vulnerable and better prepared for independence.
 "Here I learned to be responsible for my behavior and help friends," Korskov said.
 Among the students of the cadet classes there are also a few girls.
 Alexandra Romasheva, 15, said she changed schools because she wanted to become a military woman, and wanted to try herself out.
 "My parents were very negative about my decision saying that it was not a female profession but I still came to study here, " she said.
 Romasheva said she likes her studies at the cadet class and that she already got used to the hard physical exercises, which she found difficult at first.
 Bokova said many students come from military families and choose cadet classes because they want to follow in the footsteps of their parents. Some are orphans. Others want to become officers.
 About 70 percent of School No. 145's cadets go on to enter military colleges, and most often the Academy where they practice.
 Zubanin said former cadets normally become the best students of the academy.
 Cadet classes similar to the ones in School No. 145 have started in several other city schools.
 However, Yegorova said it had nothing to do with militarizing the school. "It has to do with patriotic education and bringing up healthy young people, but not with any kind of militarization."
 Whether her charges are concerned that a military career might risk their lives is unclear. It all seems too far away for 14 and 15-year-olds.
 Yanchin said he was fully aware that being a soldier is a matter of life and death, but that did not deter him.
 "Someone should still defend the Motherland," he said.

TITLE: Officials Promote Turnout
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The city's district administrations are putting pressure on private housing committees to ensure that turnout in the presidential elections next month is at least 70 percent, international human rights organization Citizen's Watch said Wednesday.
 
An official letter authorized by the Frunzensky district's administration, dated Jan. 29 was obtained by the organization. The letter demands that private housing committees represent a plan of such measures to the administration's headquarters within the next few days, Citizen's Watch says.
 The housing committees are remnants of Soviet-era cooperatives that combined citizens' financial resources to build and operate residential buildings.
 "[I] request that you present the housing committee's plan to the district administration by Feb. 1, 2004 to ensure participation of residents in the presidential elections of March 14, 2004. Your work has to provide a turnout of at least 70 percent of residents entitled to vote. 
 "The results of your work will be calculated after election results are counted," the letter says.
 The letter was given to Citizen's Watch by one of the Frunzensky district communal committees. It is signed by Vsevolod Khmyrov, head of the Frunzensky district administration.
 The person who released the letter has remained anonymous because they fear persecution by the authorities, Citizen's Watch said.
 "This letter looks like it was sent from Mars or something," Boris Pustyntsev, head of the St. Petersburg branch of Citizen's Watch, said. "It is too much even in times of the current 'managed democracy.'"
 "This is a handdown from the Soviet times that shows City Hall lives in a parallel world of some sort," he said Thursday in a telephone interview. "Such things have happened before. In 1995 [St. Petersburg mayor Anatoly] Sobchak attempted to classify all appointments within City Hall, saying such information is not in the public interest. 
 "If such a thing was done by a mayor of a neighboring town, [Finnish] Turku, for instance, it would be the end of that official's career."
 City Hall said it does want a good turnout in the presidential elections, but denied being behind the letter.
 "We have to do certain things, such as organize the operation of polling stations and inform the media," said Konstantin Tarasov, spokesman for City Hall's committee for working with state power branches. 
 "[But] we don't send any letters," he added.
 But Frunzensky district head Khmyrov confirmed he sent the letter. 
 It was his own initiative, nothing to do with the City Hall's policy and due to "purely patriotic" reasons, Khmyrov said Thursday.
 "I just requested a plan and meant nothing else by it," he said in a telephone interview. 
 "Our district is very large with more than 400,000 residents. We have more then 200 private housing committees in the district, with more than 100,000 voters. 
 "We all have to think about Russia's future," Khmyrov said.
 "I would have liked them to simply talk to people who live there and say how responsible they should be for presidential elections.
 "The letter doesn't mention any sort of punishment measures," Khrymov added.
 If turnout is below 50 percent the presidential elections will be invalid.
 According to a poll by the Agency for Social Information, 54 percent of voters are definitely going to participate in the presidential elections and 32 percent said they will likely go to the polling stations. 
 Seventy-two percent said they will vote for President Vladimir Putin. 
 The survey had 2003 respondents and was conducted between Dec. 19 to 23. It covered people of a voting age in Arkhangelsk, Krasnodar, Krasnoyarsk, St. Petersburg and Oryol.

TITLE: Century-Old War Between Russia and Japan Revisited
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Russia will on Sunday commemorate the 100th anniversary of the beginning of one of the most tragic events in Russian history - the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-1905.
 
The war, disastrously conducted by the Imperial administration, was neglected and forgotten in Soviet times. As it unfolded there were moments that showed just how indecisive and clumsy the top brass were, but also the courage of regular Russian soldiers. Port Arthur was heroically defended, but Russia's eventual capitulation against the emerging superpower Japan was considered shameful at the time and the battle of the Strait of Tsushima was a catastrophe.
 "That war had a very harsh impact on Russian history," said Nina Silinskaya, deputy director of the St. Petersburg exhibition hall in Smolny Cathedral, one of the organizers of an exhibition on the Russo-Japanese war that will open on Thursday and run until April 11.
 "When the government entered that war it wanted to distract the people from their revolutionary mood, but in the end it just made the situation worse, and led the population to the revolution of 1905," Silinskaya said.
 According to historian Vladimir Verzakov and Silinskaya whose researches created the exhibition, the history of the war goes back to a Japanese victory over China in 1894-1895. As a result, Japan received several islands, including Taiwan, and the Liaotung Peninsula on which Port Arthur, today the Chinese port of Dalian, is located.
 However, Russia, with the support of Germany and France, pressured Japan to refuse its claiming of the Liaotung Peninsula. That seriously complicated Russian-Japanese relations.
 When Russian troops occupied Manchuria, which was part of China, Japan became anxious, as did Britain and the United States. Britain and Japan concluded a treaty in 1902 and Japan started its energetic preparations for the war.
 In 1904 the Japanese fleet attacked the Russian fleet at Port Arthur, but didn't cause serious damage.
 Soon after there was a naval battle that had little military significance, but it drew a lot of attention in Russian society. It was the fight of the Russian cruiser Varyag and the gunboat Koreyets. 
 The Japanese fleet blockaded the Russian ships and called on the Russians to surrender. 
 However, Vsevolod Rudnyev captain of the Varyag and Grigory Belyayev captain of the Koreyets decided to put up a fight. The ships were damaged and then the captains decided to scuttle the Varyag and blow up Koreyets. The action is still remembered in a popular song today.
 Another little-known fact of the Russo-Japanese war includes the heroic defense of Port Arthur which lasted from July 25 to Nov. 22.
 The news from the Far East went from bad to worse. In February 1905, the Russians fought the Japanese at Mukden, a Manchurian city. It was a ferocious engagement in which 330,000 Russians battled against 270,00 Japanese. After losing 89,000 men (enemy losses were 71,000), the Russians abandoned the city.
 The final act of the far eastern catastrophe was the disaster in the Tsushima Straits.
 On Oct. 2 1904, the second Russian squadron left for the Far East from the Baltic Sea under the command of Vice-Admiral Zinovy Rozhestvensky.
 It was one of the worst blunders by the Russian navy.
 The fleet learned of the surrender of Port Arthur when it was sailing off the east coast of Africa. Since Rozhestvensky's mission was to relieve Port Arthur, he requested permission to return to home base. The request was denied.
 Joined by the Black Sea Fleet, which had sailed through the Suez Canal, he reached the China Sea and headed for Vladivostok by way of the Strait of Tsushima. Here a Japanese fleet under Admiral Heihaichiro Togo lay in wait with new armor-piercing shells.
 The Russian vessels were more heavily armed, but slower and less maneuverable. Togo also had the benefit of superior intelligence.
 The engagement fought between May 14 and 27, 1905, was an unmitigated disaster for Russia. 
 All their battleships and many auxiliary vessels were sunk and most of the remainder captured. Rozhestvensky himself was taken prisoner. 
 Tsushima ended any hope the Imperial Government may have had of staving off constitutional reforms by a glorious military action.
 After all that failure, all the government could do to soften the blow was to gain peace with Japan on the most lenient conditions.
 Sergei Witte, one of Russia's most outstanding politicians, was sent to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where the peace talks took place under the patronage of the U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt.
 Under no circumstance was Witte to agree to an indemnity or surrender one square meter of "ancient Russian soil." Witte, who had a fine sense of the "correlation of forces" realized that Russia had some strong cards to play, for the war had severely strained Japan's economy and made it fairly eager to come to an agreement. 
 He returned to Russia in triumph, having managed to obtain far better terms than anyone had dared hope. 
 In the Treaty of Portsmouth, concluded on Sept. 5, Russia surrendered the southern half of Sakhalin and consented to Japan's acquiring the Liaotung Peninsula with Port Arthur, as well as establishing hegemony over Korea, neither of which were part of Russia proper. 
 There was no indemnity. The price was small, considering Russia's responsibility for the war and her military humiliation.
 That war was marked by the massive use of many new types of weapons, which became symbols of World War I.
 It was the first time that a front stretched out over tens of kilometers. 
 It was also the first time when so many battleships participated in a naval engagement. 
 Pioneer use was made of mines and torpedoes.
 The tactics of the opposing fleets built the base for naval warfare of the world's leading countries.
 Silinskaya said the doom of the Russo-Japanese war still worries historians, who, a hundred years on, keep speculating whether Russia could have won that war if it hadn't made so many mistakes.
 The exhibition is dedicated to the memory of 220,000 Russian sailors and soldiers who died in that war, she said.
 The exhibition will feature plenty of interesting objects and documents related to the war. 
 These include a diving suit, Japanese leaflets addressed to Russian soldiers with appeals to surrender, and appeals from wives supporting their captured Russian officer husbands who refused Japanese offers of freedom and opted to stay together with their men. There is also Witte's personal passport and a fork from the cruiser Aurora.

TITLE: Law Lets Nameless Sit in Mariinsky
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Half of the Legislative Assembly deputies at the next election will come from party lists closed to the public, according to a law passed by the city parliament on Wednesday.
 
Deputies elected in single-mandate districts will automatically be removed from party lists, which will be classified until after the elections due in December 2006, the law says.
 "[The system of the party lists] is good because in this case it will be clear which party deputies belong to and who is really who," Boris Vishnevsky, a Yabloko faction member, said Wednesday in a phone interview.
 The law was originally passed at the end of last year, but was vetoed by Governor Valentina Matviyenko and sent back to the assembly with her amendments.
 "These days we're facing a habit of deputies jumping from one faction to another and it's all done for money," Vishnevsky said. "They talk about it themselves saying that a faction has completed its goal, the money's been spent, so why not leave for a different faction? I won't mention any names in particular, let them guess themselves who am I talking about."
 Viktor Yevtukhov, a United Russia faction deputy, said that under the new law factions in the Legislative Assembly would be formed on a more solid party basis.
 "The parliament will look as if it is built in a more vertical way," he said Wednesday in a telephone interview. "Now, for instance, there are several legislators who have joined the United Russia faction some time after they were elected ... they had no relation to the party itself when it was created."
 Yury Vdovin, a Citizen's Watch international human rights group member, said the new law deprives voters of their right to choose who they want to represent them.
 "It's just rubbish to discuss whether information about candidates should be classified or open," he said Wednesday in a telephone interview. "Knowledge is the basis of making a conscious choice."
 "If I saw some idiot on the list of a party I wanted to vote for, I wouldn't vote for that party," he said.
 The deputies also raised the level of voter turnout for an election to be considered valid. The new level is 30 percent of eligible voters, while previously the level was 20 percent. Turnout for the last elections in 2002 was estimated at 29.4 percent.
 Meanwhile, the main concern among legislators at the moment is how many deputies will sit in the new parliament. Both Vishnevsky and Yevtukhov said legislators are divided over whether to have 50 lawmakers as at present or to double their number, with 50 deputies elected in single-mandate districts and another 50 elected on party lists.
 "After an internal survey of deputies' opinions on that point it became clear most of them would like to see 100 deputies," Yevtukhov said.
 "This is because few of the current deputies will have a chance to get into the new parliament on party lists because the top places on the lists will go to people who financed the election campaign," he said.
 Vdovin said City Hall will not want a large number of deputies because the larger the number the harder they are to manipulate.
 "It is easy to pay 20 or so deputies [to solve questions]," he said. "A big city like St. Petersburg could have up to 150 deputies, but City Hall would not allow that to happen."
 A group of five left-wing deputies registered a new faction Wednesday. The faction, named Narodno-Patrioticheskaya or People's Patriotic, unites former members of the Communist faction.

TITLE: Chkalov: Flying Hooligan
AUTHOR: By Anna Dolgov
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW - With air shows and flights across the country, aviators are celebrating what would have been the 100th birthday Monday of Valery Chkalov, who made the first nonstop transpolar flight, covering more than 8,500 kilometers between Moscow and the United States.
 
But Chkalov may be equally well-known for his stunt flights under bridges and similar air tricks. Soviet Marshal Kliment Voroshilov reportedly introduced him to Josef Stalin as an "airborne hooligan."
 Festive events are planned for much of the year, and pilots said they want to repeat Chkalov's 1937 flight to a military airfield in Vancouver, Washington, but so far have not received a go-ahead from U.S. authorities.
 "We are planning this flight, but at this point it's only in the planning stage," said air force spokesman Colonel Alexander Drobyshevsky.
 Chkalov was among the Soviet Union's most revered heroes and one of the few honored in the West. U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who met with Chkalov, praised him for doing more to bring Soviet and American people together than diplomats could do in a decade.
 A delegation from Vancouver laid flowers at Chkalov's grave in the Kremlin wall.
 Some historians have said the transpolar flight was originally designed by aviator Mikhail Gromov and have accused Chkalov of effectively stealing the idea and relying on Stalin's backing to get all the acclaim.
 Still, Chkalov has been credited with standing up to Stalin. According to some reports, Stalin summoned him in the spring of 1938 and offered him a job as head of the NKVD, the notorious secret police. It seemed an offer he could not refuse. But Chkalov did just that, saying test-flying new aircraft was taking up all his time. Several months later, on Dec. 15, 1938, Chkalov died in a crash - an accident that remains shrouded in mystery.
 "There were intrigues spun by [NKVD chief Nikolai] Yezhov, by the NKVD, and it's possible that those intrigues played a role in Chkalov's death," Valery Shamshurin, the author of a book about Chkalov, told NTV.
 The crash of the experimental I-180 plane, piloted by Chkalov, was officially attributed to an engine malfunction. In 1999, his daughter, Valeria, cited the conclusion by a state commission investigating the accident as saying that Chkalov guided the craft to a deserted area before it crashed. "In other words... father prevented human casualties. He just didn't save his own life," she wrote in Ekho Planety, a magazine put out by Itar-Tass.

TITLE: Bomb 'Not Aimed at Tregubova'
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW - An explosion in a Moscow apartment building did not target the author of a tell-all book about the Kremlin, Yelena Tregubova, but her neighbor accused of swindling, police said Tuesday.
 
The explosive device that went off Monday was attached to the door of Yury Sklyar, whose apartment is opposite Tregubova's, a police source told Interfax on condition of anonymity. 
 Police have focused on the theory that Sklyar, who is being held in a Moscow prison pending trial, was the intended target, the source said.
 But Kommersant reported Wednesday that Sklyar hadn't lived in the apartment since 1999. Yet the homemade bomb would have seriously injured Tregubova if she had come out of her apartment when it went off, the report said, citing police explosives experts.
 Tregubova said she believed admirers of President Vladimir Putin might be behind the blast, as a reaction to criticism of him in her book, it reported.

TITLE: Oligarch Buys Forbes' Fabergés
AUTHOR: By Catherine Belton
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Oil and metals baron Viktor Vekselberg has snapped up the Forbes publishing family's legendary collection of Fabergé eggs just months before it was to go under the hammer at a Sotheby's auction in New York.
 
Vekselberg said Wednesday that he intends to return the collection to Russia and put it on exhibit around the country. The set includes nine jeweled eggs and other Fabergé pieces that once belonged to the family of Russia's last tsar, Nicholas II.
 None of the parties involved in the deal would disclose the exact sale price of the fabled collection, which has been described by a Sotheby's expert as "a virtual Aladdin's Cave of treasures." But a source close to the sale said it was "more than $90 million" and within the range set by Sotheby's of $90 million to $120 million.
 "Upon learning that the Forbes collection was going to be auctioned, I knew immediately that this was a once in a lifetime chance to give back to my country one of its most revered treasures," Vekselberg said in a statement issued by Sotheby's on Wednesday. "I am honored to have this privilege and to make this important collection available to the Russian public."
 "The Fabergé egg collection, purchased from the Forbes family by the foundation I have established, represents perhaps the most significant example of our cultural heritage outside Russia," said Vekselberg, who is a co-owner and director of TNK-BP, the nation's fourth-biggest oil company and jointly owned by Tyumen Oil Co. and British Petroleum. 
 Forbes magazine estimates Vekselberg has a personal worth of $2.5 billion.
 "The religious, spiritual and emotional content captured by these Fabergé eggs touches upon the soul of the Russian people," he said.
 Many of Russia's wealthy businessmen have started to engage in philanthropic projects after gathering vast fortunes in the often-rigged privatizations of the 1990s. Metals magnate Vladimir Potanin donated $1 million in 2002 to keep one of Kazimir Malevich's famous "Black Square" paintings in Russia, but Vekselberg's purchase is the first major acquisition of a lost treasure for its return and exhibition in Russia.
 President Vladimir Putin has called on the oligarchs to do more to help society.
 The centerpiece of the Forbes collection bought by Vekselberg is the famed Coronation Egg, described by Sotheby's as "one of the most spectacular objects ever made by Fabergé." It has an estimated value of $18 million to $24 million. The gold-enameled egg is covered with diamond-set imperial eagles and holds a tiny gold and diamond replica of the coach Nicholas II's wife, Alexandra, rode into Moscow. It was commissioned by the 28-year-old tsar as an Easter present for Alexandra soon after his coronation.
 The collection includes the very first and last Fabergé imperial eggs made for the Romanov dynasty. Carl Fabergé began creating the eggs in 1885 when Alexander III commissioned an egg for his wife, Tsarina Maria Fyodorovna. 
 In Moscow, a representative for Vekselberg was reeling from the news that the deal had come off.
 "This all happened so quickly," said Andrei Shtorkh, head of strategic development for Vekselberg's Renova holding company and a representative of the Svyaz Vremen Foundation, which was created especially to make the purchase.
 It took Vekselberg less than a month to clinch the deal. Sotheby's announced the April 20 and 21 auction with much fanfare on Jan. 9.
 "This is an unanticipated and exceptional outcome," Sotheby's president Bill Ruprecht said in the statement.
 The Forbes family said it was pleased the collection was heading back to Russia. "The family is delighted that the advent of a new era in Russia has made possible the return of these extraordinary objects. It is an astonishingly romantic ending to one of the great stories in art history," the family said in the Sotheby's statement.
 Malcolm Forbes, the late founder and publisher of Forbes magazine, began collecting Fabergé items in 1960.
 Nicholas II's vast collection of Fabergé treasures and other valuables were seized by the Bolsheviks immediately after the Revolution. 
 Between 1930 and 1933, 14 of the imperial Easter eggs were sold abroad. Only 10 of the 50 imperial eggs known to have been created by Fabergé have remained in Russia and are kept in the Kremlin armory still. 
 Shtorkh said one of the conditions for Vekselberg's purchase was that the collection would be exhibited for one last time in the United States.
 The Svyaz Vremen Foundation intends to organize a triumphant return to Russia for the collection.

TITLE: City Museums Unafraid Of Malevich Heirs' Suits
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: The State Russian Museum's collection of pictures by avant-garde artist Kazimir Malevich are safe from claims by his descendants for their return, Interfax quoted Yevgenia Petrova, deputy director of the museum, as saying Wednesday.
 
She was speaking after news that heirs of the artist, whose most famous work is the Black Square, have sued the city of Amsterdam in an attempt to recover 14 artworks that they say are rightfully theirs.
 Petrova said the heirs had been contesting the ownership of Malevich works with several museums for several years.
 The Russian Museum has had virtually no involvement in the struggle, although it is monitoring events closely, she said.
 "After the artist's death five of his official descendants gave 94 of his pictures and sketches to the Russian Museum for temporary storage.," Interfax quoted Petrova as saying. "Three were later returned to the owners, but the remainder were neither sold nor exchanged and remain in the museum."
 In 1976 the majority were given to the museum. Nine were bought by the museum for a total of 12,000 rubles at a time when 4,000 rubles was enough to buy a good house, the report said.
 Another city museum, the State Hermitage Museum, has few Maleviches and does not expect any claims to be made against it, a press spokeswoman said. The Hermitage in 2002 obtained one of several "Black Squares," which was donated by oligarch Vladimir Potanin who paid the Culture Ministry a $1 million donation so that it would remain in Russia.
 The suit against the city of Amsterdam was filed last month in the U.S. District Court in Washington and is expected to be served on the city of Amsterdam this week, Lawrence Kaye, one of the lawyers for the heirs, said Monday.
 The paintings were the subject of an exhibition last year at the Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Menil Collection in Houston. Lisa Dennison, deputy director of the Guggenheim, said that at the time of the show the U.S. government had given the museum immunity from seizure.
 This is not the first claim made by the artists' 35 grandchildren, nieces and nephews in Russia and elsewhere. In 1999 the Museum of Modern Art in New York agreed to a payment of what is believed to have been $5 million along with one painting in exchange for keeping 15 works by Malevich that have been at the Modern since 1935, when they were taken there for safekeeping. Also in 1999 the Busch-Reisinger Museum at Harvard University returned a painting and a drawing to the heirs.
 Lawyers for the heirs said that the 14 artworks identified in the suit were worth $150 million. They were part of a group of more than 100 works that Malevich took to Berlin in 1927 for display at the Great Berlin Art Exhibition.
 When he was unexpectedly called back to the Soviet Union, he entrusted the art to several friends, including Alexander Dorner, director of the Landesmuseum in Hanover, and the German architect Hugo Haering. Malevich did not return to Germany (he died in Leningrad in 1935), and the Nazis banned such art as "degenerate.'' 
 So Dorner sent some of the art to the Museum of Modern Art in New York and took others to the Busch-Reisinger Museum. The rest were lent to the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and in 1958 they were sold to the city, which runs the museum.
 "The Stedelijk was aware and had been told that Haering did not have the authority to sell them,'' Kaye said.
 Talks between the heirs and the city have been going on since 1997.
 Two years ago the city called off the talks, telling the heirs it would not return any of the art to them.
 "Now they have up to 60 days to respond,'' Kaye said. Efforts to reach city officials in Amsterdam have been unsuccessful.
 <i>(SPT, NYT) </i>

TITLE: Querulous Rodina Leaders Build United Political Force
AUTHOR: By Francesca Mereu
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - In a compromise to keep the shaky nationalist Rodina bloc together, co-leaders Dmitry Rogozin and Sergei Glazyev agreed to put their disagreements aside and concentrate on creating a &quot;united political force,&quot; a Rodina official said Tuesday.
 
The decision, which was made at a five-hour meeting of Rodina's high council that went late into the night Monday, prevented a formal split in the bloc, which has the third-largest faction in the State Duma. 
 But the decision did not address the cause of the infighting, which is the apparent unease in the Kremlin caused by Glazyev's desire to run for president, experts said.
 The Kremlin has a choice. It can allow Glazyev to run, which would generate more interest in the race and give at least the appearance of a democratic election. The risk is that, although Glazyev has almost no chance of winning this year, a strong showing would put him in place to challenge a Kremlin-backed candidate in 2008, according to both Yury Korgunyuk, editor of the political bulletin Partinfo, and Vladimir Pribylovsky, who heads the Panorama think tank.
 &quot;The Kremlin is afraid of [Glazyev], since both the left-populist and the protest voters are waiting for a leader,&quot; Korgunyuk said. As a former Communist, Glazyev has the potential to attract support from younger members of the Communist Party, he added.
 The Kremlin's other choice is to block Glazyev's candidacy. The risk here is that much of the protest vote would stay home and a low turnout could force President Vladimir Putin into a second round. 
 An ideal way out for the Kremlin is to let Glazyev and former Central Bank chairman Viktor Gerashchenko run, the experts said. Gerashchenko, a Rodina deputy, was put forward by Rogozin's faction of the bloc and is a candidate acceptable to the Kremlin.
 In this way, Gerashchenko and Glazyev would &quot;fight against each other and Glazyev's reputation would be damaged in voters' eyes,&quot; Korgunyuk said. 
 The Central Election Commission denied Gerashchenko's registration, saying he was put forward by only one of the three parties that make up the Rodina bloc. 
 Rodina has appealed the decision, and a court ruled Monday that it would take up the issue on Friday, a possible sign that Gerashchenko may get the green light to run.
 The conflict within Rodina deepened after Rogozin signed a statement on Jan. 21 saying that the bloc's only candidate was Gerashchenko.
 


TITLE: Germans Appoint an Envoy to Kaliningrad
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The first German General Consul to the Kaliningrad region will be sworn in next week during a visit to the former German territory by German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, according to the ministry's web site.
 
The general consul will be career diplomat Cornelius Sommer, 63, a former ambassador to Finland.
 Fischer's visit will coincide with the 200th anniversary of the death of philosopher Immanuel Kant, the most famous son of the city. Kaliningrad, then known as Koenigsberg, was the capital of the German province of East Prussia for almost 700 years until 1945. The province was divided between Poland and Russia at the end of WorldWar II.
 The German population was driven out and people from throughout the Soviet Union resettled there. Since then there have often been rumors and fears that Germany could recover the province, though any interest in doing so has always been denied by the German government. An agreement to open a consulate was reached between German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and President Vladimir Putin last year.
 The region has struggled to get its economy working since the end of the U.S.S.R., when it became an enclave with no physical link to the rest of Russia. Interest in its plight has grown in recent years because the addition this year of neighbors Poland and Lithuania to the European Union will isolate it inside the Schengen visa zone.
 The Hamburger Abendblatt reported Wednesday that Sommer has personal connections to the province. His uncle studied at the university and his father fell in battle against the Red Army there in 1944.
 Sommer's priorities are to promote economic, political and cultural relations with Russia, the report said.
 &quot;For the 960,000 residents [of the Kaliningrad region] our visa section will be the most visible part of the Consulate,&quot; Sommer was quoted as saying. &quot;In the future they won't have to go to Moscow to apply for a ... [German] visa.&quot;
 However, Moskauer Deutsche Zeitung reported that it will take at least six months before the first visas are issued. No site for the consulate has yet been found and it will first operate from the Hotel Albertina.

TITLE: Relocating Industry to Improve City
AUTHOR: By Marina Biriukova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The city administration will discuss the concept for a new General Plan of development on Feb. 24. Critics say the existing plan is outdated.
 
Relocating factories from the city center to more suitable locations is a major theme of the new plan. This would mean freeing up land attractive for investment in four districts of the city center: the Petrograd Side, Vasilievsky Island, the Tsentralny and Admiralteisky districts. 
 Among industrial sites subject to relocation are the freight handling facilities at Moskovsky Station - which could be moved to Shushary - the Igrotekhnika (former Leninets) factory, the Vulkan factory producing weaving looms in the northwestern part of the Petrograd Side, factories on Sinopskaya Naberezhnaya and Vasilievsky Island near the Smolenka river.
 Some participants in the process say relocation should be voluntary.
 &quot;The management of factories and warehouses must understand that it is profitable to move to a new place,&quot; said Sergey Dmitriyev, manager of the valuation department at the Business Problems Institute, at a briefing held by the Institute and Vedomosti newspaper last Friday. 
 &quot;It's a rare situation in favor of the factories. The ring road is being actively built, the city administration intends to create new legal grounds [for relocation], land prices are rising and there are more real estate options for prospective investors and the city itself,&quot; he added. 
 The government has sufficient instruments to control the situation by providing incentives and penalties. The Civil Code, for example, makes it possible to prosecute enterprises that break environmental protection laws, renters that use land and buildings for purposes other than those for which they are intended and even &quot;if they spoil city's view.&quot;
 &quot;The land belonging to the enterprise beyond the walls of the building must not exceed the border of the factory,&quot; said deputy general director of St. Petersburg NIPIgrad Yevgeny Izvarin. Some plants are actually dangerous in the densely populated center - this includes refrigerator factories that use poisonous chemical agents and flour mills that might suddenly explode. The city administration should encourage relocation of such plants even if social benefits outweigh financial gain. 
 Freeing the city center of individual industrial sites that break the harmony of their environment is another urgent task. 
 It remains unclear to what extent the government will support these projects with public funding and how much is expected from potential investors. The last resolution ordering factories to move to suburbs from both Moscow and Leningrad was passed in 1972 by the Soviet Council of Ministers. This resolution targeted 360 factories for relocation from the center of Leningrad. During the last decades of the Soviet era with perestroika and chaotic privatization, only 131 factories moved. 
 In Moscow, before Mayor Yury Luzhkov began moving industry in 1998, the situation was the same as in St. Petersburg. A few factories even managed to use federal funds, move and keep the old property, deputy general director of Moscow Financial Management Company Rais Akhmadeyev said at the conference. 
 Implementation of the new St. Petersburg plan could be a Sisyphean task for the city administration.
 &quot;The final version of the General Plan will be passed before the end of 2004. Owners of industrial property and the press should discuss all the pluses and minuses before it's too late,&quot; Dmitriyev of the Institute for Business Problems said.

TITLE: Vedomosti Gets New Tool To Defend Independence
AUTHOR: By Valeria Korchagina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The editor and opinion editor of Vedomosti will be appointed exclusively by the Financial Times and Dow Jones, the shareholders of the business newspaper announced.
 
The St. Petersburg Times' parent company, Dutch holding Independent Media, together with equal shareholders the Financial Times and Dow Jones, said they were making the move to protect the independence of the paper.
 The decision followed last year's purchase of a 35 percent stake in Independent Media by publishing house Prof-Media, a part of Vladimir Potanin's Interros industrial empire.
 Independent Media CEO Derk Sauer said the initiative was intended to eliminate even the appearance of outside influence on the paper.
 &quot;It's a kind of fourth ring of defense for Vedomosti,&quot; Sauer said.
 &quot;This is not because we have any problems. This is more to make sure that the editorial team can work in total freedom.&quot;
 The other three barriers that protect Vedomosti's independence are the fact that no shareholder has a controlling stake; the independence and professionalism of the business newspaper's team; and the existence of major international media holdings as its shareholders.
 Prof-Media acquired a 35 percent stake in Independent Media last year.
 The two companies have a number of joint projects and have yet to decide on the possibility of further combining businesses.
 By Dutch law, under which Independent Media operates, a 35 percent stake is a simple minority and does not have the powers traditionally associated with the possession of a blocking stake in Russia.
 The share of Vedomosti that could be controlled by Prof-Media represents roughly a third of the third controlled by Independent Media.
 Sauer also dismissed the reports that the decision was prompted by replacements in the management of Prof-Media in January, when Rafael Akopov replaced Vadim Goryainov as the head of the holding.
 &quot;This decision has been in the works for a couple of months,&quot; Sauer said.
 Apart from Vedomosti and The St. Petersburg Times, Independent Media also publishes the newspapers The Moscow Times and Na Rublyovke.
 Independent Media also publishes the following magazines: Cosmopolitan, Magia Cosmo, Harper's Bazaar, Domashny Ochag, Popular Mechanics, Formula Zdorovya, Men's Health, FHM, Yes and Agro Biznes.
 In addition to Izvestia, Komsomolskaya Pravda and Sovietsky Sport, Prof-Media also controls the tabloid Express-Gazeta, the Antenna television guide and FM radio stations Avtoradio, Energia and Novosti Online.

TITLE: Vimpelcom Under Attack as Speculation Rife
AUTHOR: By Simon Ostrovsky
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - What started as a dispute over an unpaid $800 phone bill could turn into a clash of titans involving hundreds of millions of dollars.
 
A criminal investigation into No. 2 mobile phone operator Vimpelcom, reported Wednesday, is pitting oligarch Mikhail Fridman's Alfa Group against the St. Petersburg-based giant Telekominvest.
 Moscow prosecutors have launched an investigation into Vimpelcom on allegations of enterprising without a license and of illegal, large-scale profit-taking, said Vsevolod Argunov, a lawyer for Mobilny i Sovremenny.
 Mobilny i Sovremenny, an unknown telecoms company, asked prosecutors to investigate. Market watchers suspect that Telekominvest is really behind the investigation.
 The conflict has its roots in Alfa's contested 2003 acquisition of a 25 percent stake in Megafon for an estimated $300 million. Until then, No. 3 mobile phone operator Megafon was associated only with Telekominvest and its foreign shareholders.
 Telekominvest and the Communications Ministry, which is headed by former Telekominvest CEO Leonid Reiman, want Alfa out of the Megafon deal, analysts said.
 Alfa is rumored to want to merge competitors Megafon and Vimpelcom, in which it also has a stake. Alternately, Alfa could use its Megafon stake as a bargaining chip in any future privatization of Svyazinvest, the state-owned fixed-line monopoly.
 The Petersburgers are pulling political strings to have the courts and prosecutors target Vimpelcom, analysts said.
 Telekominvest denies this.
 Just last December, the press was billing a separate civil dispute between a mobile phone user and Vimpelcom as one man's battle against a corporation.
 The story quickly changed when telecoms regulators threatened to take away Vimpelcom's license.
 &quot;It became clear that this was a much more serious problem when the regulating bodies started raising objections [to Vimpelcom's licensing] in January. This meant that the orders [to attack Vimpelcom] were coming from someone else,&quot; said head of research at Renaissance Capital, Alexander Kazbegi.
 The affair started last summer when Vimpelcom took Oleg Chubarov to court to force him to pay an outstanding $800 phone bill. Chubarov counter-sued, alleging that Vimpelcom was not authorized to make him pay because of a licensing technicality.
 Vimpelcom won the case in January, and Chubarov has appealed.
 Argunov, a lawyer for Chubarov, now also represents Mobilny i Sovremenny
 Some foreign investors are asking themselves if there are greater forces behind the charges against Vimpelcom - and if the conflict is a replay of the Yukos affair, in which prosecutors put Russia's richest man, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, behind bars.
 President Vladimir Putin's economic advisor Andrei Illarionov increased concerns when he told participants of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that he could not give &quot;assurances that the attack [on Vimpelcom] is not a personal attack.&quot;
 While analysts don't draw direct parallels between Yukos and Vimpelcom, they warn that the case may have implications beyond a mere licensing dispute.
 &quot;There is a big difference between the Yukos case and Vimpelcom,&quot; said Troika Dialog analyst Yevgeny Golossnoy.
 &quot;The Yukos case was much more political and had to do with Khodorkovsky's political ambitions. The Vimpelcom case is more of a commercial dispute. Alfa and Telekominvest's interests cross over in many areas.&quot;
 Even the lawyers of Chubarov and Mobilny i Sovremenny acknowledge that there could be more to this case than what their clients are telling them.
 &quot;My client's position is that he is defending his rights as a consumer against Vimpelcom,&quot; said Chubarov's lawyer Vadim Prokhorov. &quot;But it's possible that there are people interested in putting pressure on Vimpelcom, and they are following our example.&quot;
 Chubarov was an advisor to former prime minister Sergei Kiriyenko and currently heads the Institute of Applied Law, Prokhorov said.
 Mobilny i Sovremenny's lawyer Argunov said he does not know his clients well enough to say what their motives are in asking prosecutors to launch such a serious investigation into Vimpelcom.
 &quot;The reason they asked me to get involved is because I had experience from the Chubarov case. I deal with the company's director Alexander Sokolikov, and as far as I know the company is involved in the telecommunications business,&quot; he said.
 In any case, much is at stake for Vimpelcom.
 &quot;If the conflict continues, the consequences will concern not only the share price, but underlying sales would be effected. This would be very, very bad,&quot; said Goran Olson, head of the Moscow office of Telenor, a Norwegian company with a 25 percent stake in Vimpelcom.
 Vimpelcom American depository receipts were down $3.82, or 5 percent, on the New York Stock Exchange at noon Wednesday.
 &quot;Right now the press is offering a lot of possibilities for the reasons behind what is happening. We can't comment on these hypotheses,&quot; said Vimpelcom spokesman Mikhail Umarov.
 &quot;We are maintaining the position that all of our conduct is legal.&quot;
 The Moscow city prosecutors' office could not be reached for comment.

TITLE: Energy Minister Says State is Seeking $1Bln for Exxon Sakhalin-3 License
AUTHOR: By Valeria Korchagina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Energy Minister Igor Yusufov said Wednesday that the government wants up to $1 billion for a license to explore and develop one of the three Sakhalin-3 blocs that a consortium led by ExxonMobil won in a tender a decade ago.
 
The announcement came a week after the government decided to annul the 1993 tender to explore the gas-and oil-rich project in the Pacific Ocean - a move that U.S. Ambassador to Russia Alexander Vershbow on Wednesday called worrisome and potentially harmful to U.S.-Russia ties.
 Yusufov said the state wants to auction off Sakhalin-3's Kirinsky block, the largest of the project's three blocks with estimated reserves of 453 million tons of extractable oil and 700 billion cubic meters of gas.
 &quot;The government must receive money for this field as we cannot live now with the system of closed distribution [of licenses],&quot; Yusufov was quoted by Bloomberg as saying.
 He said the bloc should fetch $800 million to $1 billion.
 Under the terms of the 1993 tender, rights to explore Kirinsky were equally split between ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco and state-owned Rosneft. ExxonMobil controls two-thirds of the other two blocs, Ayashsky and East Odoptinsky, while Rosneft has the rest.
 Yusufov indicated Wednesday that ExxonMobil and its partners are welcome to stay on if they pay the money.
 &quot;We are ready to support these companies. We don't want to kick them out,&quot; he said.
 ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco had no immediate comment about Yusufov's remarks. But earlier Wednesday, ExxonMobil Russia vice president Glenn Waller reiterated that his company would treat any attempt by the government to auction Sakhalin-3 as a threat.
 &quot;It, of course, concerns us because we have business interests in this. But it's an issue of due process, the issue of investors' rights,&quot; Waller said.
 &quot;We won an international tender. We should be given the rights to develop those blocs. If those rights are taken away from us, this is a violation of our rights.&quot;
 Vershbow told an American Chamber of Commerce investment conference that he is &quot;very concerned&quot; about the development.
 &quot;We are very concerned that a decision by the government of Russia not to issue a development license to ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco for the Sakhalin-3 field despite their having won the 1993 tender could set back our bilateral energy cooperation,&quot; Vershbow said.
 American Chamber of Commerce president Andrew Somers said interests of more than a single investor are at stake. &quot;It's been 10 years, there could be some technical issues. But what it gets close to is - what not a lawyer would say-is expropriation,&quot; he said on the sidelines of the conference.
 The technical aspects that Somers referred to are probably part of the reason the government is revisiting the 1993 tender. Despite the years that have gone by since ExxonMobil won the tender, it has done little to move the project toward the development stage.
 A total of $60 million - $12 million of which was provided by ChevronTexaco and none by Rosneft - has been pumped into Sakhalin-3 for preliminary research and seismic studies, Waller said. The delay, he said, is due to ExxonMobil's lengthy and fruitless negotiations to gain production-sharing agreement status for the project, which would provide investors with considerable tax breaks. However, the State Duma last year voted not to give a PSA to Sakhalin-3.
 Asked about the $1 billion price tag later Wednesday, Somers said by telephone: &quot;I think they are moving very quickly. And I think at this point it is not a good signal for Russia to be sending.&quot;
 At the conference, Somers said AmCham is trying to get to the bottom of what prompted the government to annul the tender.
 &quot;We have had some success in appealing to the prime minister on business issues that cut across all sectors,&quot; he said.
 He stressed that his goal was not to defend ExxonMobil but the interests of the whole foreign business community.
 &quot;This issue goes way beyond the energy sector, way beyond ExxonMobil. It goes to every sector in Russia - to whether investors in Europe and the U.S. are going to invest,&quot; he said. &quot;Is this a signal from the government? Is it not interested foreign investment and strategic assets like energy?&quot;
 Somers also raised questions over whether Rosneft was at all involved in the tender's annulment.
 &quot;In several different sectors when you have a situation when a foreign partner begins to lose rights, sometimes the Russian partner is not the ally that you think he was. I shouldn't speculate about this, but I have to because we don't know what is going on,&quot; he said.

TITLE: Gref: Oil Tax Hike Won't Top $3Bln if Prices High
AUTHOR: By Valeria Korchagina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - A looming hike in oil and gas sector taxation will not exceed $2 billion to $3 billion, Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref said Wednesday.
 
Gref dismissed the Energy Ministry's proposal earlier this week to hit up the sector for as much as $6 billion.
 &quot;We are not planning this,&quot; he said. &quot;We are now engaged in consultations with the oil and gas enterprises. At issue is an additional [tax] of about $2 billion to $3 billion, providing [oil] prices are high,&quot; Gref said, addressing an investment conference at the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia.
 Gref said prices of $25 per barrel of Urals crude are considered high. Russian Urals crude traditionally tags a dollar or two behind the benchmark Brent crude.
 &quot;We want to introduce some changes, which, however, are not of a radical nature,&quot; he said, referring to recent proposals to demand tens of billions of dollars from the sector.
 Gref indicated that while changes in the taxation of mineral extraction are in the making, most tax hikes would come in the form of new export duties.
 Gref said that when the government drew up the tax law on minerals extraction and set export duties in 2001, &quot;we did not expect that such high prices for oil and gas would remain for such a long time.&quot;

TITLE: Church Says Tax Avoidance Is Theft
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW - Tax avoidance is theft from orphans, the elderly, and the handicapped, the Russian Orthodox Church announced Wednesday, wading into the national debate on corporate social responsibility.
 
At its annual congress at Danilov Monastery, the church issued a list of recommendations for ethical business practices that it says are based on the Ten Commandments.
 The issues covered range from contract enforcement to privatization.
 The document says that privatization must be justified by higher quality goods at lower prices; that racy ads are not virtuous and wage arrears shameful; and that besides paying taxes, companies must aid the unemployed and the old.
 The church itself is exempt from taxation, though by law it has to pay on revenues derived from its businesses. It has, however, been lobbying the government to exempt it from property taxes.
 The church remains a popular institution despite persistent questions about its business practices.
 Noting the social image of companies like Yukos, Marina Liborakina, an economist at the Institute for Urban Economics in Moscow said it is not ethics but good old mammon that has driven Russian companies to meet consumer expectations of social responsibility.
 &quot;Just look at the correlation between competition in a given sector and the level of social support&quot; that companies in that sector provide, Liborakina said.

TITLE: Restoring Trust
AUTHOR: By Zbigniew Brzezinski
TEXT: Whether or how our national leadership should be held accountable for having inaccurately asserted, at war's outset, that Iraq was armed with weapons of mass destruction is ultimately a matter for the politicians to debate and the electorate to resolve. But two consequences with ominous implications for our national security call for a more urgent response: U.S. credibility worldwide has been badly hurt by the WMD affair, and U.S. intelligence capabilities have been exposed as woefully inadequate.
 
America is preponderant in the world today, but it is not omnipotent. Thus America must have the capacity, when needed, to mobilize the genuine and sincere support of other countries, particularly of its closest allies. It can do so only if it is trusted.
 That U.S. credibility has been hurt is indisputable. It is a serious matter when the world's No. 1 superpower undertakes a war claiming a casus belli that turns out to have been false. Numerous public opinion polls demonstrate there has been a worldwide drop in support for U.S. foreign policy. There is manifest resentment of recent American conduct and a pervasive distrust of America's leaders, even in countries that have participated in the coalition in Iraq. Trust is an essential ingredient of power, and its loss bears directly on our long-term national security. An America that is preponderant but distrusted is an America internationally weakened.
 The first line of homeland defense as well as the point of departure for an effective global security policy is reliable and internationally credible U.S. intelligence. The sad fact is that in the Iraq crisis U.S. intelligence was not up to par. There are many reasons for that failure, but the most obvious one is the absence of an effective human clandestine intelligence service, compounded by excessive reliance on foreign intelligence services (the Niger uranium fabrications being a case in point).
 Over the years the United States has been remarkably innovative in technological-scientific intelligence aimed at the Soviet Union, whose arsenal also depended heavily on science and technology. Consequently, the United States was well informed about the scale, deployments and even war plans of its most likely strategic opponent.
 Regarding Iraq, the opposite has been the case. The United States, we now know, was uninformed not only about the level of Iraqi military capabilities but also about Iraqi military and political planning. That indicates the means used to define with reasonable accuracy the nature and scale of the Soviet arsenal were not helpful in deciphering Saddam Hussein's relatively backward military capabilities or in penetrating his primitive regime, even though it was hated by significant portions of the Iraqi population.
 There is no excuse for the inadequacy of the intelligence that provided the background for the decision-making and the articulation of U.S. policy. Though an autocracy, Iraq was a much more porous state than the totalitarian Soviet Union had been. It was certainly much more porous than contemporary North Korea. The misjudgments made and the imprecision of the information provided, based (we now know) largely on extrapolations and hypothetical conclusions, are just not acceptable. The evident shortcomings of U.S. intelligence, if allowed to persist, pose too many risks for the future.
 Today, in the more diffused post-Cold War circumstances, access to reliable political intelligence derived from high-level human penetration of potential adversaries is the essential requirement of responsible and globally credible strategic policy-making. It is therefore a matter of high national urgency that several steps be promptly taken to give our national decision-makers a more reliable basis for shaping policies that command international support:
 -The administration should candidly acknowledge that the United States was misinformed about the state and level of Iraqi armaments, a fact already quite evident to much of the world. Continued evasion on this subject is a disservice to America.
 -A shake-up of leadership in the intelligence community is needed and appropriate; measures to that end should be promptly taken. Accountability is needed to restore credibility.
 -A small committee of experienced individuals trusted by the administration (hence not including its critics, such as the undersigned) should be tasked on a short deadline to present the president a plan for changing the priorities and the modus operandi of the intelligence community, with high emphasis on the development of an effective clandestine service.
 Our national security is too much at risk for the issue to be handled in a traditional fashion. The usual reliance on a comprehensive review by a high-level commission working at a leisurely pace would not be an adequate response. Sweeping the matter under a rug would be even worse. A globally preponderant power, if blind, can only lash out when it senses danger. America's leadership in the world calls for something better than that. For the world at large, America's word should again be America's bond.
 
 <i>Zbigniew Brzezinski was national security adviser to President Carter. His latest book, <br> &quot;The Choice: Domination or Leadership,'' is to be published this month. This comment first appeared in The Washington Post </i>

TITLE: How Many Watermelons To Moscow?
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalev
TEXT: The recently appointed head of the Oktyabrskaya Railroad, Viktor Stepov, has a hell of a job to do if he wants to change things for the better. 
 
This was my first thought as I tried to get a train from St. Petersburg to Moscow this week, for the first time in about three years.
 My assumption that things would have changed a bit was confirmed when I looked through the clean windows of new railway cars, at train attendants wearing clean and original looking uniforms, and carpets leading into shiny compartments.
 The only problem was, I couldn't get on the train. 
 Although it was clear that there were lots of free seats inside, cashiers kept trying to insist to me and others in the line that there were no tickets left. 
 The same information was displayed on the electronic screen hanging in the ticket office. &quot;There's only one ticket left for the Red Arrow [train] - 2,000 rubles,&quot; a cashier told me. 
 In his first public speech, Stepov said one of his main priorities was &quot;the financial stability of the company.&quot; I don't know much about the financial situation of the most respectable railway company in the country, but I certainly knew my own financial stability was under threat the minute I heard the price.
 Traveling with my dad as a child, I remember him dealing with train carriage attendants when cashiers claimed there were no tickets. He would try to buy seats for us using watermelons as payment and - believe it or not - it worked every time.
 Maybe it was just the wrong time of year, but I didn't have any watermelons on me, so I decided to pursue financial &quot;negotiations&quot; with carriage attendants. I had no alternative.
 It took me about an hour and a half to find out about seats on four trains to Moscow. Most carriage attendants literally laughed out loud at the price I offered them: 600 rubles.
 One of them made it clear that it simply made no sense for him to accept such a small sum.
 &quot;What would be the point in me taking this money. I'd only end up having to hand over the same amount in any case,&quot; he said. 
 What does this mean? It means there is a fixed system of selling places, bypassing official booking offices, with the money going into pockets of the authorities. 
 The people in question could, of course, be the heads of specific trains, but it is more likely to be somebody within the management of St. Petersburg's Moskovsky Station.
 It is very hard for me to believe that the managers of the station have no clue about the organized collection of money - bypassing the official system - on trains between St. Petersburg and Moscow. 
 The good news, though, was that finally I got a seat in a<i> platskartny vagon </i>with open-plan seats for about $20 - double the official rate for a seat in that sort of train. 
 Imagine how many watermelons I would have had to pay for such a ticket? At 80 rubles a piece, we're talking about a good seven and a half melons. 
 This seems quite a lot, given that my dad used to give just two watermelons to cover a 1,600 kilometer trip for two in the late '70s. 
 Life is definitely getting more expensive on the territory of the former Soviet Union, but that's not the point. 
 The point is that before my latest train experience, I was naive enough to believe that such a system of train attendants involved in the organized collection of money was buried in the past, with the introduction of various computer technologies that track the ticket flow at most stations located on the Petersburg-Moscow route.
 I guess I was wrong. So, my best advice to Stepov would be to look into the ticket sales issue more carefully and thereby to provide financial stability for both the Oktyabrskaya Railroad and the general public.

TITLE: Not Exactly Party-Based Government
TEXT: The call this week by one of United Russia's leaders, Oleg Morozov, for his party to have more of a say in the creation of the new government to be formed this spring, after the presidential election, is just the latest episode in an ongoing saga that began last May with President Vladimir Putin's state of the nation address.
 
The main political sensation of the president's rather bland and nondescript address was a vaguely worded suggestion that the next government would be a more &quot;parliamentary-based&quot; or &quot;party-based&quot; government - seemingly paving the way for a French-style parliamentary-presidential system, rather than the overwhelmingly presidential system that currently prevails. 
 However, Putin soon scotched speculation to this effect by declaring that what he had in mind was merely closer &quot;consultations&quot; with the parliamentary majority over his candidates for prime minister and other key posts.
 A vague formulation then found its way into United Russia's party manifesto: &quot;If the people put their trust in us and after the State Duma elections a government is formed, for which we can take responsibility, we guarantee that our program for a successful Russia will be implemented.&quot;
 While there can be no doubt that many of United Russia's careerist contingent are itching to transfer to the executive branch, it is extremely unlikely that more than a few government positions will be thrown to the party as rewards for good behavior. And the idea that the Kremlin would consider ceding real control over Cabinet formation to parliament - even to one as loyal as the current Duma is - was patently absurd from the outset. Not only does it run counter to the centralizing creed of the Putin regime, but also the party ranks are bristling with lobbyists of one sort or another who will have to be kept on a tight rein. (It's worth recalling that plans to cut the number of Duma committees had to be completely shelved in order to satisfy the lobbyist appetites of United Russia deputies and their patrons).
 Nevertheless, even the limited party involvement in the formation of the new government that Putin has committed himself to is an improvement on previous practices - particularly if legislation is changed to allow members of the government to be party members. 
 At least this should mean that United Russia cannot duck responsibility for the government's actions - precluding the possibility of a repeat of United Russia's antics last year, when the party started making populist attacks on the government that it had supported as party of its election campaign.

TITLE: free to be the 'catalan radiohead'
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Refree, the Barcelona-based band which plays sophisticated, melancholy, poetic pop, returns to Russia after two inspired performances in Moscow in October 2002. The band caused a club sensation and was immediately dubbed the &quot;Catalan Radiohead.&quot;
 Refree is the alter ego of Raul Fernandez, the 27-year-old Barcelona-based songwriter, singer and guitar player. Poetic, with clear literaturary influences - one of his songs, &quot;Raisa&quot; was inspired by a character from Russian author Sergei Dovlatov's &quot;The Suitcase&quot; - the sounds of Refree envelop the listener and linger on.
 
Fernandez, who combines music-making with music journalism, said he started his music career by chance. 
 &quot;I was not conscious of doing an album, I just wrote some songs at home, with no pretensions, and then [Madrid-based indie label] Acuarela wanted to release them. That's when everything started,&quot; he said in a recent telephone interview from his home in Barcelona.
 Though the 2002 debut &quot;Quitamiedos&quot; was somewhat eclectic, incorporating vocals from French singer Francoiz Breut and Abel Hernandez, Fernandez's close friend and member of Spanish band Migala, Refree's second album, the critically-acclaimed &quot;Nones&quot; which was released last October, retains a unity of form.
 &quot;I live in Barcelona where there are two different languages, one is Spanish and the other is Catalan. I speak in Spanish with my father and with my mother in Catalan, so I'm totally bilingual,&quot; he said.
 &quot;Refree was created for a lot of reasons but one of them was that I wanted to write in Spanish and in Catalan - on this last album there are two songs in Catalan.&quot;
 &quot;Nones,&quot; which was named &quot;the album of the year&quot; by the influential Spanish music publication Rock de Lux, feels timeless, and Fernandez says he wants to write music that does not belong to any particular moment.
 &quot;I think that my record could have been composed in the 1960s, or maybe now, or in 20 years, because it's something that happens to folk songwriters' albums - just because you like to say things and it doesn't matter how you do it. It's just because somebody wants to feel that he hears us explain things.&quot;
 Speaking about his influences, Fernandez admits that his work owes probably more to British and American music than to the musical traditions of his own country.
 &quot;When journalists listen to my music, they believe it's very Mediterranean, very Catalan, with French and Italian influences, but if you want me to be totally truthful, I think I've listened to a lot of British and American music. Maybe there are Catalan influences, because my parents listened to a lot of Catalan music, when I was a child, so you can realize it's influenced my music, too.&quot;
 Indeed, such names as Radiohead or Tindersticks frequently pop up in reviews. 
 &quot;I like both bands, but if I have to choose between the two names, I'd better choose Radiohead, because I think we're closer to Radiohead,&quot; he said.
 &quot;Even if I think that we're not very close in music to what they're doing, because they're stronger, they're more a rock band, but we share the same taste in jazz chords and difficult harmonies in our music, and yes, it's kind of an experimental thing. But maybe with Tindersticks we share the same taste for the classical forms.
 &quot;But I think that the best way to define my work, it's like a folk-pop songwriter with clear influences of jazz music.&quot;
 The music has a certain cinematic quality and would probably sound great in a film. 
 &quot;I would like to compose music for films, but I haven't done it,&quot; said Fernandez.
 &quot;Some of my songs, not from this album, appeared in two Spanish films, but I would like to compose the complete soundtrack.&quot;
 Fernandez's favorite films include Billy Wilder's &quot;The Apartment,&quot; as well as those by Federico Fellini, Aki Kaurismaki and Spanish director Luis Garcia Berlanga.
 Though being sung in Spanish - and especially when sung in Catalan - makes Fernandez's lyrics obscure to an English-speaking listener, his literary tastes might give a hint to his approach. Apart from Dovlatov, he cited Belen Gopegui, Carmen Martin Gaite, Ian MacEwan and Lewis Carroll as his favorites.
 Listening to the refined sounds of &quot;Nones,&quot; it is difficult to imagine that Fernandez started out as a punk guitarist.
 &quot;It was a hardcore pop band called Corn Flakes, very well-known in Spain,&quot; he said. &quot;But it had existed before I joined it as a guitarist. It was 10 years ago and I was only 17. But yes, I played in a hardcore band.&quot;
 Developing what he found while making &quot;Nones,&quot; Fernandez plans to do without electric instruments on the next album. 
 &quot;I have some new songs, but I don't know how they sound and I still don't know how I want them to sound like,&quot; he said.
 &quot;I think I want a new album in the same direction as 'Nones', but more acoustic, with no electric guitars.&quot;
 In St. Petersburg, Fernandez, whose band occasionally extends to feature up to 11 members, will perform what he describes as a &quot;more intimate, acoustic show.&quot; He will be backed by accordion and piano player Josep Maria Baldoma and bass and piano player Federico Falkner. 
 
 <i>Refree in concert at Fish Fabrique at 10 p.m. on Saturday. Links: http://www.acuareladiscos.com/refree </i>

TITLE: jazz legend honored at corner fete
AUTHOR: By Jennifer Davis
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Next week, the American Corner in St. Petersburg will unveil an exhibit dedicated to Louis Armstrong in honor of the organization's two year anniversary. With &quot;Louis Armstrong: King of Jazz,&quot; the American Corner hopes to acquaint the public with the most important figure in jazz history in an event featuring photographs, performance footage, a lecture about Armstrong by local jazz historian Vladimir Feiertag and live music provided by a local Russian-American band, Jazzebel. 
 
In 2002, the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Consulate in St. Petersburg joined forces to create the American Corner in St. Petersburg within the Department of Foreign Languages at the Mayakovsky Public Library. Functioning mainly as an English-language library featuring books and audiovisual materials providing information about American history, culture, geography, literature, language, and study abroad programs, the American Corner also hosts several free events, including holiday parties and lectures, throughout the year. Currently there are over 25 American Corners scattered throughout Russia and the former Soviet Union, which are visited by Russians and Americans alike. 
 &quot;A lot of English-language teachers come here, as well as American students who borrow books and films&quot; said St. Petersburg Director, Anna Nadezhina. 
 &quot;Many Russian students who are interested in studying in the United States use our resource center. We provide information on Fulbright scholarships, the Edward Muskee Program, as well as a variety of programs offered at Universities across the United States. 
 &quot;Our materials are accessible to everyone holding a library card for the Mayakovsky Public Library,&quot; she explained. 
 The American Corner also works closely with its partners the American Council of Teachers of Russian (ACTR) and the Alumni Center, which brings together Russian alumni from various study abroad programs in the United States. Once a week, the American Corner organizes lectures by native speakers at the library which are open to the public. 
 Previous lecturers included a panel of American judges who discussed the American legal system and the Vice President of International Business Development of Scholastic Books, Dr. Carol Kanuth-Soccaine. 
 On March 18, John Varoli, a local freelance reporter, who has written for the New York Times, will be giving a lecture about Americans in St. Petersburg. The American Corner also hosts an English Language Discussion club from 3-5 p.m. every Saturday, bringing together Russians and native English speakers, moderated by English fellow and professor from the University of Texas, Maggie Berg. 
 &quot;Louis Armstrong: King of Jazz&quot; is the second exhibit held at the American Corner, following the success of &quot;The American West&quot; exhibit held last year. 
 &quot;I feel that St. Petersburg is the most jazzy city in Russia.&quot; Nadezhina said. &quot;We have the Jazz Philharmonic Hall, a history of popular local jazz bands, and resident jazz historians like Feiertag. I loved Louie Armstrong as a child, so I decided to make him the focus of the exhibit.&quot; 
 A trumpeter, vocalist and world-famous entertainer, Louis Armstrong is universally credited with transforming jazz from novelty music and the soundtrack of the 1920s into a high art form. Born into poverty in New Orleans in 1901, Armstrong took up the trumpet at 10 years old when living at the Colored Waifs home for juvenile delinquents. After dropping out of school at age 11, he cut his teeth at various taverns in the red light district of the city. In his early 20s the legendary jazz man King Oliver invited him to Chicago to join his band, where he quickly became the star performer. He moved to New York at the invitation of popular bandleader Fletcher Henderson, where he headlined nightly at the historic Roseland Ballroom. By 1925, he had formed his own group, the legendary Hot Five with his wife Lil Hardin on piano and recorded some of the most famous and influential albums in jazz history. 
 In tandem with the exhibit, the American Corner will host a class on jazz for Russian teachers of English, to be held every Wednesday in March and April. All participants will receive certification upon completion.
 
 <i>&quot;Louis Armstrong: King of Jazz&quot; opens on Feb. 12 at 5:00 p.m. at the American Corner in St. Petersburg, Mayakovsky Central City Library, 46 Fontanka Embankment. Tel. 117-1589. Links: www.amercorners.ru
 </i>

TITLE: chernov's choice
TEXT: Nat &quot;King&quot; Cole never performed in St. Petersburg, but this week there will be a chance to meet the late jazz legend's younger brother. 
 
Singer and pianist <strong>Freddy Cole </strong>has the talent, and a style, similar to his famous brother, whose fame overshadowed Freddy Cole's own career, but his voice has been described as &quot;darker.&quot; He will play at the Jazz Philharmonic Hall on Saturday.
 Also on Saturday, <strong>Refree, </strong>the Barcelona-based band led by singer and guitarist Raul Fernandez, will appear at Fish Fabrique. See article, this page.
 <strong>Billy's Band, </strong>the amusing, Tom Waits-influenced local trio which has been in its heyday in the past year or two, will play a concert at Red Club this Friday.
 The show which the band jokingly dedicate to its &quot;20th anniversary,&quot; will have at least two special features. The first will be a premiere of the band's video &quot;Zimny Son&quot; (Winter Dream), which is the band's gravel-voiced cover of what is probably pop singer Alsou's best-known song.
 The video was directed by the Purga club's co-owner Vadim Isayev, with some of the art bar's staff taking part.
 Alsou's video of the song featuring actor Sergei Makovetsky drew from Vladimir Nabokov's &quot;Lolita,&quot; but Novik insists his band's version is not spoofing the pop nymphet.
 &quot;It's not a parody to Alsou's video, it's totally different,&quot; he insisted.
 Secondly, closer to the end of the evening, Billy's Band plans to perform its recent song &quot;Otorvyomsya Po-Pitersky&quot; (Having Fun Petersburg Style) with the ska-punk band Besheniye Ogurtsy - or &quot;The Mad Cucumbers,&quot; in English style.
 Local folk band <strong>Dobranotch </strong>will join forces with New York-based klezmer musician and songwriter <strong>Michael Alpert </strong>(see photo, page iii).
 Dobranotch which peforms East-European folk met Alpert at the local annual KlezFest event last year. 
 Alpert, who sings and plays accordion, violin, guitar and percussion, has been described as a &quot;pioneering figure in the current renaissance of East European Jewish klezmer music for over 25 years.&quot;
 A scholar and educator, he is coming to St. Petersburg for a seminar on the invitation of the local Jewish Community Center. He is also noted for his original Yiddish songs on contemporary themes.
 According to Dobranotch's violin player Mitya Khramtsov, Alpert will take part in several songs.
 Dobranotch will play Wednesday at Red Club.
 <strong>Wine, </strong>whose lineup seems to always be changing these days, will celebrate its frontman Alexei Fedyakov's, aka Winer's, birthday while premiering its first CD release &quot;Wine Not?&quot; at Red Club on Sunday.
 The other local concerts of note include <strong>Chirvontsy, </strong>the band formed by some ex-members of Leningrad (Fish Fabrique, Friday), the all-female folk-punk band <strong>Iva Nova</strong> (Manhattan, Saturday) and the <strong>Vermicelli Orchestra,</strong> the art-rock ensemble led by the former Akvarium player Sergei Shchurakov (JFC, Saturday).
 The bunker rock club <strong>Front </strong>abruptly followed the bunker techno club Tunnel this week and is now closed. While Tunnel's explanation was &quot;technical reasons,&quot; Front refers to &quot;renovation works,&quot; though late last month it sent out its program of concerts which runs to the end of February. Now they have been all canceled.
 
 <i>- By Sergey Chernov
 </i>

TITLE: better than your average mess
AUTHOR: By Joseph James Crescente III
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Advertisements for a new restaurant and bar called Piyanni Soldat (The Drunken Soldier) feature a half naked woman wearing army pants and gripping a Kalashnikov rifle. It bills itself as the &quot;extramarital son of the Purga club and the Soldier of Fortune shop&quot; (the owners of Purga designed it). It also states that it served the best food of the peoples of the world. Armed with a palate that doesn't like being lied to, I marched down Nekrasova Ulitsa and burst through the doors. My suspicions were confirmed; I was not the only one armed. So were the waitresses. 
 
The interiors are striking. It comprises only one room with seating for about forty people, but every setting is intimate. This is because there are four levels in one room. My companion and I sat on the top level, which looks out over the bar, a DJ booth and a large television screen which was showing the Vietnam war flick &quot;Full Metal Jacket.&quot; There are individual staircases to ascend each side of our table. The cloth seats have a parachute bag attached to the back. Industrial piping lines the ceiling, which is adorned with buttons from military uniforms. Lights blink as the music plays a constantly revolving mix of techno, house, pop, rock and ethnic sounds. The waitresses are adorned in various military uniforms, with a pistol in a holster strapped around the hip. And they are dangerously beautiful.
 I started off with a glass of Pit beer (60 rubles, $2) and my companion had a Gesser at 70 rubles ($ 2.30). Without favoring any nationality, the menus represents the cuisines of the Italians, the French, Mexicans, Greeks, Americans, Ukrainians, and Russians. 
 For appetizers I had a Caesar salad for 150 rubles ($5), and my companion had a beef salad with mushrooms and vegetables for the same price. The Caesar salad was drenched with creamy dressing, mixed with warm chunks of chicken, tomatoes and croutons. By Russian standards, this Caesar was victorious, although instead of traditional fresh romaine lettuce, it was based on iceberg. The same substitution afflicted my companion's salad. His was served with finely marinated beef strips and tomatoes, with basil and mushrooms. He complimented the vinaigrette. 
 Next came crunchy fried calamari, which was also served on a bed of iceberg lettuce for another 150 rubles ($5). It was served with a freshly made, chunky tomato sauce with a bit of zest. My companion then had a chicken soup at 120 rubles ($4). He described it as bland and consisting of a &quot;very boring mix of ingredients.&quot; 
 For the main course my companion had the pork ribs with hot sauce, again priced at 150 rubles ($5). The ribs were served stacked high on top of each other, and were chewy and gooey with sauce was tinged with honey. On the side he had roasted vegetables which were crisp and drizzled in a honey sauce (80 rubles, $2.60). I opted for what was billed as spaghetti with seafood although the pasta was actually fettucine. Among the fruit of the sea plucked for this dish were mussels, clams, scallops, and baby shrimps - plucked, that is, most likely from a can. The sauce was rich and creamy however, and it made a good mixture. I also ordered Idaho potatoes on the side (40 rubles, $1.30). 
 We followed this up with desserts and coffee, and it is in this area that The Drunken Soldier excels. I had a cappuccino (50 rubles, $1.60) and my companion had an espresso (40 rubles $1.30). Both were much better than you would expect to find in a regular restaurant and bar. His dessert was a simple berry ice cream with fresh fruit for 65 rubles ($2.10). He thoroughly demolished it, being impressed with how good something is when it's fresh. I had carrot cake (70 rubles, $2.30), which looked like a castle surrounded by a moat of tangy, berry sauce. It was recommended by our server and was moist and satisfying.
 The Drunken Soldier is designed like a maze, and is the most creatively designed bar I've seen yet in St. Petersburg. The service is excellent. The poor girl had to climb countless times up the stairs to serve us, taking a different staircase every time. She was unobtrusive but punctual. The food was reasonably priced, well-presented, fairly portioned and varying in colors and smells. A comfortable and intimate dinner was not what came to mind when imagining a night at The Drunken Soldier, but this soldier was a perfect gentleman. 
 
 <i>Pyanni Soldat, 44 Nekrasova Ul. Tel. 279-1789. Open daily from 2 p.m. until 2 a.m. Menu in Russian only. Credit cards not accepted. Dinner for two with alcohol: 1515 rubles ($50.50). </i>

TITLE: sad, funny ariadne falters
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Richard Strauss's &quot;Ariadne auf Naxos&quot;, which premiered at the Mariinsky Theater on Monday, thrives on contrasts: heroic opera and light <i>commedia dell'arte, </i>tragedy and nonsense, melancholy and frivolity. Russia's first production of the opera - directed by Frenchman Charles Roubaud - was premiered more than 90 years since it was written.
 
The opera was not met with much enthusiasm when it was originally shown in Stuttgart in 1912 but eventually gained fame for its theatricality, wit and musical harmony. In 1912, the opera was meant to follow Moliere's comic ballet &quot;Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme&quot;, for which Strauss wrote the music, and the two works were performed together. Audiences didn't accept the combination and the idea was abandoned. The opera was performed in its current version only in 1916, when Strauss wrote a scenic prologue for &quot;Ariadne&quot;.
 What was meant to be &quot;a witty paraphrasing of the ancient heroic style intermixed with buffoonery&quot;, as the opera's librettist Hugo von Hofmannstahl described it, turned out as a show more tedious than witty, where tragedy and melancholy prevailed over frivolity and flirtatiousness. The performance in general lacked ease - an essential ingredient for the opera.
 In the prologue, the Composer (a male soprano part here performed by Nadezhda Serdyuk) is forced to bring <i>commedia dell'arte</i> characters into an opera he is writing based on the ancient Greek myth about Ariadne being abandoned by her beloved Theseus. Vocally uneven and at times shaky on high-pitched notes, Serdyuk made her character a bit weaker than the composer may have desired. The Composer is portrayed as desperate yet fussy, a combination which draws little compassion. Milana Butayeva, however, is formidable as the pretentious Prima Donna, who would collapse at the idea of mixing her art with &quot;the vulgar comedians&quot; around her. The Prima Donna's - and eventually Ariadne's - visual and emotional antithesis, Zerbinetta is beautifully performed by Anastasia Belyayeva. Technically adroit, the singer was very much into her role as a vivacious and frivolous yet compassionate actress. 
 After the Prologue in the opera proper Ariadne (Milana Butayeva) longs for death and calls for Hermes to take her to the underworld. She meets the flirtatious comedienne Zerbinetta, who has little sentiment over men, and is trying to convert Ariadne towards her lighthearted philosophy of love. Butyaeva's Ariadne is convincing both vocally and artistically. Indulging in melancholy, on the verge of mental collapse, Ariadne is deaf to Zerbinetta's exhortations and temptations. The opposition between the two heroines is intense but the director makes their stage presence in the opera rather static. Ariadne spends much of her time sitting on a chair or standing.
 The two singers sensibly outshine the rest of the cast but the production in general appears to drift and loses direction owing to lack of ensemble work. Bacchus (Avgust Amonov) is stiff and short on flexibility. At times it is obvious the players lose the plot as if they have only a vague idea of the essence and goals of their characters. 
 Over the past two years the Mariinsky has performed &quot;Ariadne&quot; several times in a concert version. Therefore, it is all the more surprising that the company - possessing more than enough vocal resources for the opera - didn't put forward a more successful cast. On the other hand, had they received a more detailed concept from the director, their stage presence would probably have been more confident, bright and consistent.
 
 <i>Links: http://www.mariinsky.ru </i>

TITLE: new music formed in the city
AUTHOR: By Larisa Doctorow
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: This Sunday's concert in the Herzen State University provides a sampling of contemporary compositions by foreign and Russian composers, the majority of whom live in the city. Its organizers promise that it is &quot;audience friendly&quot; and very diverse. There is in the program impressionism in the tradition of Debussy, pieces which draw on medieval music, and works which have as their frame of reference Ligeti, Shostakovich and Messiaen. 
 
The highly respected Klassika orchestra under the baton of Roman Leontiev will be performing several pieces that either are being performed for the first time in St. Petersburg or are world premieres. 
 The concert opens with &quot;Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten&quot; by Estonian composer Arvo Part, dating from 1977. With a nod to minimalism there are 12-minute symphonic pieces such as &quot;Fire&quot; by Marcus Heachcock which dates originally from 1990, when it was commissioned by Greenpeace, and has been performed several times around the U.K. Sunday's performance is a revised version from 2003. The composer said it draws musical inspiration from Prokofiev's &quot;Scythian Suite.&quot;
 Given the time of year, it should be especially interesting to hear St. Petersburg-based British composer Peter Dyson's &quot;After Winter there always comes Spring&quot;, which has its St. Petersburg premiere but was first performed, appropriately, in the northern Russian city of Murmansk. The composer describes the work as is his &quot;Concerto Grosso&quot; because there are solo parts for violin, viola, cello and a string orchestra. The composer's reflections on the first winter he spent in the city comprise the piece. It portrays &quot;wintry violence&quot; with abrasive contemporary harmonies.
 The oldest composition in Sunday's performance is Boris Tchaikovsky's clarinet concerto, composed in 1957. The clarinet solo will be performed by Sergei Doroshev from the orchestra of the Mariinsky Theater.
 One world premiere is NAS:TROE:SUR:NIE by young St. Petersburg composers Konstantin and Natalia Logvinov. As the name suggests the piece is about contrasting moods and emotions. The other world premiere is by Kirill Mikhalyov. His &quot;Seasons Autumn and Winter-2002&quot; is a symphonic piece for 13 instruments.
 The concert has been organized by the New Music Initiative under the joint directorship of composers Marcus Heathcock and Peter Dyson and conductor Roman Leontiev. Heathcock and Dyson both came to St. Petersburg seven years ago. Since 2000 their mission has been to restore an more important tradition from St Petersburg's past. 
 &quot;A hundred years ago St. Petersburg concert programs were full of first performances. Where have they gone? It is not as though the city is short of good composers and excellent musicians,&quot; Dyson said.
 
 <i>New Music Initiative Concert, Feb. 8, at the Kolonny Hall of the Herzen State University, 48 Naberezhnaya Reki Moika at 4.00 p.m. Tickets can be purchased at the start of the concert priced 40 rubles ($1.30) each.
 </i>


TITLE: 'the last train' shows war at its worst
AUTHOR: By Tom Birchenough
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Through the Soviet era, every 10th anniversary of the end of the Great Patriotic War would regularly bring a swathe of war films - and some more will likely be launched in 2005, when the 60th anniversary comes around. Given the high feelings of patriotism with which the date is associated, it's understandable - particularly in the light of national ideology - that such Soviet works were celebratory to the point of bending history and fact.
 
Exceptions to this rule were rare and, indeed, proved the rule by their very defiance. One of the most notable was the late Elem Klimov's &quot;Come and See,&quot; which, with its searing depiction of partisan warfare against occupying German forces in Belarus, went on to become one of the key works of the first creative wave of perestroika. 
 There's no such redeeming context in &quot;The Last Train,&quot; which opened in Moscow last week, and despite a strong inherent sympathy for those who are fated to die in an event in which they are only tiny players, the new film by Alexei German Jr. is bleak indeed. 
 That bleakness is heightened by an extreme realism that stands in marked contrast to other celebratory war films, the most recent of which was Nikolai Lebedev's &quot;The Star.&quot; Viewers have also praised &quot;The Last Train&quot; for greater historical accuracy. 
 And German Jr. is surely right: the war was a brutal and often chaotic process, and its ending - with flanks advancing and retreating, struggles with munitions and supplies, confused communication networks, and a civilian population caught between the sides - was particularly messy. The film's winter context is especially telling in the soundtrack, with its continual coughing as frozen characters hack their way through cold and empty landscapes. 
 The film opens, as its title suggests, with the arrival of a doctor, Paul Fishbach (played by Pavel Romanov), at a frontline station; a World War I veteran, he has been drafted east in the final days of evacuation. He's far from the typical war hero. Corpulent and relatively ineffectual, there is nothing he can do to help in a landscape of human and physical desolation, and he wanders off into the forest. 
 There, he finds another German soldier, a postman drafted into the army, and together they stumble off through the snowy wastes. The film has little or no plot. The film closes with Fishbach holding a dying woman's hands, a gesture of kindness that, however small, is almost the film's only redeeming moment. A chilling postscript title notes Fishbach's future fate.
 But it should be emphasized that the realism of &quot;The Last Train&quot; is relative. What we see certainly pulls no punches, but how we see it - through German's visual style, and, in particular, the stunning black-and-white widescreen cinematography of Oleg Lukichev - is stylized enough. The director's family background can't be ignored either: He is the son of noted screenwriter Svetlana Karmalita and the classic director Alexei German Sr., whose 1976 masterpiece &quot;20 Days Without War&quot; was another rare picture of human beings on the fringes of wartime.
 The elder German's most recent film was the controversial &quot;Khrustalyov, My Car!&quot; (1998), a searing story of the last days of the Stalin era. &quot;The Last Train&quot; shares something of a general visual atmosphere with that work, a sense of a kind of abstract space that mirrors the chaos, both external and psychological, of the time it depicts. It's the visual language of madness.

TITLE: survivors inspire siege novel
AUTHOR: By Matthew Brown
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A British writer who was moved to tears the first time she heard about it from an Intourist guide during a visit to the U.S.S.R. in 1979 has published an award-winning novel set during the Siege of Leningrad.
 
&quot;I was ... absolutely stunned by its scale, and sad that it should have been given so little attention in the West,&quot; C. S. Walton, author of &quot;The Voice of Leningrad: The Story of a Siege,&quot; said in an email interview from London.
 The 900-day Siege of Leningrad by the German armed forces during World War II claimed about a million lives between 1941 and 1944. Last month the city commemorated sixty years since the breaking of the deadly siege.
 After her initial visit Walton was inspired to learn Russian and spend a year in Samara, central Russia, in 1993, shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
 &quot;When it became possible to travel more freely in Russia I decided to go to live in a city that was unused to foreigners,&quot; Walton said. &quot;Samara had been closed to westerners since the war. I wanted to live somewhere that was less cosmopolitan than Moscow or St. Petersburg to try to uncover the everyday realities of Russian life.&quot;
 Walton later published a book of non-fiction essays based on her experiences in &quot;Little Tenement on the Volga&quot; (Garret County Press, May 2001.)
 Walton's new book, described by its publisher as an &quot;incredibly well-researched ... allegory for the personal, political and historical events surrounding the siege,&quot; is narrated by Zinaida Konstantinova Suleikina, a 75 year-old former singer who returns to present day St. Petersburg after a 30-year exile in the U.K. 
 &quot;The story is set in the present with flashbacks to the siege years,&quot; Walton explained. &quot;[Suleikina] is searching for people from her past, from the siege. In particular she is anxious to find her former lover, the film actor Ivan Razin. She believes him to have denounced her after the war, which resulted in her 10-year exile in Siberia. In St. Petersburg she meets former colleagues - musicians, actors and dancers and they talk about how they survived those terrible years. Their creativity emerges as the key to their survival.&quot; 
 Walton was first attracted to Russian themes by reading Tolstoy and Dostoevsky as a teenager.
 &quot;I thought what an amazing country Russia must be to produce such writers. So I set about reading Russian history, and then of course realized I needed to learn the language.&quot;
 Walton, who has traveled all over the world, came back to St. Petersburg in the summer of 1999 to research the book by interviewing survivors and visiting museums and archives. 
 &quot;I also spent a lot of time exploring the city and its environs, to acquire a sense of place. Specifically, I wanted to know how people managed to survive the siege on a spiritual level; why they did not, under such unimaginably tough circumstances, succumb to despair. To this end I sought out people who had been involved in the creative arts. There were those such as Valentina Suleikina, a member of the Obrant troupe of children who performed before soldiers at the front, who described to me how their creativity kept them alive, involving as it did a life-giving exchange of energy with their audience.&quot;
 The characters in &quot;The Voice of Leningrad&quot; are based on real people, Walton explained. &quot;Some are composites; others were altered by dramatic invention. For example, the character of Sasha, a musician, is loosely based on [the late oboe player] Ksenia Mattus, one of the last ... survivors of the orchestra that performed the premiere of Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony [in 1942].&quot;
 Walton said she found people were able to talk to her about their experiences during the siege.
 &quot;Russians [are] very open and willing to talk about their grimmer experiences. Even on the very dark subject of cannibalism (which features in my book), people were forthcoming. For example, in Petersburg I met a lady in a park who got talking to me about her life as a little girl during the siege. Her family believed that her grandfather had been killed for cannibalistic purposes, but could never prove anything. She told me her story very simply and sadly, in an almost matter-of-fact way.&quot;
 Walton said she was encouraged to write about the siege because of the people she has met in St. Petersburg.
 &quot;I must say I was overwhelmed by the help I received. It seemed that everyone I spoke to, from [Hermitage Museum director Mikhail] Piotrovsky to anonymous <i>babushki </i>... was willing to talk about their own experiences, or direct me to those who could.
 Not surprisingly, it was the most moving and harrowing piece of work I have ever undertaken. I often found myself in tears, and suffered nightmares afterwards.
 I feel very privileged to have met such remarkable people.&quot;
 The first part of &quot;The Voice of Leningrad&quot; won a New London Writers Award for historical fiction in 2000 and the book has now been published in full by Garrett County Press, an independent publisher based in New Orleans. Part of a Russian series which includes &quot;Ivan Petrov: Life Through a Shot Glass,&quot; an acclaimed biography of a Soviet alcoholic, Walton's interest in Russia's dark past remains undimmed, she said. 
 &quot;I am currently writing a novel - about how the repression of the 1930s affected subsequent generations.&quot;
 
 <i>&quot;The Voice of Leningrad: The Story of a Siege&quot; by C. S. Walton. Published Garrett County Press, 828 Royal St. No. 248, New Orleans, Louisiana 70116, USA. <br> Links: www.gcpress.com </i>

TITLE: the word's worth
TEXT: <i>&ecirc;&Acirc;&Iuml;&Oacute;&Igrave;&Uacute; - ~&Uacute;&Oacute; &Ograve;&Uacute;&Euml;i&Euml;&Egrave;&Igrave;&Oacute;&Acirc; .&Acirc;o/oo&Ograve;&Uacute;'&Euml;&Acirc;: </i>remodeling your apartment is a natural disaster<i>.</i>
 
 If one of your now-abandoned New Year resolutions was &quot;fix up the apartment,&quot; here's a reminder that this is a good time of year to do a bit of <i>@&Acirc;&Iuml;&Oacute;&Igrave;&Uacute; </i>(repair work, redecoration) so long as it's not <i>&Iacute;++&Ocirc;&Euml;&Uacute;++&Icirc;,&Igrave;(o)&Egrave; @&Acirc;&Iuml;&Oacute;&Igrave;&Uacute;</i> (major repairs): for that you need open windows. But it's a fine time for some <i>&Iacute;&Oacute;&Ograve;&Iuml;&Acirc;&Uacute;&Euml;~&Acirc;&Ograve;&Iacute;&Euml;&Egrave; @&Acirc;&Iuml;&Oacute;&Igrave;&Uacute; </i>(cosmetic repairs, redecoration). 
 Firstly, you'll need to decide what you want to do and who can do it. <i>&aring;++&Icirc;fl@(o) </i>(painters), <i>&Ograve;++&Igrave;&Uacute;&Acirc;i&Igrave;&Euml;&Iacute;&Euml; </i>(plumbers), <i>&Ograve;'++@^&Euml;&Iacute;&Euml; </i>(welders, guys who cut and weld pipes), <i>~&Icirc;&Acirc;&Iacute;&Uacute;@&Euml;&Iacute;&Euml; </i>(electricians), <i>&Iuml;++&Ograve;&Uacute;&Acirc;@++ &Ocirc;&Oacute; o/oo&Acirc;@&Acirc;'&Ucirc; </i>(carpenters) can all be hired separately, or you can hire a whole crew <i>(@&Acirc;&Iuml;&Oacute;&Igrave;&Uacute;&Igrave;&Oacute;-&Ograve;&Uacute;@&Oacute;&Euml;&Uacute;&Acirc;&Icirc;,&Igrave;++fl .@&Euml;&quot;++o/oo++)</i>, often manned by Moldovans, Ukrainians, and other former Soviet citizens. Russians have adopted the German word <i>&quot;++&Ograve;&Uacute;++@.++&Egrave;&Uacute;&Acirc;@(o) </i>(Gastarbeiters) to describe them, when they are not simply referring to them as <i>o/oo&Acirc;-fi'++fl @++.&Oacute;~++fl &Ograve;&Euml;&Icirc;++ </i>(cheap labor). 
 The easiest way to freshen up the place is to change the wallpaper: <i>fl i&Oacute;~&Ucirc; &Ocirc;&Oacute;&Iacute;&Icirc;&Acirc;&Euml;&Uacute;, &Igrave;&Oacute;'(o)&Acirc; &Oacute;.&Oacute;&Euml;</i> (I want to put up new wallpaper.) And the easiest way to do this is to simply stick the new stuff over the old. However, if that's been done once every two years since the apartment was built, one fine day the weight of twenty layers of wallpaper will bring the whole wall down. <i>&euml;&Igrave;++~++&Icirc;++ &Igrave;++o/oo&Oacute; &Oacute;~&Euml;&Ograve;&Uacute;&Euml;&Uacute;, &Ograve;&Uacute;&Acirc;&Igrave;(o) &Oacute;&Uacute; &Ograve;&Uacute;++@(o)i &Oacute;.&Oacute;&Acirc;', ++ &Ocirc;&Oacute;&Uacute;&Oacute;&Iuml; &Ocirc;&Oacute;&Iacute;&Icirc;&Acirc;&Euml;&Uacute;, &Igrave;&Oacute;'(o)&Acirc; &Oacute;.&Oacute;&Euml;</i> (first you need to strip off all the wallpaper and then repaper). 
 If you want to paint, you'll have to do this, too. Only then will you find out why Russians use so much wallpaper: The original walls are construction blocks with plaster slapped over them. The holes and bumps can be hidden by thick wallpaper, but not by paint. <i>&egrave;&Acirc;@&Acirc;o/oo &Uacute;&Acirc;&Iuml; &Iacute;++&Iacute; &Ocirc;&Oacute;&Iacute;@++&Ograve;&Euml;&Uacute;, &Ograve;&Uacute;&Acirc;&Igrave;(o), .@&Euml;&quot;++o/oo++ '(o)@&Oacute;'&Igrave;fl&Icirc;++ &Euml;i</i> (the work crew evened out the walls before they painted). 
 In Russian you usually say: <i>&Igrave;++o/oo&Oacute; &Uacute;++&Iacute;&Ecirc;&Acirc; &Ocirc;&Oacute;.&Acirc;&Icirc;&Euml;&Uacute;, &Ocirc;&Oacute;&Uacute;&Oacute;&Icirc;&Iacute;&Euml;</i> (I also have to paint - literally &quot;whitewash&quot; - the ceilings.) But these days you don't have to use whitewash <i>(&Ocirc;&Oacute;.&Acirc;&Icirc;&Iacute;++), </i>you can use latex or water-based paint <i>('&Oacute;o/oo&Oacute;~&Iuml;&Ucirc;&Icirc;,&Ograve;&Euml;&Oacute;&Igrave;&Igrave;++fl &Iacute;@++&Ograve;&Iacute;++) </i>or oil-based paint<i> (&Iuml;++&Ograve;&Icirc;fl&Igrave;++fl &Iacute;@++&Ograve;&Iacute;++).</i> Or you can forget the paint altogether; <i>&Iuml;(o) &Ocirc;&Oacute;&Iacute;@(o)&Icirc;&Euml; &Ocirc;&Oacute;&Uacute;&Oacute;&Icirc;&Oacute;&Iacute; &Ograve;&Ocirc;&Acirc;^&Euml;++&Icirc;,&Igrave;(o)&Iuml;&Euml; &Ocirc;&Icirc;&Euml;&Uacute;++&Iuml;&Euml; </i>(we tiled the ceiling). 
 Before you start the process, it's good to lay in a supply of tranquilizers. You'll first need them when the workers give you their price estimate <i>(&Ocirc;@&Acirc;o/oo'++@&Euml;&Uacute;&Acirc;&Icirc;,&Igrave;++fl &Ograve;&Iuml;&Acirc;&Uacute;++). </i>Keep in mind that negotiation is acceptable <i>(&Uacute;&Oacute;@&quot; &Ucirc;&Iuml;&Acirc;&Ograve;&Uacute;&Acirc;&Igrave;),</i> as is a bit of theatrical swooning <i>(&Uacute;&Acirc;++&Uacute;@++&Icirc;,^&Euml;&Igrave;++, </i>which can refer to any display of high emotion for show): <i>&quot;&euml;&Iacute;&Oacute;&Icirc;,&Iacute;&Oacute;?!&quot; </i>(How much?!) <i>&quot;&Ccedil;(o) ~&Uacute;&Oacute;, @&Acirc;.fl&Uacute;++, &Ograve;&Ocirc;fl&Uacute;&Euml;&Icirc;&Euml;?&quot;</i> (Are you guys nuts?) The latter is very slangy and rather crude, so it should only be used when the price quoted exceeds your budget by at least a factor of 50. 
 You'll need your second dose when you see that the workers forgot to cover your antique silk lampshades before they sanded, and they are now dusky brown instead of pristine white. <i>&uuml; '(o)~&Euml;&Uacute;++, &Ograve;&Uacute;&Oacute;&Euml;&Iuml;&Oacute;&Ograve;&Uacute;, &Aacute;++&Iuml;&Acirc;&Igrave;(o) &Euml;&Aacute; '++-&Acirc;&quot;&Oacute; &Aacute;++@++.&Oacute;&Uacute;&Iacute;++!</i> (I'm deducting the cost of replacement from your pay!) 
 

 <i>
Michele A. Berdy is a Moscow-based translator and interpreter.</i>

TITLE: Mzoudi Acquitted After Sept. 11 Trial
AUTHOR: By Geir Moulson
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: HAMBURG, Germany - A Hamburg court on Thursday acquitted a Moroccan man of helping the Sept. 11 hijackers after a 5 1/2-month trial that was only the second anywhere of a suspect in the attacks.
 
Abdelghani Mzoudi, 31, had no visible reaction as presiding Judge Klaus Ruehle read the verdict in Hamburg state court, keeping his arms folded and looking down toward the floor.
 Prosecutors had sought the maximum 15 years in prison on more than 3,000 counts of accessory to murder and membership in a terrorist organization. Last February, similar evidence secured the maximum sentence against Mzoudi's friend Mounir el Motassadeq - the world's first Sept. 11 conviction.
 Federal prosecutors alleged Mzoudi provided logistical support to the Hamburg cell under lead hijacker Mohamed Atta, helping with financial transactions and arranging housing for members to evade authorities' attention. Mzoudi spent time at a terrorist camp in Afghanistan in 2000.
 Mzoudi's lawyers denied the charges, saying their client knew nothing of the plot to attack the U.S.
 The acquittal on all counts came after the court rejected a dramatic last-minute motion from a lawyer for relatives of American victims of the attacks. Lawyer Andreas Schulz said he had &quot;new information&quot; - apparently incriminating Mzoudi - from the U.S. Department of Justice (news-web sites), but was &quot;not authorized&quot; to tell the court what it was.
 His motion urged the court to again ask U.S. authorities for testimony by Ramzi Binalshibh, a Yemeni believed to be the Hamburg cell's key contact with al-Qaida.
 U.S. authorities persistently refused any access to the interrogation transcripts or Binalshibh himself, who has been in secret U.S. custody since his capture in Pakistan on the one-year anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.
 Schulz said he believed there were signs that U.S. authorities might recently be more willing to release evidence gained from Binalshibh.
 Prosecutors had alleged Mzoudi helped the Hamburg cell under lead hijacker Mohamed Atta conduct financial transactions and arranged housing to help members evade authorities' attention.
 But the court ordered Mzoudi freed Dec. 11 after receiving a statement that said the only people in Hamburg who knew of the plot were hijackers Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah as well as Binalshibh.
 The court - which said the statement's unnamed source appeared to be Binalshibh - decided it no longer had sufficient grounds to keep Mzoudi behind bars. 
 The Mzoudi verdict was originally scheduled Jan. 22, but prosecutors secured a last-minute delay to allow testimony by a man claiming to be a former Iranian intelligence agent who implicated Mzoudi in the attacks.
 


TITLE: Hoon Denies Blair Was Misinformed
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON - Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon on Thursday played down suggestions that Prime Minister Tony Blair was not fully informed about the details of key intelligence reports in the lead-up to war in Iraq.
 
Blair said Wednesday that when he urged lawmakers to vote for military action in March 2003, he was unaware a claim that Iraq could deploy its weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes related only to battlefield weapons, not long-range missiles.
 Hoon, who has already publicly stated that he knew what the claim referred to, said the claim in a September 2002 dossier that argued the government's case for war &quot;was not a matter that we greatly relied on.&quot;
 &quot;I do not recall at the time this being a major matter of controversy,&quot; Hoon told Sky television. &quot;I don't recall at the time any great debate about what kind of weapons system was involved.&quot;
 The September 2002 dossier stated that Iraq's &quot;military planning allows for some of the WMD (weapons of mass destruction) to be ready within 45 minutes of an order to use them,&quot; leading to newspaper headlines claiming they could hit British forces based in Cyprus.
 Opposition Conservative lawmaker Michael Ancram said Thursday it was extraordinary that Blair did not know details about the type of weapons when both Hoon and former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook did.
 &quot;It beggars belief that on the eve of going to war... that the prime minister didn't know this and if he didn't know, why on earth wasn't he told?&quot; he said.
 
 
 


TITLE: Kerry's Rivals Say They Can't Win Primaries
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: Washington - John Kerry's chief rivals all but ceded three weekend elections to the high-striding presidential front-runner on Wednesday, covering their retreat with fresh claims that he is a flip-flopping Washington insider who would lead the party to defeat this fall.
 
Southern natives John Edwards and Wesley Clark pointed their cash-strapped campaigns to next Tuesday's elections in Tennessee and Virginia, gambling that they can survive to fight Kerry in Wisconsin Feb. 17. A third challenger, Howard Dean, also had his sights set on a Wisconsin showdown.
 The odds are stacked against all three. In a war of attrition, Kerry has the most allies, the longest supply lines and weakened adversaries.
 &quot;Without money, you can't have the troops. Without troops, you can't compete. How can you compete with a guy who can write himself a check for ads in California?&quot; said Michigan pollster Ed Sarpolus.
 Clark, Edwards and Dean hope to rise out of Wisconsin as the only alternative to Kerry when the race turns to contests in California, New York and eight other &quot;Super Tuesday&quot; states March 2.
 The hopes of Edwards, Clark and Dean hinged on two matters that were out of their control - Kerry's performance and his past. A plodding and imperfect campaigner, the Massachusetts senator could make a mistake or be scorched under the spotlight cast upon his nearly 20-year record in the Senate.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: <b>Churchill Letters Find
 </b>

WASHINGTON (AP) - Winston Churchill predicted World War I two years before it broke out, Library of Congress scholars discovered in a newly unearthed collection of the British prime minister's letters.
 The letters to Churchill's cousin, the Duke of Marlborough, have not been seen in decades, even by scholars, Librarian of Congress James Billington said.
 The duke donated the letters to the library at the urging of Bainbridge Colby, secretary of state under President Wilson, but they were misfiled.
 
 
<b>BBC to Mock Report 
 </b>

LONDON (AFP) - The BBC pledged to broadcast as planned a comedy mocking the government over last week's Hutton report, despite worries the program might inflame a dispute between the two institutions.
 The new series of popular radio comedy "Absolute Power," based around the cynical antics of a pair of fictional government spin doctors would go out as planned this week, a BBC spokesman said.
 A report by judge Lord Brian Hutton into the suicide of government weapons scientist David Kelly exonerated the government of any blame in the death.
 
 
<b>Sharon Questioned
 </b>

JERUSALEM (AP) - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was questioned by police Thursday in a bribery case that could force his resignation, and critics charged his talk of removing Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip was meant to deflect attention from the scandal.
 Sharon has agreed to put his plan before the people in a referendum. Removal of authorized settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, as well as such a referendum, would be firsts in Israel.
 
 
<b>Oscars Expel Member
 </b>

LOS ANGELES (AFP) - Oscar bosses have for the first time expelled one of their members for supplying a suspected movie pirate with advance copies of scores of top Hollywood films, they announced.
 The landmark expulsion of Carmine Caridi from cinema's most illustrious organization came after the Academy last year signed an anti-piracy agreement with studio bosses.
 
 
<b>EU Sanctions Ryanair
 </b>

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) - The European Union's head office told Ryanair on Tuesday to repay about $5 million to Belgian authorities, about 30 percent of the subsidies that the Irish discount airline received for using the state-owned Charleroi airport south of Brussels.
 By disallowing some subsidies and permitting others, the European Commission said it struck a balance between the need to respect antitrust rules and the need to encourage competition among low-cost carriers that are a lifeline for small regional airports.
 Officials said Ryanair will have to repay some money it received from the government in Wallonia, Belgium.
 
 
 



TITLE: Russians Win Pairs Title for Third Time
AUTHOR: By Salvatore Zanca
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BUDAPEST - Tatiana Totmianina and Maxim Marinin of Russia won the pairs title at the European Figure Skating Championships on Wednesday for the third straight year. 
 
They used a work by a Hungarian composer to continue a Russian tradition. It was the ninth straight year a Russian couple won the event, and 37th time in the last 40 years a Soviet or Russian pair won. 
 Totmianina and Marinin led after the short program, and made no mistakes to &quot;Art on Ice&quot; by Hungarian musician Edwin Marton. It was only the second time they skated to the program after injuries set back their training this past season. 
 &quot;It was a great pleasure to skate the new program,&quot; Totmianina said. &quot;It's more demanding emotionally and the opposite of our former program.&quot; 
 Last year they won with a lighthearted routine to &quot;The Cotton Club.&quot; 
 Their marks this time ranged from 5.5 to 5.9, including four 5.9s for presentation for a performance highlighted by unusual positions in several lifts. Totmianina was nursing a knee injury that forced them to downgrade a triple jump to a double. 
 &quot;In spite of Tatiana's injury we showed a very good program,&quot; Marinin said. 
 Russians Maria Petrova and Alexei Tikhonov, who won consecutive titles in 1999-00, finished second. They skated well but Petrova had a two-footed landing on a throw triple salchow, and received slightly lower marks from 5.5 to just three 5.9s. 
 &quot;We felt very good about our performance especially since Masha didn't feel well today,&quot; Tikhonov said. At 32 he is the oldest skater in these championships. 
 Poland's Dorota Zagorska and Mariusz Siudek, second in the Europeans in 1999-00, were third, skating to &quot;Warsaw Concerto.&quot; 
 With the pair's competition over, two other events at the European Figure Skating Championships are under way. 
 The women must wait until Friday before they start competition, with Yelena Sokolova looking to continue Russia's streak while Irina Slutskaya is sidelined due to an illness. Women's qualifications originally scheduled for Wednesday were called off due to a smaller field than expected. 
 Sokolova, second to Michelle Kwan at the world championships last March, is the favorite in this event. Slutskaya, who has not competed this season with a variety of health problems, will also likely miss the world championships in Dortmund, Germany, in March. 
 World champion Yevgeni Plushenko held onto first place after the men's short program, overcoming a weak landing on a combination and a strong showing by Frenchman Brian Joubert on Tuesday.
 Plushenko slipped a little while landing a quadruple jump and had to hold his balance and do only a double toe loop instead of a planned triple. The Russian also was a bit off in the air landing a triple lutz. 
 His routine to tango music had marks from 5.4 to 5.8 for required elements, and 5.6 up to one 6.0 for presentation. In the interim scoring system and random picking of judging, no one knows if that 6.0 counted. 
 Plushenko didn't know what went wrong on the quad, normally a consistent jump for him. 
 &quot;I don't have an answer,&quot; Plushenko said. &quot;First I have to watch the tape and see what happened with my quad today.&quot; 
 He refused to blame his knee injury. 
 &quot;I have had it already six months. I am ready for the pain,&quot; Plushenko said. &quot;All athletes have a problem in their leg - or in their head.&quot; 
 When asked whether he has a problem in his head, he laughed and said: &quot;No, not yet.&quot; 
 A majority of the nine judges rated him slightly better than Joubert, whose quad-triple was clean to a routine of &quot;Time&quot; by Pink Floyd. 
 Joubert's marks ranged from 5.4 to 5.9 for required elements, and from 5.6 to one 5.9 for presentation. As the last skater, the scoreboard showed he had just four first-place votes. He needed five to beat Plushenko. 
 It will likely come down to Thursday's free skating. If Plushenko or Joubert win the free skate, they take the title. Russian Ilya Klimkin, currently in third, has an outside chance to win only if the top two fail.
 Plushenko, seeking his fourth European title, is not worried about winning the free program, which counts the remaining 50 percent of the mark. 
 &quot;If I skate cleanly I can,&quot; Plushenko said. &quot;I am in good shape, good condition I can do it.&quot; 
 Joubert thinks he has a chance after his good program. 
 &quot;It was awesome,&quot; said Joubert, the silver medalist behind Plushenko last year. &quot;I had fun in my program. At the end of the footwork I exchanged glances with my coach. We have done a lot of hard work together.&quot;
 Joubert has worked with Alexei Yagudin recently. Yagudin, the Olympic gold medalist, was Plushenko's main rival the past four years before retiring four months ago due to recurring hip injuries.

TITLE: Film Retells Olympic Ice 'Miracle'
AUTHOR: By Anita Chang
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: COLUMBUS, Ohio - A new film which aims to teach a generation of Americans that doesn't know the details behind the U.S. gold medal finish in the 1980 winter Olympic Games ice hockey finals against the Soviet Union - famously dubbed the &quot;Miracle on Ice&quot; - opens in American cinemas Friday.
 
&quot;Miracle,&quot; tells the story of 20 fresh-faced college kids who upset the seemingly unstoppable Soviets 4-3 en route to a gold medal at the Olympics in Lake Placid, New York. 
 &quot;It's a wonderful love story about guys who have this dream, a coach who has a vision and a country that needed uplifting,'' said Jim Craig, the goaltender of the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team. 
 The star of the movie is not the scrappy team, but its legendary coach. 
 &quot;It's the Herb Brooks story and we just happened to be a part of it,&quot; team captain Mike Eruzione said. 
 Kurt Russell portrays the icy intensity and calculated aloofness of Brooks, who died last August in a car crash in Minnesota. Eddie Cahill, best known for his recurring role as Rachel Green's assistant on &quot;Friends,&quot; plays Craig. 
 Director Gavin O'Connor wanted real hockey players to portray the athletes, so most of the &quot;actors&quot; are former college or junior league hockey players. Longtime hockey player and first-time actor Patrick O'Brien Demsey took on Eruzione's role. Left wing Buzz Schneider is portrayed by his son Billy. 
 Just six months before the 1980 Olympics, Brooks brought together players from Minnesota, Boston and frozen places in between. 
 &quot;We played 60 games in three months. A National Hockey League season, at least when I played, had 80 in nine months, so you can envision how vigorous the training was,&quot; Craig said after a recent appearance at a Columbus Blue Jackets game to promote the film. 
 The significance of the victory during the Cold War extended beyond sports. 
 Iranian revolutionaries were holding 52 Americans hostage at the U.S. embassy in Tehran. Watergate, the Vietnam War, high interest rates and a gasoline shortage led U.S. President Jimmy Carter to say America was experiencing a &quot;crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will.&quot; 
 &quot;When you're in the Olympics and you're playing another country, the intensity is incredible. It's our way of life versus someone else's,&quot; Craig said. 
 The Americans only hoped to avoid being embarrassed at home by the mighty Soviet machine. The Russians had won gold medals the last 20 years with waves of robotic squadrons that didn't even smile after scoring goals. 
 Three days before the opening ceremony, the teams played an exhibition game at Madison Square Garden. The Soviets won 10-3. 
 &quot;We were way strong. Nobody doubted that. We were professionals and they were just students,&quot; Soviet starting goalie Vladislav Tretiak said in the 2001 HBO documentary &quot;Do You Believe in Miracles? The Story of the 1980 U.S. Hockey Team.&quot;
 &quot;Simply put, we did not respect their team and you cannot do that in hockey,&quot; he said. 
 On Feb. 22, 1980, the Americans were down 3-2 going into the third period. Mark Johnson scored to tie it, and 81 seconds later Eruzione added another. The frenzied crowd of 8,500 chanted &quot;USA! USA!&quot; But the players and Brooks could only bite their lips and glance nervously at the scoreboard. 
 There were still 10 minutes left. 
 &quot;The Russians had won so many games in their careers in the last two minutes, last five minutes, so 10 minutes - it was like a lifetime,&quot; Craig said. 
 Many people still get chills when they remember the last seconds of the game ticking away, the famous call by sportscaster Al Michaels -&quot;Do you believe in miracles? Yes!,&quot; - the young team spilling onto the ice with sticks and fists raised, mouths wide with screams of victory. 
 They didn't realize the rest of the country was celebrating, too. 
 &quot;We weren't allowed to talk to the media, so we didn't even know people were watching. When we got out in the countryside, that's when we realized it was pretty special,&quot; Eruzione said. 
 &quot;Seeing people lining the streets in Washington, the letters, the fan mail - it was kind of shocking.&quot; 
 Eruzione, Schneider and former teammate Jack O'Callahan were to attend a special screening of the movie Thursday night in Lake Placid, just down Main Street from where the game was played. 
 Producers Gordon Gray and Mark Ciardi said they were inspired by the victory that Sports Illustrated named the greatest sports moment of the 20th century. 
 &quot;These players are iconic,&quot; Ciardi said. &quot;It's an honor to be able to tell their story.&quot;
 Craig wants his children to one day tell the story, which was made into a TV movie in 1981, to their kids. 
 After &quot;Miracle,&quot; 15-year-old J.D. and 12-year-old Taylor will know that their father stood strong for a very long 10 minutes that night, stopping 39 shots. 
 A miracle? 
 &quot;You know what's funny?&quot; Craig said. &quot;After you see this movie, you'll find out that it wasn't really a miracle. It was a lot of hard work.&quot;

TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: <b>Weightlifter Banned
 </b>

MOSCOW (AP) - Vladislav Lukanin, one of Russia's top prospects for a weightlifting gold medal at the Olympics, has been banned for two years for doping. 
 Russian Weightlifting Federation secretary-general Yuri Teryaev said the ban was imposed by the International Weightlifting Federation and covers both international and domestic competitions, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported Wednesday. 
 The ban was the result of tests performed after Lukanin won the silver medal in the 152-pound class at the world championships in November. 
 The report did not specify which substance the 19-year-old Lukanin was found to have used.
 
 
<b>Magic a Shooting Star
 </b>

NEW YORK (AFP) - Basketball Hall of Famer Magic Johnson will be among those participating in the Shooting Stars competition, the newest addition to the National Basketball Association All-Star Weekend.
 The Shooting Stars will feature four teams consisting of an NBA player, a WNBA player and former NBA star in a timed one-round shooting event. The event will take place on February 14 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, one night before the All-Star Game.
 Johnson will headline the Los Angeles Lakers team that will include guard Derek Fisher and Los Angeles Sparks center Lisa Leslie.
 The Los Angeles Clippers, Detroit Pistons and San Antonio Spurs also will have teams in the field, which was announced Wednesday.
 All-Star Saturday Night also includes the Skills Challenge, Three-Point Shootout and Rising Stars Slam Dunk competitions. Also included on All-Star Weekend is the Rookie Challenge, which pits the top first-year players against the league's second-year players on Friday night.
 Hall of Famer Magic Johnson will be among those participating in the Shooting Stars competition, the newest addition to the National Basketball Association All-Star Weekend.
 
 
<b>Suspect Denies Guilt
 </b>

COMPTON, California (AP) - A suspect in the shooting death of the half-sister of tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams pleaded innocent Wednesday to a murder charge. 
 Robert Edward Maxfield, 23, was arraigned in Compton Superior Court after being arrested last month in the killing of Yetunde Price. 
 Authorities suspect Maxfield, a reputed gang member, fired the shot from an assault rifle that killed Price, 31, on Sept. 14 as she sat in the passenger seat of a sport utility vehicle. 
 Maxfield remained in custody without bail. He was ordered to return to court on Feb. 20. 
 
 
<b>Bulls Coach Fined
 </b>

NEW YORK (AP) - Chicago Bulls coach Scott Skiles was fined $7,500 Wednesday by the NBA for criticizing veteran referee Jess Kersey after a loss to Seattle earlier this week. 
 The fine was levied by Stu Jackson, the league's vice president of basketball operations. 
 "Jess Kersey turned his back on me right from the beginning of the game," Skiles said after the 109-97 loss. "I'm not sure why. We weren't even getting on him at that time. He spent most of the game not even acknowledging any of the questions we had or anything else."