SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #944 (12), Tuesday, February 17, 2004
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TITLE: High-Speed Train to Shorten Trip to Helsinki
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A high-speed train service which would take just 3 hours to travel from St. Petersburg to Helsinki may start as early as 2008, Governor Valentina Matviyenko said Friday.
The journey takes 5 1/2 hours now, but using trains running on a high-speed rail track, due to be completed in four years' time, travelers will be able to cut as much as 2 1/2 hours off the journey.
Speaking after a four-day visit to Finland, Matviyenko said the project had been under discussion since 2001 and "it is time to speed it up."
The governor added she was happy with results of negotiations underway about it.
"There is mutual understanding as to what has to be done," she said. "The negotiations should be finished by June, with a detailed plan of action developed by both sides."
Finns account for the lion's share of foreign visitors to St. Petersburg.
Valentin Zakharov, spokesman for City Hall's tourism committee, said more than 1 million Finnish tourists have been visiting St. Petersburg every year since 1998 and Finland is a popular destination for Russians.
"St. Petersburgers go to Finland more often than to any other foreign country," he said, "and the numbers are constantly growing."
In 1998, 800,000 trips were made by St. Petersburgers to Finland, a figure that grew to 1.4 million in 2000. In 2002, more than 1.6 million St. Petersburgers crossed the Finnish border.
While the figures for the Russian tourists have been steadily growing, the number of Finnish travelers is stable. Industry insiders say the major barrier to growth is the complex process of obtaining a visa. More and more Finns prefer going to neighboring Estonia, where they do not require visas.
The number of tourists arriving in St. Petersburg by ferry has been rising rapidly, with 210,000 people arriving last year, twice more than in 1998, when 102,000 travellers arrived by boat.
But insiders warn that without a simplified visa regime it will be difficult to maintain even current levels.
Matviyenko said that after a ferry link resumes between St. Petersburg and Helsinki in April, the city can expect an additional 400,000 visitors a year.
According to unpublished research by Andrei Beryozkin, head of the water tourism department of the St. Petersburg tourist information center, visa hassles are the major obstacle to ferry tourism development.
"In 2002 the Finnish ferry operator Silja Line had to cancel 40 sailings by the Silja Opera [ferry] to St. Petersburg, plus another 80 ferries scheduled for 2003, because the Russian Foreign Ministry refused to allow visa-free travel for the foreign passengers," the report says.
"The cancellation resulted in direct losses of at least $11 million for the city budget."
Zakharov said tourist traffic from Finland has significant potential, but obtaining visas is the key issue for the ferry business and foreign travel in general. The faster and less complicated the process, the more tourists St. Petersburg can expect. Otherwise, the figures will never grow.
Russian authorities are fighting for easy travel on a mutual basis, he said.
According to international practice, cruise liner passengers don't need a visa. If ferries sailing between St. Petersburg and other European cities receive the status of cruise ships, then visas shouldn't be required.
For instance, when a Russian citizen buys a package to Cyprus with a visit to Jordan or Israel on a cruise ship, no visa is required for Israel or Jordan. But if travelers go on a scheduled ferry, these rules don't apply and a visa is needed for every country entered.
In 2003, Silja Line delivered mainly tourists from Finland on fast-track 72-hour visas that could be obtained on arrival.
"The government of St. Petersburg with the full support of the Foreign Ministry is making every effort to introduce visa-free, or an express and more convenient regime for all ferries coming to and from St. Petersburg," Zakharov said.
In June, the Finjet ferry operating between Rostock and St. Petersburg will begin weekly visits to the city. From April, Estonian ferry operator AS Tallink Group will launch operations in St. Petersburg, with two ferries plying the route between St. Petersburg, Tallinn and Helsinki every week.
Welcoming ferries and building a high-speed track between St. Petersburg and Helsinki are part of one major goal - to draw more tourists to St. Petersburg. But St. Petersburg's recent forays into high-speed rail projects haven't been very fruitful.
An ambitious $5 billion plan to lay 654 kilometers of track between St. Petersburg and Moscow to carry high-speed trains that would reduce the journey time to only 147 minutes was shelved in 2002. And the Sokol-250 high-speed train, which cost $20 million to design and build, failed to achieve the projected speed of 250 kilometers per hour. The Sokol-250's best result was 236 kilometers per hour.
According to Magistral, a print and web information resource of Oktyabrskaya Railways, only five countries in the world make trains that travel at over 250 kilometers per hour: Japan, France, Germany, Italy and Sweden.
The process from setting a technical task to projecting a model to building the actual train takes from 11 to 21 years on average, while modification of an already existing model takes between 5 and 8 years, according to Magistral.
The VSM Co., or High Speed Railway, created in 1992 specifically for the project, received $200 million from two British banks, Indosuez and SBC Warburg, but never returned the money. The federal government, which had provided guarantees for VSM, had to assume responsibilities for the loans. The Property Ministry owned 87 percent of shares in VSM.
The joint Russian-Finnish high-speed train project requires at least $800 million, with more than half of the sum expected to come from Finland.
The Russian daily newspaper Kommersant reported that the two countries have a preliminary agreement to use Russian-made wagons on the route, but it is clear that a Russian-made locomotive is not an option.
"The likeliest scenario is that locomotives made by Siemens and costing 2 million euros each will have to be purchased," Kommersant reported.
Lev Savulkin, an analyst with the Leontieff Center in St. Petersburg, said foreign investment for any similar large-scale project would be very hard to find.
"Everyone still remembers the VSM affair and investors' money is literally going through the ground," Savulkin said.
"The plan is dead and buried but the huge hole, which was dug next to Moskovsky Station, where the new terminal buildings were due to be constructed, is still there, as a live reminder."
TITLE: Yukos Plans Bail Out of Ex-Chief
AUTHOR: By Judith Ingram
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - A group of shareholders that control Russia's largest oil company, Yukos, have offered their stock to the government in exchange for the release of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Yukos' former chief.
Leonid Nevzlin said that he and other core shareholders of Group Menatep - a holding company - had offered to turn over their stake in Yukos to the government if it agrees to let Khodorkovsky out of jail.
"Life and liberty are more valuable than shares," Nevzlin, believed to own 3.5 percent of Yukos through Menatep, told Dow Jones Newswires.
Khodorkovsky, who resigned as Yukos chief shortly after his Oct. 25 arrest on fraud and tax evasion charges, has remained in custody awaiting trial. Courts have repeatedly dismissed petitions by lawyers of Khodorkovsky to free him on bail, and his supporters have alleged his arrest was politically motivated.
Group Menatep is believed to own 44 percent of Yukos. It is not clear how much stock individual members of the group own. Nevzlin said the offer applied to shares in Yukos and other companies held both directly and indirectly by the Group Menatep partners.
Nevzlin said the offer was conditional on Khodorkovsky and another shareholder, Platon Lebedev, first being released. After their release, Nevzlin and the other shareholders will surrender their shares, he said.
He declined to say which specific government officials had been approached about the offer. He did, however, add that the shareholders were willing to forfeit all of Group Menatep in addition to just the Yukos shares to ensure Khodorkovsky's and Lebedev's freedom.
Nevzlin was quoted by Interfax as saying the decision to make the offer was made a week ago but there had been no response from the government.
Khodorkovsky's arrest and the ensuing freezing of about 40 percent of the Yukos stock by prosecutors have marked a peak in the long-running official investigation, which is widely seen as a Kremlin-orchestrated attempt to curb Khodorkovsky's clout.
President Vladimir Putin has denied any political undertones to the inquiry and sought to present it as part of the government's anti-corruption efforts.
Nevzlin is living in self-imposed exile in Israel, along with fellow Menatep shareholder Vladimir Dubov. All of Menatep's shareholders face criminal charges, mainly relating to alleged fraud and tax evasion.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Prosecutor Found Dead
ROSTOV-ON-DON (AP) - A prosecutor in the Volgograd region was found dead Monday with gunshot wounds, police said. Anatoly Kolosev, the prosecutor of the Yelan district of the Volgograd region on the Volga River, was last seen alive Sunday when he went hunting with four other men.
His body was found Monday in a car together with bodies of two other men, who also had gunshot wounds, said Roman Sobolev, a spokesman for the regional police.
An investigation has started.
Belarus Officials Fired
MINSK, Belarus (Reuters) - Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko has unleashed a crackdown on corruption, moving to clean up the ranks of his top officials ahead of a parliamentary election.
Lukashenko sacked his chief of staff and the head of the state television and radio company last week, a move analysts said on Monday was part of a bid to rescue his flagging ratings.
Galina Zhuravkova, the chief of staff, was sacked early last week and then imprisoned, awaiting trial for "abuse of office".
The head of the state broadcaster Belteleradio, Yegor Rybakov, was sacked after an investigation by Belarus's KGB.
Ukraine Store Blast
KIEV (AP) - An explosion ripped through a grocery store in western Ukraine, injuring 18 people, emergency officials said Monday.
The blast occurred on the ground floor of a five-story building in Chernivtsi, some 540 kilometers southwest of the capital Kiev, on Sunday night. It damaged its facade and blew out windows in adjoining buildings, the Emergency Ministry said.
Eighteen people were hospitalized, four of them in critical condition.
Officials have given no cause for the blast, but said there was no fire, which led them to believe that the explosion was probably triggered by a gas leak.
TITLE: Hermitage Chary on Trophy Art
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The director of the State Hermitage Museum has urged German diplomats and officials to be more sensitive and "especially accurate" when speaking about so-called trophy art being returned to Germany.
Trophy art refers to paintings, sculptures and other cultural treasures that were brought to the Soviet Union after World War II.
The German government considers the treasures, many of them removed from museums, as its property. Its case is based on three Hague conventions that the Soviet Union and Russia are party to that say an army of occupation may only confiscate property that may be used for military operations.
Many Russians consider the art as reparations for destruction wreaked by Hitler's armies on the Soviet Union.
"Its all right to talk about transfer of those treasures, but not about its return," Interfax quoted Hermitage director Mikhail Piotrovsky as saying in response to statements by the German ambassador to Russia Hans-Friedrich von Ploetz.
In an interview printed in Itogi magazine last week, von Ploetz said Germany wants back not only the archives of Walter Rathenau - which Russia had promised to return, but last month reneged on the deal - but also of other captured cultural treasures.
"If you look at the treasures that [Moscow's] Pushkin Fine Arts Museum publicly displays on its Internet site, you will see only a small part of the so-called 'trophy art,'" von Ploetz said.
"In the Hermitage, captured masterpieces brought from Germany after the war are exhibited in two halls," von Ploetz added. "The number of objects we are talking about is a six-digit number [more than 100,000]. And there are kilometers of it in archives."
Piotrovsky said that each transfer of cultural treasures should be based on direct negotiations.
"This question can be solved only in the framework of Russian law," he said.
"All attempts to portray Russia as criminal and to equate it to Nazi Germany in relation to its handling of cultural treasures are undiplomatic, insensitive, and may only cause an adverse reaction," he said.
By exhibiting objects from private collections, confiscated from Germany, and now belonging to Russia in accordance with local legislation, the museum shows its sensitivity by declaring the origins of those objects, Piotrovsky said.
Former president Boris Yeltsin made an agreement in 1992 that would have allowed the art's return. The State Duma, however, disagreed with Yeltsin and passed a bill that made trophy art the property of Russia. President Vladimir Putin approved that law in May 2000.
"Unfortunately, today Germany's arts world is divided into those who understand the delicacy of the Hermitage policy, and those who consciously don't understand it," Piotrovsky said.
"We didn't commit any crimes after the war," he said. "These objects were confiscated due to the logic of the post-war period. Almost all of them were returned, while the transfer of the remainder would require thorough negotiations so that both sides are satisfied. And by no means do we accept any suggestion that Russia is guilty of plundering poor Germany," Piotrovsky said.
Piotrovsky said even when the Hermitage takes such important decisions as the return of such cultural treasures as the stained-glass windows of Frankfurt an der Oder's Marienkirche, "it often receives something like insults from some German officials."
"It's ... a problem that is not really all that important, but that [could] spoil relations between Russia and Germany."
TITLE: Vandals Daub Swastikas, Slogans on Jewish Graves
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: About 50 Jewish graves were defaced with fascist signs and slogans at the city's Jan. 9 Cemetery on Saturday night.
Unknown vandals painted swastikas on all the graves and wrote racist graffiti on some, including "Yids Get Out of Here!," said Mark Grubarg, head of St. Petersburg's Jewish Religious Community. "We are in shock," he said.
The cemetery, which in the 19th century was exclusively Jewish and the largest burial site for Jews in the city, had suffered separate acts of vandalism before, but it never witnessed such a massive act, Grubarg said.
The cemetery also contains the gaves of many people shot on so-called Bloody Sunday in 1905, many of whom were Gentiles and are buried separately from the Jews.
"Any nation is sensitive to acts of vandalism at cemeteries, but Jews are especially vulnerable to them," Grubarg said, "especially, when it concerns fascist signs, which Jewish people have terrible memories of."
When he went to the cemetery on Monday the scene reminded him "of the early years of fascist Germany, where the genocide started exactly the same way," Grubarg said.
The vandalism was committed only a few days after a group of teenagers brutally murdered a nine-year-old Tajik girl in St. Petersburg. The slaying caused a wave of indignation in the city and across Russia. No one had been arrested for the murder Monday.
Grubarg said racially motivated vandalism in St. Petersburg had recently became more frequent. It seemed to be all directed to destabilize the situation in the city and the country on the eve of the presidential elections, he added.
"It's obvious to anyone that acts of nationalism in a multi-national country like Russia may have very negative consequences, and President Vladimir Putin always is always warning about that," he said.
"Our society should do everything possible to nip such things in the bud," he added. "We don't know who did that to the Jewish cemetery or if it was skinheads, but if it was them then it's obvious that those young boys are just toys in the hands of adult people, who are interested in damaging Russia."
The city prosecutor's office has opened a criminal case over the vandalism.
TITLE: Price Policy 'Optimizes' Visitors
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The State Hermitage Museum's pricing policy is resulting in the optimal number of visitors Interfax quoted general director Mikhail Piotrovsky as saying Monday.
About 2.5 million people visit the celebrated museum each year, he said.
"Up to 7 million visit the Louvre each year, up to 10 million visit the Prado [museum in Madrid]," he was quoted as saying. "But such high numbers are not all to the museums' benefit in terms of preservation and appropriate conditions for the invaluable works."
Ideally, entry should be free for everyone, but this is impractical, he said.
The price of entry was changed on Jan. 1 when it rose from 15 rubles (52 cents) to 100 rubles after no raises for three years.
"That [100 rubles] is 10 times more than 15 years ago, but the number of visitors has not gone down," he said.
The price for foreigners remains the same at 350 rubles.
Entry is free for all students, children and pensioners, regardless of nationality and individual visitors will be able to enter free on the first Thursday of each month.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Manevich Extension
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The investigation into the 1997 assassination of Mikhail Manevich, head of the city's property committee, has been extended by three months until May 18, Interfax reported Friday.
Citing the city's Federal Security Service, the news agency said the order extending the investigation was signed by a deputy general prosecutor.
"Work is continuing and we will have some results," Valery Kuznetsov, head of the press service, was quoted as saying. "It's too early to announce the results that have already been achieved."
Manevich was shot in his car while driving to his office by a sniper hiding in an attic above the crossroads of Ulitsa Rubensteina and Nevsky Prospekt.
Recruits in Poor Health
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Military medical officers are concerned about the poor state of health of recruits, Interfax reported Friday.
"The autumn draft shows that the health of recruits leaves a lot to be desired," Nikolai Skolovsky, head of the medical service of the Leningrad Military District, was quoted as saying at a news conference. "Between 25 percent and 28 percent of recruits were either unsuitable for all purposes or unfit for service," he said.
"In addition, about a 10th of those called up were undernourished, 15 percent suffered a chronic disease that did not exclude them from being drafted, but they require extra attention from medical officers, and 7 percent are psychologically unreliable," he added.
Asked what illnesses exempted conscripts from being called up, Valery Krylov, head of the 9th military-medical commission for the district, said drug addicts and the mentally ill are excluded.
Of those exempted, 30 percent are on psychiatric grounds, 14 percent for having unhealthy nervous systems, 8 percent for diseased muscular-skeletal systems and 10 percent because of digestive illnesses.
$.5M Swedish Aid
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Sweden has allocated $500,000 for an analysis of the technical and economic aspects of creating a plant to reprocess radioactive waste from Andreyev Bay on the Kola Peninsula, Interfax reported Friday.
The money will allow the investigation to continue beyond April, the news agency said.
Valery Panteleyev, head of the state-enterprise that is managing the waste, was quoted as saying that at least 6,000 cubic meters of highly radioactive waste is stored in the bay.
Britain will also take part in the project that will examine staff safety and shipping of waste to the Mayak reprocessing plant in the Chelyabinsk region, the report said.
Brullov Work Stolen
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - A painting by Russian artist Carl Brullov was stolen early this month from the apartment of a U.S. citizen, Interfax reported last week.
Citing a police division dealing with antiques, the agency said the painting is called The Girl with The Jug.
"According to the owner, the painting was given to him several years ago in the United States," an unnamed source said. "If the painting is an original it would be worth at least $100,000. But we might only know if it is after we recover it. All we can say at the moment is that a painting was removed from the apartment of a U.S. citizen."
Central Asian Visit
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - A delegation of St. Petersburg business people led by Governor Valentina Matviyenko plans to sign up orders during a visit this week to Central Asia, Interfax reported Monday.
"The purpose of the visit is to facilitate more orders from city enterprises," Matviyenko was quoted as saying Friday.
Leading contenders for contracts are Siloviye Mashiny and the Kirov Works, she added.
"Unfortunately, not all our products are competitive in European markets, but demand may be rising for them in the markets of the states of the former Soviet Union."
She said she would also discuss obtaining grain from Kazakhstan. $5.5Bln for Caspian?
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) - LUKoil said it may need to invest $5.5 billion to develop a Caspian Sea field after winning the rights to explore there for oil and gas.
The government awarded LUKoil a permit to develop the Yalama-Samur field, which may hold an estimated 300 million tons of oil and gas reserves, the company said in a statement.
The "prospective block is situated in the Caspian offshore in water depths of 200 to 700 meters,'' LUKoil said. "LUKoil is planning to develop the Yalama-Samur prospective block under production-sharing agreement terms,'' that may give tax breaks.
$325M Severstal Bonds
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) - Severstal said it sold $325 million of eurobonds to finance its projects.
The debut offering comprised five-year bonds paying an interest rate of 8.625 percent, Severstal said in a statement. Citigroup Inc. managed the sale.
Severstal has a long-term corporate credit of B+ at Standard & Poor's, four levels below investment grade, with a negative outlook, indicating the rating company is more inclined to cut its assessment.
Vekselberg Faces Fine
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) - The Anti-Monopoly Ministry will ask an arbitration court to order the breakup of a trading company owned by Viktor Vekselberg and Leonard Blavatnik, to end the unit's monopoly on caustic soda sales, Vedomosti said.
The ministry said it will levy fines on United Trading Co. for charging too much for caustic soda, an alkaline compound used to make chemicals, pulp and paper, and to refine oil, the paper said, citing an unidentified ministry official.
The company will appeal the ruling, United's general director Konstantin Selivanov told Vedomosti. The trader, which controls almost all Russian sales of the chemical, doubled prices at the start of this year and demanded full payment before delivery, the newspaper said, citing officials at the Arkhangelsk and Tsepruss pulp and paper mills. Novgorod Investment
NOVGOROD (SPT) - Investment in the Novgorod region reached 7.4 billion rubles in 2003, 1.4 times the figure for 2002, the region's press service told Interfax.
A number of factories were built in the region in 2003, including a copper cathode plant, a logistics terminal belonging to the Velts company, a gas turbine heating plant, and launching of the third phase of Amkor Rench.
The press service also announced that in 2003 the region's factories produced 34.5 billion rubles worth of goods, which shows a 2.9-percent increase over 2002.
Foreign trade in the Novgorod region reached $697.4 million in 2003, or 31.1 percent more than in 2002. Exports grew by 15.4 percent to $432.2 million and imports by 64.4 percent to $265.2 million.
Exports went to Finland, China, Algeria, Estonia, Mexico, Latvia, and the United States.
Oil Rig Approved
KALININGRAD (SPT) - A government commission signed documents approving the opening of the LUKoil platform on the Kravtsovskoye field (D-6), Interfax reported Monday.
The commission determined that the platform meets technical requirements and conforms to existing environmental safeguards.
The Kaliningrad administration region plans to put the platform into service officially in March 2004.
Experts say the D-6 field should produce about 600,000 tons of oil per year.
Vyborg Signs Deal
ST. PETERSBURG (Prime-Tass) - Vyborg Shipyards, based in the Leningrad region, will build some sections for an icebreaker to be used for the Sakhalin-1 project, according to a contract signed by the company and Finland's Kvaerner Masa-Yards on Thursday, Vyborg Shipyards reported Friday.
The amount of the contract was not disclosed, but the total cost of the icebreaker is estimated at $75 million.
Far Eastern Shipping Company ordered the ship and signed an agreement on its construction with KMY in August.
The 99.9-meter-long and 21.23-meter-wide ship, capable of breaking ice 1.5 meters deep, requires complicated welding technology, Vyborg Shipyards said.
ING Bank is to provide over $60 million for the construction of the icebreaker, according to an agreement signed with FESCO in October 2003.
This accounts for about 80 percent of the icebreaker's cost, while the other 20 percent will be provided from FESCO's own funds.
Watch the Watches
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The Montres Breguet S.A. Swiss watchmaker announced last Tuesday that it will sponsor an exhibit of vintage Breguet watches at the State Hermitage Museum starting June 10, 2004.
Abraham-Louis Breguet opened his own watchmaker's shop in Paris in 1775. The Breguet name was known throughout Europe by 1807 and a Breguet family member involved in sales came to Russia in 1808. Emperor Alexander I was so impressed by the Breguet watches he ordained that the company became an official supplier of the Russian court.
TITLE: Roof Collapse Kills 25 at Moscow Complex
AUTHOR: By Oksana Yablokova and Valeria Korchagina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The massive concrete roof of Transvaal Park indoor water complex in southwestern Moscow collapsed Saturday evening, killing at least 25 people and injuring more than 100.
Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov visited the scene on Monday morning and said that nine to 13 people were still missing after a further search for survivors had been abandoned.
Sixty-eight people injured in the disaster, including 20 children, remained hospitalized on Monday.
St. Petersburg authorities said no such collapse could occur in the city because it has no buildings with a similar structure.
A crowd of people were buried under the chunks of concrete and shards of glass that rained down on hundreds of unsuspecting bathers at the water park in the southern suburb of Yasenevo.
Rescue workers with sniffer dogs searched for survivors under rubble Sunday evening, pumping warm air into the area to keep any survivors alive in the freezing cold.
Although the cause of the disaster was not immediately clear, prosecutors questioned the park's manager, designer and chief builder.
City Hall officials said Sunday that the licenses of the Sergei Kiselyov & Partners architectural firm, which designed the park, and Turkish construction firm Kocak Insaat Ltd., which was the general contractor, had been suspended until the cause of the accident could be determined.
Moscow Chief Prosecutor Anatoly Zuyev, who along with Luzhkov was one of the first officials to arrive at the scene, said a criminal investigation had been opened.
The tragedy came as Muscovites were reeling from the shock of the Feb. 6 explosion in the metro, which claimed 40 lives and left more than 100 injured.
However, authorities said that there was no evidence that the collapsing roof was caused by an explosion.
Zuyev said the roof could have caved in because of defective construction or a maintenance problem, rejecting earlier versions that the collapse occurred because of a heavy layer of snow or a sharp difference between inside and outside temperatures.
The reinforced concrete roof, the size of a soccer pitch, collapsed from a height of 20 meters at 7:15 Saturday evening. An estimated 352 people were in the pool area, right below the roof, at the time. A total of 800 people were in the complex, according to the police.
Police spokesman Kirill Mazurin said a child's birthday was being celebrated in the pool area, while young people were gathering for a St. Valentine's Day disco just meters away.
"There was a sudden sound - a crack - and my older son said it was like a terrible dream," Olga Matveyeva, whose two sons were at the park with their grandmother, told NTV.
Those visitors unhurt ran in panic outside, where the temperatures had plunged to minus 15 degrees Celsius. Bathers were barefoot, wearing nothing more than swimming suits.
Roman Yazymin, 29, was sunbathing in a solarium in an upper level of the complex when he heard a loud crash.
"It wasn't an explosion, but the noise of metal collapsing," he told The Associated Press. As he went to collect his clothes, he noticed that "everything was [covered] in blood."
Outside the complex, police cordoned off the area to provide easy access for ambulances, police and rescue vehicles.
Twenty-nine children, many in grave condition, were treated at Morozov Children's Hospital and Hospital No. 20 for fractures, hypothermia and shock.
Transvaal Park was built in a record time of 18 months and opened for visitors in September 2002.
The project was funded by Sberbank, with Kocak Insaat overseeing a number of companies involved in its construction.
TITLE: Challengers Protest At Coverage Of Putin
AUTHOR: By Caroline McGregor
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Challengers to President Vladimir Putin protested Friday that the sweeping state television coverage of his campaign speech the day before violates election laws because the airtime was not paid for from his campaign funds.
Under Russian legislation, candidates are to have equal access to the media and they are required to pay for any airtime they get in addition to limited free slots allocated to them.
Central Election Committee chairman Alexander Veshnyakov said he would look into whether state-owned channel Rossia had gone too far in broadcasting live Putin's 29-minute speech to several hundred campaign representatives on Thursday. State-run station Channel One also ran big portions of the speech throughout the day as part of its news programs.
"In my opinion, there were aspects of excess from the federal channels," Veshnyakov was quoted by Interfax as saying Friday during a visit to Tatarstan. "I was not able to see the broadcast, but we will investigate the situation and assess it."
Putin declined the right to free airtime to which candidates are entitled, and on Feb. 9 the Central Elections Commission distributed the time slots without his participation. He has also refused to participate in television debates with his challengers.
On Friday, Izvestia's front page and the two centerfold pages were blanketed with the text of his speech, though this ran with a note that it was a political advertisement paid for by Putin's campaign.
Calling Thursday's live broadcast a "monstrous infringement of the electoral law," Communist Party candidate Nikolai Kharitonov announced his attention to file an appeal with the Central Elections Commission.
Irina Khakamada's staff said they would ask Rossia to devote an equivalent amount of time to covering her meeting with campaign representatives next week.
Officials at VGTRK, Rossia's parent company, said the airtime was not paid for by Putin's campaign fund because the speech did not amount to campaigning.
As a state channel, Rossia "cannot not cover the activities of the president," VGTRK press secretary Viktoria Arutyunova told Kommersant.
Article 48 of the law on voters' rights defines campaigning, in part, "as any action capable of creating a positive or negative attitude among voters toward the candidate" and "the description of possible consequences of a candidate's election or non-election." The law goes on to say that such instances must be financed from campaign funds.
At Putin's campaign headquarters, a spokeswoman who would only give her first name, Zhanna, directed any questions about the propriety of the lengthy broadcast to the television station. "From our side, everything was in accordance with the law and paid for from campaign funds," she said.
That money went toward bringing in some 600 journalists from all corners of the country to cover the speech and housing them in Rossia Hotel.
Organization was kept under tight wraps, as Kommersant reporter Andrei Kolesnikov described in a story Friday, and it is not clear everyone knew exactly why they were there.
Articles 50 and 51 of the law on voters' rights say "state and municipal broadcasters - must provide equal conditions for presenting the campaigns of registered candidates."
TITLE: Rybkin: I Am 'Special Operation' Victim
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Presidential candidate Ivan Rybkin said Friday that he had been drugged and abducted during his five-day disappearance last week, and said he was the victim of a "special operation" to discredit him.
Speaking to reporters in London, Rybkin said he had been lured to Kiev by a false offer to hold peace talks with Chechen rebel president Aslan Maskhadov, but instead had been drugged and held against his will by armed men, who showed him a compromising videotape apparently taken during his abduction.
He refused to say who was behind what he called a "special operation," or what the videotape contained, except to say that it was made by "horrible perverts."
Rybkin said he would continue his election campaign, which has been sharply critical of President Vladimir Putin and has advocated an end to hostilities in Chechnya, from abroad, and would not return to Russia until after the March 14 election.
Rybkin said that he had not given the real reasons for his absence when interviewed in Moscow out of fears for his safety.
Rybkin, a former Security Council chief and State Duma speaker who leads one wing of the Liberal Russia party, said that he went to Kiev on Feb. 5, after receiving the offer of peace talks with Maskhadov. In Kiev, Rybkin said he was taken to an apartment, where his hosts gave him tea and sandwiches.
It was then, he said, that he started to feel drowsy. Four days later he woke up in a different apartment, "smashed and very tired" and guarded by two armed men.
One of the men told Rybkin that it was a "special operation" and showed Rybkin what he called a "disgusting" videotape of him that they said would compromise him.
They then told him to call Moscow and say he was taking a vacation and was OK. A third man came in later and took Rybkin to the airport, from where he flew to Moscow, the statement said.
In a video linkup with Moscow later Friday, Ksenia Ponomaryova, Rybkin's campaign manager, said that doctors in London had found signs that he might have been gassed through a mask while unconscious.
The offer for negotiations with Maskhadov came from Bekhan Arsaliyev, a human rights activist Rybkin knew from his time in the late 1990s on a Chechnya missing persons commission, he said.
Arriving in Moscow late last Tuesday, Rybkin's explanations for his absence, including the rambling hour-long interview on Ekho Mosvky the next day, appeared vague and incoherent.
Amid reports that he might quit the election race, Rybkin flew to London on Thursday to consult with Boris Berezovsky, who funds his campaign.
TITLE: Rodina Division Dismisses Contender Glazyev
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - A split in the nationalist Rodina bloc opened wide Sunday when its members voted to remove a co-chairman who is challenging President Vladimir Putin in next month's election.
Members of the Party of Russian Regions voted to remove Sergei Glazyev as a co-chairman of the party and to support Putin in the March 14 election, Interfax reported.
Russian Regions is the most important of the parties making up Rodina, a bloc founded three months before last December's State Duma elections. Rodina finished third.
Rodina's other top leader, nationalist Dmitry Rogozin, is a Kremlin ally who was angered by Glazyev's decision to run against Putin. Rodina nominated a less popular candidate, former Central Bank chairman Viktor Gerashchenko, who has since been removed from the race.
A strong showing for Glazyev would cast doubt on the breadth of support for the president.
Glazyev voted for his own dismissal as co-chairman, calling the situation a "farce," Interfax reported. He said colleagues followed orders to neutralize him as an "objectionable" candidate. Members of Russian Regions, now renamed Rodina, led by Rogozin voted unanimously to back Putin.
AP, SPT
TITLE: $8.5M Hotel Renovation Pays Off
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Winter used to be a dead season in St. Petersburg, but not this year. Only one room out of the Angleterre's 193 was available for view Thursday, when the hotel officially reopened after refurbishment. Occupancy was at nearly 100 percent.
Rocco Forte Hotels International, which manages both the Astoria and the Angleterre, invested around $8.5 million in the hotel's renovation. The Angleterre is St. Petersburg's only four-star hotel managed by an international hotel chain.
The Forte Group's executive chairman and principal shareholder is Sir Rocco Forte, who founded this luxury hotel group in 1996.
The group includes the Hotel de Russie in Rome, the Balmoral Hotel in Edinburgh, the Astoria and Angleterre in St. Petersburg, St. David's Hotel & Spa in Cardiff Bay, the Hotel Amigo in Brussels, the Hotel Savoy in Florence and the Lowry Hotel in Manchester. The group is headquartered in London, where Forte, descendant of an Italian emigrant to England, resides with his family.
Forte was formerly chairman and chief executive of Forte Plc, a company founded by his father, Lord Charles Forte, in 1934. During that time he was responsible for over 800 hotels, 1,000 restaurants and almost 100,000 employees in 50 countries. In 1996, the Forte business was taken over by Granada, and since then it has broken up.
The Forte business came to St. Petersburg in 1997, when the Forte Group bought controlling stakes in both the Astoria and the Angleterre. The Astoria was fully refurbished in 2002, then the company tackled the Angleterre.
The new interiors of the Angleterre have been designed by Olga Polizzi, one of Forte's five sisters, who often works with him and looks after the design side of the business. Sometimes she does it herself or she hires a designer whom she oversees and directs.
Both the Astoria and the Angleterre are lucky to have arguably the best views in town. Polizzi created a light and tactful classical design in pastel colors to emphasize the panorama of St. Isaac's Cathedral.
"She replaced heavy curtains and massive dark furniture with light linen curtains and bedspreads and comfortable and practical fittings," said the Angleterre's spokeswoman Viktoria Gorbunova. "The delicate, elegant design serves as a frame for the marvelous view."
Forte, who presided over the reopening, drew guests' attention to the fact that the curtains, bedspreads and furniture in the Angleterre are Russian-made. He recalled being frustrated over having to import absolutely everything back when he started his business.
Now, Sir Rocco's business is getting easier in many ways, from noticeable tax reductions on the local level to the promotion president Vladimir Putin has given St. Petersburg on the international level.
After refurbishment, starting this year the Angleterre increased room prices by about 20 percent. Not only did this not push sales down, the hotel is full.
"We have nearly 100 percent occupancy now which is unusual for this time of year," Gorbunova said.
"Visiting St. Petersburg has become so fashionable that many people who couldn't come to the jubilee festivities last year are coming now," Forte said.
For many St. Petersburgers the name Angleterre is inseparable from the name of Silver Age poet Sergei Yesenin, whose life was tragically cut short in the hotel on the Dec. 28, 1925.
The Angleterre's general manager Michael Walsh said guests - even those from overseas - are aware of the connection. "There are people who say they prefer [the four-star] Angleterre over [the five-star] Astoria specifically because of the Yesenin connection," Walsh said. "Some of them even request to stay in the poet's former room but of course we have to disappoint them and say the hotel has been rebuilt a while ago!"
TITLE: Official Attacks Cops' Beat
AUTHOR: By Simon Saradzhyan
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Viktor Ivanov, deputy head of the presidential administration and one of the leaders of the siloviki group, came down hard on the Interior Ministry on Friday, criticizing the police for failing to crack down on economic crime and accusing them of whitewashing statistics.
Police officers' reluctance to register all crimes "does not allow the government to adequately react to the existing criminal threat," Ivanov, a retired Federal Security Service general, told a meeting of the Interior Ministry's top brass.
For instance, the Interior Ministry registers a total of 3 million crimes per year, compared to French police, who report 10 million thefts alone each year, Ivanov said.
The ministry's rosy statistics look doubtful when compared to those of Western police forces. Detectives either cover up or avoid registering crimes that could be difficult to solve, such as petty thefts and economic crimes.
Federal authorities' repeated efforts to impel police units to register all crimes have fallen flat because of a system that links career advancement and salaries to reported closure rates. In a clear sign that the Kremlin has given up on these efforts, Ivanov announced that the State Statistics Committee will be made co-responsible for keeping tabs on crimes.
The upbraiding by Ivanov also fits into President Vladimir Putin's strategy of using the Federal Security Service, or FSB, to strengthen control over the Interior Ministry, or MVD.
Konstantin Romodanovsky, an FSB general, was assigned to the ministry in 2001 and charged with weeding out corrupt police officers. It was Romodanovsky, who heads the ministry's internal security department, who announced the arrests last June of "werewolves in epaulets," a group of officers accused of running an extortion ring.
The acting interior minister, Rashid Nurgaliyev, also comes from the FSB, where he was a deputy director until June 2002. He then moved to the Interior Ministry as first deputy director.
Ivanov, who rarely ventures into the domain of public politics, has started to be called on to speak to those in the law enforcement agencies and judicial system on what they should focus on in their work. Last month, he addressed a conference of regional judges.
According to the Kremlin web site, Ivanov is responsible for personnel issues in the presidential administration and for ensuring cooperation between the presidential administration and state agencies in personnel policy. He is considered one of the leaders of the siloviki, a group of hawks in the Kremlin that come from the secret services.
He told the Interior Ministry generals that their agency's efforts to root out corruption and economic crime "are formidable, but not sufficient."
Last year, police exposed 50 percent fewer cases of large-scale bribery than in 2002. "The results do not reflect the scale [of corruption] and clearly fall short of MVD's capabilities," Ivanov said.
He scolded the police for failing to detect and disrupt money-laundering operations, citing Central Bank estimates that $11 billion was laundered in Russia last year. Only 11 cases of suspected money laundering were sent to court in 2003, of which nine fell apart in court, indicating that police detectives are not doing their jobs, he said.
Organized crime is responsible for laundering most of the money, which includes proceeds from drug and human trafficking that sometimes go to finance terrorist organizations, according to Ivanov.
He said the Interior Ministry and other agencies have failed to destroy the economic base of terrorism and block the flow of money that feeds terrorism.
Ivanov also called on the Interior Ministry and other law enforcement agencies to scramble to prevent false bankruptcies. The federal bankruptcy agency detects more than 500 suspected scams annually, but only a few are prosecuted, he said.
TITLE: Law Opens Window on Company Registration
AUTHOR: By Edward Zadubrovsky
TEXT: Current rules governing registration of legal entities in Russia were first introduced in the federal law On State Registration of Legal Entities that came into force on July 1, 2002. The law was supposed to be a turning point in the reform of the procedure for setting up a business in Russia. At that time high-ranking officials in the federal government and the Tax Ministry, the body in charge of registering legal entities, first introduced the concept of the "single window." The single window, it was explained, is the process where documents for registering a business are submitted only to the tax inspectorate, without the necessity of visiting other authorities that require notification or registration. In essence, it is one-stop shopping.
Despite good intentions, the concept did not work in practice.
But starting Jan. 1, 2004, new simplified rules of state registration of legal entities and individual entrepreneurs came into force. These rules were adopted in the federal law On Amendments to Legislative Acts in Regard to Improvement of Procedures Concerning State Registration of Legal Entities and Individual Entrepreneurs dated Dec. 23, 2003 (No. 185-FZ).
Pursuant to the new edition of article 83 of the Tax Code, a legal entity is automatically registered with the tax authorities after the legal entity obtains state registration. If a company has any real estate property or vehicles, it must also obtain tax registration, but at the location where these assets are registered. This tax registration is to be carried out exclusively on the basis of information provided by agencies responsible for real estate or vehicle registration.
In St. Petersburg this means the City Bureau on Registration of Real Estate Rights (GBR) and the local traffic safety authorities of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (GIBDD), respectively. The company itself does not have to provide any information to the tax authorities in this regard. The same rule applies to tax deregistration. This is a novelty in the legislation.
If a Russian company is liquidated or reorganized, its deregistration is conducted on the basis of information contained in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities. This effectively means that the company itself does not need to spend any time or administrative effort on separate deregistration, as in the past. However, it remains to be seen how this will be applied in practice. For example, what if the tax authorities fail to deregister a former taxpayer? The legislation does not contain any specific regulation, which leads the taxpayer to challenge the tax authorities in court. There have already been successful precedents that forced the authorities to comply with the law.
In the past, separate registration with various state non-budgetary funds was mandatory to establish a legal entity in Russia. A new edition of the federal law On State Registration of Legal Entities and Individual Entrepreneurs in article 11 states that the tax inspectorate must provide information to the state non-budgetary funds no later than five days from the company's state registration. Accordingly, registration with state non-budgetary funds must be accomplished within this five-day period.
The new simplified procedure applies only to registration of Russian companies and does not cover branch and representative offices of foreign legal entities operating in the country. The new rules do not apply to registration of branch and representative offices of Russian companies either, which is still conducted in the same manner as in the past.
The initial reform concerning establishment of legal entities in Russia was intended to simplify the set-up procedure and make it less administrative and bureaucratic. This was originally nothing more than a declaration of intent, but now there is a clear legal framework. It is becoming more convenient and easier to do business in Russia, or at least to register a business.
Edward Zadubrovsky is an associate at EY Law, St. Petersburg.
TITLE: Minister: Bribes in Oil Tax
AUTHOR: By Alex Fak
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Natural Resources Ministry on Friday waded into the growing debate on ways to increase taxes on oil producers, saying plans to introduce a differential tax will only encourage corruption.
"Officials would be the ones determining the level of yield of this or that field," Deputy Natural Resources Minister Kirill Yankov told reporters in Novosibirsk. "This is dangerous."
President Vladimir Putin in December said oil companies were raking in "super-profits" due to unusually high prices and called on the government to increase revenues from the oil sector by differentiating taxes based on such factors as the quality and depletion rates of fields.
The Finance, Energy, and Economic Development and Trade ministries have all submitted proposals to raise the tax take from the sector by between $3 billion and $6 billion per year, but the Natural Resources Ministry had been largely silent on the debate.
The problem with differentiation, Yankov said, is that different geologists may study a given field and legitimately disagree on its quality and profitability, leaving an untrained bureaucrat to determine how to classify it for tax purposes.
"One geologist could say one thing, another a different thing, and in the end the decision would be made by an official," Yankov said, Interfax reported.
Many oil economists have been airing similar concerns for months.
"Maybe [Yankov] is just putting it out as a trial balloon - that often tends to be the case. But it's a good sign if a deputy minister is saying this," said Paul Collison, oil and gas analyst at Brunswick UBS.
"One of the good things about Russia's oil sector in the last couple of years is that the tax regime has been simplified. Any step away from that is bad," Collison said.
Also criticizing the proposed tax changes Friday was Sergei Sobyanin, the governor of the oil-rich Tyumen region.
"Considering that the first returns from investments in the oil sector come after five or even seven years, no one will invest anything here if we start to change the rules of the game chaotically," Sobyanin told Interfax. "The state would only lose from this."
Sobyanin said there is no concept of "natural rents" in the Tax Code, and that he hoped the issue of raising taxes on the oil sector will be decided on economic merit alone.
"There must be no politics involved here," Sobyanin said.
Presidential candidate Sergei Glazyev, who led the nationalist Rodina bloc to a strong showing in December's State Duma elections, has urged the government to raise its take from the oil sector by $8.4 billion.
The government is scheduled to review proposals for raising taxes on the industry next week.
TITLE: 'Conventional Unit' Tied to Euro, Ruble
AUTHOR: By Greg Walters
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW - When the expensive Moscow private school where Patricia Gillespie sends her son asked to be paid in rubles instead of dollars, Gillespie didn't think much of it. Until she heard the catch.
"Before, I had always paid in dollars," she said. "But then they told me, 'our prices aren't really set in dollars, they're set in 'conditional units'.'"
And though the dollar has fallen over the past year to a little above 28 rubles, the school's conditional units were still set at 30 rubles.
"So the school's tuition had suddenly gone up by about $30," she said. "I can understand their position. But I still get paid in dollars. So, obviously, I'm losing money."
The conditional unit, or, as it is colloquially known by its Cyrillic abbreviation, U.E., for Uslovniye Yedinitsy, is a non-currency peculiar to Russia that has traditionally been a euphemism for the dollar.
But since the greenback has slumped by about 10 percent against the ruble over the last year, companies that tie prices to the dollar have been faced with a choice: either set an arbitrary U.E.-ruble exchange rate, set prices in rubles, or simply take losses because of the falling U.S. currency.
Not surprisingly, few have chosen to leave the U.E. tied to the dollar.
"The U.E. is basically now the euro," said Alpha Bank's Natalya Orlova. "Shops started making the change in the summer of 2003. In the majority cases, the U.E. rate is now 33 to 36 rubles."
Some of those businesses that made the change seem to have done so with little public fanfare - or warning.
The country's biggest airline, Aeroflot, recently announced its U.E. will henceforth be equal to 30 rubles, no matter how the exchange rate between the ruble and the dollar fluctuates.
"It was a surprise," said Yelena, a travel agent at the Moscow-based Andrew's Travel House. "We just came in one morning and saw the new exchange rate on the computer screen. They hardly gave us a single day's warning."
Her clients' reaction, Yelena said, has been mostly resigned.
"They're not very happy about it," she said. "Of course it's not a very comfortable or pleasant. But it's not fatal."
An Aeroflot spokeswoman denied that the company had downplayed the move, and defended the change as necessary.
"This is a crisis situation," said Irina Dmitrievna, head of Aeroflot's press service. "Aeroflot has been making major losses. And we have the legal right to do what we've done."
The airline sent out letters to travel agencies about the change on Jan. 22, Dmitrievna said.
She also denied a claim made in Vedemosti that, by fixing the exchange rate, the company could increase its revenues in 2004 by as much as a billion rubles, saying she had no precise figures.
Other companies, though, have chosen to scrap the U.E. altogether.
Stockmann's, the Finland-based department store, swapped the U.E. pegged to the dollar for rubles in late January.
"We want to use rubles because we are in Russia, and people find it easier," said Petri Antilla, Stockmann's area director for Russia. "And the depreciating dollar - well, that was the straw that broke the camel's back."
The move away from the U.E. was also prompted by a desire for transparency in its pricing, Antilla said.
"Sometimes we heard complaints about that," Antilla said. "And after all, we are in Russia. It would be very strange if there was a company in Finland or the U.K. that wasn't trading in the national currency."
Stockmann's made a similar move shortly before the 1998 crash, but had to switch back to dollars because of the ruble's volatility.
"If a crisis indeed comes again, we'll have to close the door and reprice things again," Antilla said. "But we don't see another crisis coming now."
Analysts said the move away from dollars is likely the start of a permanent change - assuming, of course, relative financial stability in the next few years.
TITLE: Industrial Growth Hits 3-Year High, State Statistics Committee Says
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW - Industrial production rose 9.2 percent in January, the fastest in three years, as machine building and housing material output soared, the State Statistics Committee said in an e-mailed statement.
The gain, adjusted for working days, was the fastest monthly increase since 2000, the Moscow-based committee said in an e-mailed statement.
Industrial production grew 7 percent last year, the fifth successive of expansion, as high oil prices boosted export and demand for drilling equipment while soaring wages fueled consumer demand for real estate and mobile phones.
Machine building soared 28.8 percent in January from the previous month, while building material production rose 16.5 percent and fuel output rose 8.2 percent, the State Statistics Committee said.
TITLE: Manager Gives City Royal Treatment
AUTHOR: By Simone Kozuharov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Joerg Schiffmann has a pretty lofty goal.
After his hotel brought in $12 million in revenue last year, the Radisson SAS Royal's general manager says he expects a similar number for 2004, despite the fact that the city's tercentenary celebrations are over.
"We want to exceed it [12 million]," Schiffmann said in an interview at the hotel.
However, to exceed last year's revenue, Schiffmann has some obstacles to overcome.
"Everybody wants to come during the White Nights," Schiffmann said. "We are looking for business as well in shoulder and low seasons because St. Petersburg is also beautiful in low seasons."
To attract tourists to St. Petersburg in winter, the local five-star hotels formed a "joint promotion" called "White Days," referring to the blanket of snow that covers St. Petersburg during the low season.
"This White Days program offers really reasonable prices, packages, and this was sold to agencies who are in our feeder market ... in Germany, the U.K., France, Italy," Schiffmann said.
He said the promotion was "Quite successful," but that he is looking for improvement in the 2004/2005 season.
Another hurdle the city's tourism industry has faced besides unpredictable winter weather is the visa required to enter the country.
Tourists from what Schiffmann described as the feeder market need visas to enter the country, presenting an extra expense and hassle to add to the usually hectic pre-vacation schedule.
However, Schiffmann doesn't advocate abolishing the visa system, but proposes revamping instead.
"It makes it more difficult for foreigners to get into the country," he said. "It doesn't mean that we don't need a visa or that Russia should do away with it, it means that to get a visa should be easier, like in Egypt.
"You arrive in Egypt and you ... just pay for it when you come to the airport, 10 to 15 or 20 euros or dollars for your entire stay, you pay for your visa. That's it."
Schiffmann was careful not to ruffle any feathers while he diplomatically evaluated the system. "I wouldn't say [it's] a problem, but [it's] an issue."
Another issue according to Schiffmann is the failure to adequately market the city abroad as a major tourist destination.
Citing the city's meager participation in a major international tourist fair in Berlin, Schiffmann said the city needs to make a more valiant effort to capture more of the market.
"Last year, St. Petersburg had really a teeny, tiny booth [at the tourism fair]," Schiffmann said. "I was really shocked."
However, he praised President Vladimir Putin's showcasing of the city during last year's celebration and said Putin was instrumental in promoting St. Petersburg abroad.
While the city has a reputation as a beautiful place, it also has a reputation, fair or unfair, as the crime capital of Russia.
"I was waiting for this question," Schiffmann said with a laugh. "Yes, we have some incidents from gypsies in the summer period and some thefts from purses in the city, but I wouldn't say there are any more compared to the other main cities in the world."
However, he also said that gypsies and pickpockets were not the only culprits. Schiffmann asserted that the police are guilty of bribing tourists and that this is a bigger problem than petty street theft.
"They [the police] ask for the passport and then if they don't have the passport, they ask for payment," Schiffmann said. "We tried to apply for attention to the governor, to the city police and of course to the government. And all five star hotels did, not only ours."
That was two months ago and there has been no response yet. In fact, Schiffmann said he would like to talk to the governor about tourism in general.
"I would like to take this opportunity to ask her to meet us [the managers of the five-star hotels]," he said. "She hasn't yet, but of course she met with people who are responsible for the tourism in St. Petersburg, which I really appreciate."
Appreciation is one thing Sandra Dimitrovich, a spokeswoman for Rezidor SAS, Radisson's parent company, has for Schiffmann.
After having worked with him closely for more than half a year, she said he is always "very precise" and "very professional."
"It makes my life much easier," she said.
Dimitrovich recounted Schiffmann's dedication to a recent joint venture between the Radisson and the State Russian Museum called "St. Petersburg Through the Eyes of Children," in which children depicted the city in their art.
"I saw this very special something in his eyes," she said. "He was very, very interested in this project and took it very personal."
Originally from Germany, Schiffmann, who arrived in St. Petersburg last September, has been in the hospitality industry for more than 20 years and spent 10 of those years with SAS.
"This was my very first trip to Russia," he said. "My first impression is, and is still, very, very positive because I personally like art and culture."
"And this city is, if you are interested in this, the right place to live."
Schiffmann said he was most especially pleased to arrive in St. Petersburg during the city's 300th anniversary year.
"It was to me a very emotional thing that this city is so big and is so full of culture and full of history and it's so young," Schiffmann said. "That's something very special to me."
In the hospitality industry, executives are usually shuffled around every three years, Schiffmann said, but he isn't against making St. Petersburg his long-term home.
"Long term is for me three years," he said. "But it could also be most probably longer because it depends on the development of the company and if the company has the opportunity to develop not only in St. Petersburg... but over the borders of St. Petersburg, which means maybe there will be opportunities for me to stay in Russia. I don't see a reason why I should go somewhere else."
TITLE: Oil Industry Tax Reform Will Be Hard Work
AUTHOR: By Vitaly Yermakov
TEXT: President Vladimir Putin, in an address to the Russian Chamber of Commerce at the end of December, said two things. First, the oil industry has been making "super-profits" due to high oil prices, and whereas the norm around the world, he claims, is an 80-20 split of super-profits in favor of the state, in Russia the split is about 50-50. Second, the current system of oil taxation needs to be improved through "differentiation" of oil taxes according to the field quality, well yield, water cut, etc.
It pays to listen closely to what the president says, as his statements - irrespective of the contentious nature of his estimates of the state's tax take - become political drivers in their own right and start to shape policy.
The policy response, however, may not match the complexity of the goal that the president has set.
Ministries have prepared draft proposals, which are to be reviewed by the government during a Cabinet meeting on Feb. 26; if implemented, the additional tax take would be approximately $3.5 billion (as proposed by the Economic Development and Trade and the Finance ministries) or as much as $6 billion (as proposed by the Energy Ministry).
These proposals concentrate on increasing marginal extraction tax rates and export duties on crude oil.
Furthermore, the government has closed some loopholes in the tax legislation that in the past allowed oil companies to minimize their effective profit tax rate by using affiliates (usually traders) registered in foreign and local tax havens.
The effective rate paid in 2002 by LUKoil, Surgutneftegaz and Rosneft was very close to the statutory 24 percent; however, it was only 9 percent for Sibneft, 11 percent for Yukos and 12 percent for TNK. This year, the authorities have been cracking down on profit tax optimization, and most Russian oil companies have publicly pledged to increase their profit tax payments to the statutory level.
These measures, taken together, will significantly increase the state's tax take from the oil industry, thus responding to the president's first concern.
However, the easy part ends here. Putin's second objective of differentiating the tax take is not in the government's plans - at least not immediately.
Varying companies' tax burden on the basis of the quality of deposits requires not only having technical data for more than 3,000 Russian oil and gas fields, but also competent and non-corrupt administration. Most experts agree that, at least in the short term, the government will not be able to implement a complex system of oil tax differentiation.
However, it is crucial to start the process. Russian policymakers have embraced a myopic approach to taxing oil sector profits, due to existing high oil prices, low lifting costs and extremely low effective capital investment, and have put in place a system that is sensitive to international oil price fluctuations, but not directly to companies' profitability.
It is worth noting that over the past four years, movements of the major parameters for calculating the state's tax take (such as world oil prices, operating and capital costs, etc.) have been far from typical of long-term trends:
. In the period 1999-2003, oil prices were very high, with this trend continuing into 2004, but there is no certainty that high oil prices will persist beyond that.
. Transportation costs for Russian oil are substantial, despite the fact that Transneft's total tariff for transportation from western Siberia to Novorossiisk is on average a modest $3 per barrel. The limited export capacity of the Transneft pipeline system forces oil companies to use costly railroad exports, and here transportation costs to certain destinations can be as high as $11 per barrel.
. Lifting costs decreased dramatically following ruble devaluation in 1998. Despite ongoing real ruble appreciation, the most efficient companies in the last three years, such as Yukos and Sibneft, have managed to keep lifting costs below $2 per barrel (a best practice that other Russian majors are trying to follow). There is huge potential in correcting the Soviet legacy of reservoir mismanagement, but these opportunities are finite, and lifting costs will eventually move into the area of $3-$4 per barrel.
. The western Siberian "oil miracle" of the last few years has revealed huge opportunities for reworking existing oil fields in Russia's oil heartland, effectively postponing the move to new oil provinces such as Timan-Pechora and eastern Siberia and, therefore, downgrading immediate requirements for new capital investment. In 2002, combined operating and capital expenditures amounted to $3.53 per barrel for Yukos, $4.22 per barrel for TNK, $4.51 per barrel for Sibneft, and $5.78 per barrel for LUKoil. In the next few years, however, we may see a rapid increase in these expenditures with the second stage of the "miracle" becoming more costly-not to mention the high capital costs of developing the oil "periphery."
In the long term, it is likely that the average crude oil price over the next 20 years will be lower than current highs; lifting costs in Russia will increase due to higher electricity costs and rising payroll; and capital costs associated with the move to new oil provinces will grow rapidly as well. Inevitably, as this happens, the inadequacies of the current tax system will move to the center of the debate on the future of the oil industry.
It is certainly true that the tax take (traditionally defined as the ratio of a company's total tax bill to its operating profit) in other oil-producing countries is higher than in Russia - where it was approximately 60 percent in 2003.
In Indonesia, it is at least 80 percent; in Britain, it is generally 70 percent on fields in the North Sea; in Norway, it is about 80 percent. But the notion of "tax take" is only meaningful over the long term (30-40 years for oil and gas projects).
International experience suggests that most oil-producing countries use relatively low royalties, and high and progressive profit taxes - exactly the opposite of the approach employed by the Russian government.
Moreover, most oil-producing countries have tax stability clauses in their legislation; in Russia, by contrast, the constantly changing tax regime creates an atmosphere of instability that is detrimental to long-term, big-ticket projects.
The Russian government continues to rely on taxes based on gross revenues: In 2003, extraction taxes and export duties constituted approximately 75 percent of oil companies' total tax bill, whereas profit tax accounted for only 12 percent. This makes it easy to tax oil producers today, but does not create incentives for companies to replenish their capital stock for tomorrow. It is essentially a "second-best" policy.
In the longer term, in order to develop a new generation of oil fields, the state will eventually have to adopt a "first-best" approach, making taxes more profit-based and thus giving producers an incentive to embark on big-ticket projects in new territories.
A prerequisite for effective profit-based taxation is the ability to ring-fence oil and gas fields for tax purposes.
This will require the government to concentrate on tax administration and invest in collecting the necessary data on historical production, costs and profitability of individual fields, before it attempts to undertake real oil industry tax reform.
Vitaly Yermakov, an analyst with Cambridge Energy Research Associates, contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times.
TITLE: Moscow Just Too Busy To Fight Terrorism
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: Two weeks ago, Moscow was hit by the worst terrorist act since the Nord Ost hostage-taking in October 2002 - the official body count is 39.
Over the weekend, Dmitry Rogozin, co-leader of Rodina, called for the declaration of a state of emergency. Mikhail Leontyev, presenter of Odnako on Channel One, argued that the forces behind the terrorist act are those whose toes the state has been stepping on most actively of late, and "first and foremost the oligarchs." However, he forgot to mention that they finance such acts using money that should have been paid to the state in taxes.
Terrorist acts will continue to happen in this country for two reasons. Firstly, because it is in the nature of the system in place in Chechnya.
Chechen field commanders produce terrorist acts, just as the Ostankinsky meat plant produces sausages. It's their business, just as it is a business in Palestine. In both Chechnya and Palestine there are people with power, influence and money who would not have them if there were no terrorist acts.
It is not easy to fight terrorism even in a normal country, just as it is not easy to fight gangrene even in a clean operating theater.
If, however, the operating theater is located in a pigsty, the nurses have pinched all the lightbulbs and the surgeon is not thinking about how to do the best job for the patient, but about how he can cut off the hand bearing a gold watch - then the chances of gangrene increase exponentially. And that is the second reason for such terrorist acts.
Four years ago, President Vladimir Putin came to power promising to "wipe out the terrorists in the shitter." The terrorists, instead of lurking in the shitter, ended up in the metro, and the war continues in Chechnya. But the Kremlin decided to say that there was peace in Chechnya and had Akhmad Kadyrov elected as president last year.
Kadyrov is capable of many things. He can ensure universal support for a party that promised to wipe out terrorists in the shitter (at certain polling stations, they say there was 109 percent support initially) and propose that Putin be made president for life. He can also transform his own security service into the main armed force in the republic.
But he cannot prevent terrorist acts from taking place. Just because you can manipulate the vote does not mean that you can control Chechnya. Nobody controls the whole of Chechnya. Every automatic weapon controls the republic - but only an area equal to the range of the weapon.
Thus, when the issue arose as to what should be the main plank of Putin's re-election campaign, the decision was taken to make it the battle against the oligarchs, not the terrorists. And it was Mikhail Khodorkovsky, not Shamil Basayev, who ended up in jail.
The security and law enforcement system of the country has contracted HIV. Instead of destroying the alien bodies of bandits and field commanders, it engages in protection rackets and extortion. The louder the claims that the war is over in Chechnya, the more active chekists will become in redistributing property rather than chasing terrorists; and the more horrific terrorist acts will become.
And then someone has to take the blame, but who? Mikhail Leontyev had an excellent suggestion. As we all know, if chickens die on a collective farm, then it is not the fault of the collective farm system, but of wreckers. If the metro is blown up then it is not the fault of the siloviki, but their victims. After all, the war is over in Chechnya, Kadyrov is in charge and Putin enjoys 100 percent support in the republic.
So, Russia is not living in peace with Chechnya. Russia is not conducting any "counter-terrorist operations" there, is not "restoring the constitutional order" etc.
Russia is at war with Chechnya, just as Israel is at war with the Arabs.
And Russia will lose this war because the top brass are too busy doing other stuff. They are trading kerosene and weapons, launching criminal cases against Yukos and Vimpelcom, riding around in fancy cars and holidaying at expensive resorts.
The foot soldiers of this war, however, travel on the metro.
Yulia Latynina is a columnist for Novaya Gazeta.
TITLE: Market Rises to New Level
AUTHOR: By Angelina Davydova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The Russian stock market continues to grow with the RTS index hitting a new record. Meanwhile, the Prosecutor's Office dismissed charges against Vimpelcom, which once again drove the stock higher.
The market pushed past prior highs and set the RTS index up to hit a new record, after closing at an all-time high in Friday the 13th trading.
Volume was light, but when the closing bell rang the RTS was up nearly 1 percent at 644.71, eclipsing the previous record of 643.30 hit on Oct. 20, the day before prosecutors triggered a massive sell-off by announcing plans to haul Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky in for questioning.
Troika Dialog analysts say the market was strong throughout the whole of last week and there was little profit-taking on Friday.
The stock of the week was Gazprom, up by 12.6 percent on historically high turnover.
"Vimpelcom could well set the pace during overnight trading in New York. The news wires are reporting that the prosecutor in Moscow's Northern District has dismissed criminal charges against VimpelCom related to license use. There is as yet no official confirmation of this, but the stock is very likely to jump later on, once there is," according to an Aton research note.
The Aton report also said, that "we believe the news, if confirmed officially, would be very positive for Vimpelcom and should drive the stock higher in the near term."
Meanwhile, Troika experts expect UES "to drag its feet and perhaps even slip somewhat after news this morning that the government has adopted the Gref plan for the regional 'genco' (wholesale generating companies) auctions."
This allows for the use of cash, as well as stock, something that could well cool demand for UES. The market is now concerned by the lack of information as to how the government plans to value UES shares in cash terms. News that Norilsk Nickel is issuing convertible bonds worth up to $1 billion for the purpose of raising money ahead of the auctions suggests that the strategic investor will be using cash rather than UES shares.
"There is an enormous amount of enthusiasm going around at the moment," said Roland Nash, chief strategist at investment bank Renaissance Capital.
The world is "awash in liquidity" thanks to low interest rates, and with oil and metals prices high, the ruble strengthening against the dollar and Russia's role as a major supplier of raw materials to a booming China growing, Russian equities have become a "sweet spot for international investors," Nash said.
Nash cautioned, however, that investors appear to be in the middle of a "feeding frenzy" because they are ignoring negative news. "A bull market is often defined as one that does not fall on bad news and rises on good news, and that is what you've got at the moment," he said.
Nash said the "bad news" investors are ignoring includes the uncertainty surrounding the magnitude of a looming tax hike on the oil sector, Yukos' continuing legal troubles, the annulment of ExxonMobil's exploration license in Sakhalin, and "the Communications Ministry feeling empowered to put pressure on Alfa Group through Vimpelcom."
The arrest of Khodorkovsky on Oct. 25 sent the market into a tailspin that bottomed out in mid-November. Since then, however, the RTS has marched steadily upward - despite the continuing legal onslaught against Yukos, the index's largest component.
Describing the present state of affairs on the marker, Aton analysts said that "the necessary combination of continuing strong external liquidity drivers with reduced domestic risk aversion is falling into place."
There was no big news on the foreign currency market, with the ruble maintaining growth both against the U.S. dollar and the euro.
On Monday the U.S. dollar rate against the ruble was 28.49, which means the ruble grew by 0.08 since the previous day.
The rate of the euro against the ruble on Monday was 36.30, bringing the ruble up by 0.70 percent since the previous day.
TITLE: Racist Murder, Ostriches and McCartney
TEXT: In response to "Teen Killers Of Tajik Girl Still At Large," an article by Irina Titova on Feb. 13.
Editor,
I am deeply offended and saddened to see this act of brutality to a defenseless little girl. This act of violence stems from fear based out of ignorance. It does not matter the origin of our birth as we all deserve the basic and sacred dignity of the sanctity of life. A just society places a high value upon life. It does not matter how rich or poor that society may be as basic human kindness is innate within our souls. It is the understanding of the deviance of character that must be understood in order to prevent these terrible atrocities from happening again. Our lives are ruled by only two feelings fear and love. Unfortunately, fear has ended the life of this innocent little child.
My heart goes out to the family of this little girl and they are in my prayers.
Kevin Bishop
Calgary, Alberta
Canada
Editor,
When a leading opposition candidate for the Russian presidency simply "disappears" it is frighteningly easy to believe the Kremlin may have had a hand in it. The same can be said when bombs explode in apartment buildings or on the metro. It would almost be better to know for certain that the Kremlin was guilty, and still be unable to accept it, rather than to feel with such certainty that the Kremlin is capable of such acts whether they are ever proved or not.
And in the case of poor little Khursheda Sultanov, perhaps the greatest tragedy in a nation of tragedies, one wishes with all one's heart that some "other explanation" might magically appear, that the recent rise of nationalist parties, at Kremlin instigation, and the disappearance of Yabloko, are totally unrelated developments. But one cannot manage it. Even in my own wretchedly racist country, a pack of young beasts has yet to set upon a tiny defenseless little girl with knives. I fear that soon we must bid the Russia we know, or at least dared to dream of, a mournful farewell.
Melvin Anders
Houston, Texas
Big Birds
In response to "Ostriches Find Favor In Oblast," an article by Simone Kozuharov on Feb. 10.
Editor,
I don't want to sound mean or evil, but ostriches are also delicious. High in protein, leaner meat, with a taste more like venison than chicken. It can be cooked many ways, all wonderful. My wife and I took a vacation in Texas awhile ago and decided to eat like Texans. At a nice restaurant in Houston we were surprised to see Texas ostrich served several ways. My wife, bolder than I, ordered the pulled-barbecue-ostrich. After allowing me a taste, we found it rated better than steak. It was excellent. But it is still a bit of a delicacy.
More people are raising ostriches because it can be a lucrative adventure. My congratulations to Vladimir Alksnis for bringing the birds to St. Petersburg. He shows true spirit.
Addison Bender
Camden, New Jersey
Precious Eggs
In response to "Oligarch Buys Forbes' Fabergés," an article by Catherine Belton on Feb. 6.
Editor,
It was a great experience for me to tour lovely Russia and see a display of the famous Fabergé Eggs. Reading that the Forbes Fabergé Eggs were bought and will return to Russia is such a great joy because they belong to your country and are testaments to your history.
Fabergé Eggs and Russia are one. They speak of beauty and history. I do love the Russian countryside, St. Petersburg, the pure-wood Church at Kizhi Island, the cathedrals, the elegant Moscow Metro and Bolshoi Theater. Great country, great people.
Felisa Tyler
Boise, Idaho
Making 'Real Men'
"In response to "Cadet Training Prepares Students to Be 'Real Men,'" an article by Irina Titova on Feb. 6.
Editor,
I think this is a very good thing to do in the schools.
My daughter is a member of the Halifax Armorys in Nova Scotia. I found it helped with her education a great deal. She has learned everything from leadership by training other cadets at summer camp to firing the big 105 millimeter howitzers. She has definitely benefited from this program over the years compared to others who fell into the street.
My wife and I are very proud of her we also hope our two sons are smart enough to follow the same route. To the cadets I say you are very intelligent young people not to throw your lives away.
Joe O'Brien
Dart, Nova Scotia,
Canada
Latvian Language
In response to "Ethnic Russians In Baltics Don't Need Inciting," a comment by Vladimir Gryaznevich on Feb. 3.
Editor,
I can not beat the impression that the author does not have full command of the situation in Latvia.
Obviously, any attempt to provoke or incite somebody is doomed in the absence of a real problem, and the problem of minority schools in Latvia is very, very much real, alive and kicking.
I'd like to draw your attention to only one aspect of the issue.
It is officially proclaimed and internationally accepted that in 1940-1991 the Republic of Latvia continued to exist de jure.
Therefore, in 1991 Latvia re-established not only its independence, but also the very pre-Soviet Republic of Latvia - with its citizenry in particular.
About half of all Russian-speakers in Latvia today are citizens of the state. The overwhelming majority of them are so-called "citizens by inheritance."
In the "bureauspeak" of Latvia this means that either their parents or (which is more probable in the case of children) grandparents, were citizens of the pre-World War II independent Republic of Latvia. The founding fathers of the state de facto treated minorities (Russians, Belarussians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Poles, German and Jews) as constituent nations, or co-founders of the republic. Minorities enjoyed almost full autonomy of the school system (fully paid up by the state) and the law explicitly stipulated that every minority student was entitled to be taught a school curriculum fully in his or her native tongue - again, with the state footing the bill.
The current law on education equally affects both citizens and "non-citizens." Today's resident non-citizens were transferred to Latvia by the Soviets and denied automatic citizenship in the early '90s and in some aspects are still treated as unwanted aliens, illegal immigrants who were allowed to stay out of goodwill or under pressure from international structures, depending on one's point of view.
So, what do you call it when a group of grandchildren is summarily denied the rights their grandparents fully enjoyed in the same state they and their grandparents are citizens of?
And how would you react, realizing, that the only distinctive feature shared by all these grandchildren is their ethnic origin?
A.K.
Riga, Latvia
Editor,
If the Latvian people were really so concerned about protecting their mother tongue, perhaps they should consider taming the preponderance of the English language, as opposed to the Russian.
On a recent trip to Riga, I was gobsmacked to find all of the cinemas showing films in the English language, with subtitles in Latvian ... Isn't this formula backwards?
Robert Bridge
Moscow
Ex-Beatle's Plan
In response to "McCartney Plans Gig In Palace Square," an article by Sergey Chernov on Feb. 3.
Editor,
I think that Paul McCartney performing another concert in Russia would be a wonderful thing. It is great that he is sharing his talents with his Russian fans who love him! Music is a great peacemaker and we definitely need more ways of creating peace in this very violent world we live in. A "little" McCartney concert can help promote a lot of peace!
Barbara Wright
Bowie, Maryland
Estonian Redress
In response to "Estonia Seeks Compensation," an article printed on Feb. 3.
I read about Estonia every day. It is my chosen country to know, and next summer I will visit Estonia. Otherwise, I have no vested interest in Estonia.
This is just one idea, and I am sure that there is a lot of justification for these actions. However, time has passed, and time has changed. These actions will only make relations worse. Within Estonia the Russian population will be scorned by Estonians, and the Russians outside of Estonia will look at these actions as just more Estonian hatred toward Russians.
Please do not let this action go forward. Estonia is a beautiful country with wonderful, forgiving, people. Take this opportunity to forgive and work together with the Russian population within Estonia to become Estonian citizens. Don't try to make them run away.
Larry Freeman
Sterrett,
Alabama
Visas,Registration
In response to "Hotels and Theaters Promote City Image," an article by Galina Stolyarova on Jan. 30.
Editor,
I recently spent a month in St. Petersburg and will agree with you that theaters do a good job of promoting St. Petersburg.
But, sadly, the passport and visa service does little to promote travel to Russia.
I encountered an inspector at the passport and visa service who refused to register my arrival as required by Russian Law. Instead, the inspector told me to return some days later to register, which placed my registration outside the required 72 hours.
This refusal and having to return some days later created many problems for me, not to mention the money and time I lost having to cancel and reorganize my travel plans.
I wonder how many other tourists have experienced the same service as I did. I know the inspector wanted "to sort this problem out another way." In other words, she wanted me to pay her a bribe.
Hamish Mark
Auckland, New Zealand
Editor,
Charge a room occupancy tax for each visitor. This tax to be used exclusively to promote St. Petersburg as a tourist destination. The tax would be painless to local residents. The tourists would be paying to promote the city they are visiting. The tourist bureau could monitor the city's collection of the tax.
Don Houston
San Antonio, Texas
Art and Reality
In response to "City Captures Novel's Confused Hero," an article by Galina Stolyarova about the novel "Liebman's Ring" by Pieter Waterdrinker printed on Jan. 30.
Editor,
St. Petersburg is one of the most beautiful cities in the world and rich with culture and class. I wish we had a place like that in the United States.
So please don't let one man upset you because he wrote a book that made St. Petersburg sound bad. Take my advice ... wake up in the morning, open your front door, take a deep breath of fresh air and thank God that you do not live in the States with all the crime and pollution.
Spencer Shipley
Houston, Texas
The author replies:
Dear Mr. Shipley,
I am in love with St. Petersburg myself. I even own my own place there. But the world of art is not quite the real world. Or the other way around.
Pieter Waterdrinker
TITLE: Losing Russia
AUTHOR: By Charles William Maynes
TEXT: It's hard to believe it was just last September when President George W. Bush stood beside President Vladimir Putin at Camp David and announced, "I respect President Putin's vision for Russia." Since then, things have turned decidedly sour.
In recent telephone conversations with his Russian counterpart, Bush has expressed his displeasure over Russian actions in Chechnya and the nation's "failure to pursue democratic reforms." The U.S. ambassador to Moscow complained publicly in December about Russia's "breach of values," saying that recent Russian actions "could limit possibilities of expansion of our cooperation." And when Secretary of State Colin Powell visited Russia last month, he wrote a front-page essay for Izvestia in which he prodded Moscow on its human rights record in Chechnya, for its increasing media controls and for the arrest of Yukos' former chief executive, Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
To understand why Russia and the United States are drifting apart again, it's crucial to understand just how differently Russians and westerners view the 1990s. The West saw the decade as one of liberation and burgeoning democracy for Russia. Western observers felt that Russia was finally rejoining Europe politically and economically.
But for Russians, it was a decade of disintegration and false promises. At the beginning of the 1990s, Russia was an uninspiring, drab and politically repressive place, but it had a strong middle class and functioning institutions. By the end of a decade, it was something close to a failed state. Russians were glad to be able to speak their minds, but they watched helplessly as crime and other social ills took hold and the economy became wildly unstable. Tens of millions of Russians found themselves impoverished, as the government could no longer pay pensions and factories could no longer meet payrolls because of the disruption of internal trade. "Price reforms" led to massive inflation and overnight wiped out family savings accounts.
Even as they witnessed Russian suffering, most western experts showed little concern for the pain inflicted and urged Russia to stay the capitalist course. The West held this position until the very day the financial dam finally burst in August 1998, when the government devalued the ruble and suspended payment on most of its foreign debt.
Many Russians now see that disastrous era as the consequence of pursuing western-style democracy and following western-proffered advice. By contrast, they associate the current era of growing prosperity with Putin's coming to power.
To Russians, Putin's record of successes is impressive. Back wages and pensions are being paid. Growth is vigorous. Consumer goods are again being manufactured at home. Russia has paid off most of its foreign debt. And if high oil prices have been the single most significant factor in reversing Russia's fortunes, so what? Russians still credit Putin with the reversal, pointing to an impressive growth in domestic production and sound taxation policies that have also contributed to both growth and the restoration of health in public finances. Russians are pleased that their country is again a major player in foreign relations and that foreign leaders take Putin seriously in a way they never did his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin.
Yet there is abundant cause for concern about many of Putin's actions. He shows no signs of modifying Russia's brutal suppression of Chechnya's Muslim population, which is particularly incendiary in the current international framework. He has clamped down on fragile media freedoms. He has continued to act imperiously against his immediate neighbors, which undercuts Russia's credibility with the rest of Europe. It is incumbent on the West to encourage Putin to alter his course, and the good news is that there are concrete steps that can be taken.
Russia's desire to be accepted as a western-style power gives western countries some leverage: That acceptance, and the closer economic and political ties that would follow, must be made contingent on Russia's continuing commitment to democratic reforms. The West must give Russia some incentives by spelling out more precisely how the rest of Europe is prepared to integrate Russia with its western neighbors. Will the West admit Russia into NATO, as the Germans have suggested? If not, what positive security role will Europe permit a democratic Russia to play?
The West must also continue to step back from Cold War policies that tip the debate in Russia against the Westernizers. For all the declarations in the West of the end of the Cold War, NATO forces still patrol Russian coasts, as if waiting for an imminent war, and 95 percent of the U.S. nuclear arsenal - which is still maintained at Cold War levels - remains dedicated to the potential destruction of Russia.
Washington, of course, claims these missiles are not targeting Russia, but the Russians know that they can be retargeted within minutes and that their only possible purpose would be to attack Russia. Proposed cuts in the numbers of nuclear weapons dedicated against Russia will not take place for a decade.
The unwillingness of the West to scale back its nuclear arsenal from Cold War levels only reinforces hard-line Russian elements that insist that NATO, which is now proposing to establish bases in Eastern Europe, has aggressive intentions toward Russia. The U.S. should offer to remove at least 50 percent of its thousands of nuclear warheads, provided Moscow takes a reciprocal step. Such an offer would leave enough missiles to destroy every major city in both countries, but it would also convey to the Russian military a direction in the relationship that would encourage the more democratic voices in Moscow.
Another area of collaboration with Russia should be working to provide greater security and a better economic future for the countries caught in the middle between an expanding EU and NATO on the one hand and a resurgent Russia on the other. At this point, it is by no means clear that Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus will ever be allowed to join the European Union.
Cut off from any sizable market, many of these states could sink into deeper poverty and become pockets of instability and crime. Yet the U.S. and other western countries resist any effort by Russia to organize an appropriate economic space east of the EU, and they denounce Russian investments in these countries. The U.S. and EU countries could work with Russia to craft something like the Hoover-Roosevelt Good Neighbor Policy, under which the largest state in the region would begin to treat its neighbors as partners rather than as subjects.
To build and hold the democratic space that exists in Russia, western leaders must constantly engage the Russian leadership while also offering support to those inside Russia who are struggling to build a civil society. Plans by the U.S. and Britain to curtail aid to these groups in the coming years should be reversed.
We should not hesitate to speak honestly, but we must speak fairly. Care must be taken to apply the same standards to Russia that we apply to close allies that do not always meet the highest standards. Otherwise, our criticism will be dismissed.
The West cannot allow the predictions of a "cold peace" or a new Cold War to become reality. Today neither Washington nor Moscow enjoys a surplus of friends in the world. Neither capital needs a new antagonist.
Charles William Maynes is president of the Eurasia Foundation, which promotes political and economic reform in the former Soviet Union. This comment first appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
TITLE: Little Promise in Revisiting Failed Policies
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Gryaznevich
TEXT: The new administration of St. Petersburg has continued to follow some ill-advised policies of the previous administration. This can be seen in the area of housing reform.
One of the main reasons why the housing reform policies failed - in addition to former governor Vladimir Yakovlev's unwillingness to tackle the problem in the political sense - was the lack of consistent action by his government. The reformers at City Hall declared achievable goals and more than adequate means to achieve them, but the administration did not take the appropriate steps to carry out those declarations. There are signs that Governor Valentina Matviyenko's administration intends to make the same mistakes.
The ideologists of City Hall's new economic policy say they understand that land that is ineffectively used in districts near the center of St. Petersburg should be sold on the market, for housing among other purposes. Yet at its Feb. 5 meeting City Hall decided to develop St. Petersburg housing in the near future on the outskirts of town in the Primorsky, Vyborgsky and Krasnoselsky districts.
In other words, instead of encouraging building on plots of land near the center of town that have been turned into virtual junk yards by ineffectual users - land that stands on existing utilities mains and even distribution points - the authorities plan to expand the city limits. But this approach will overextend utilities and significantly increase costs (both city and private funds, even those of the monopolies). Not to mention the fact that life on the edge of town is inconvenient. Petersburgers, forced to buy apartments at such a distance, will not be happy that they, as always, are condemned to exile. In essence, the new administration is doing nothing, but revive the faulty policies of the Yakovlev administration that have already been the subject of well-argued criticism by specialists.
Of course it is easier for the bureaucrats to relegate builders and their clients to an empty field than to grapple with the mess of complex legal, property and ecological issues that arise with the conversion of factories. So why talk about reform?
There is a similar situation in reform of existing housing. At the Second Congress of Housing and Construction Cooperatives, Associations and Housing Owners on Feb. 7 Matviyenko made a very controversial statement. I quote: "The essence of housing reform is in giving the residents themselves control of housing and creating a housing and utilities market in which homeowners can find affordable housing that suits their tastes."
However, the administration at its Feb. 3 meeting adopted a resolution to provide apartments to yard keepers and policemen. The governor insisted in particular that this resolution will more effectively resolve the problem of filling empty positions in the housing and law enforcement areas.
But there are no empty positions in housing. The problem lies in the absence of an effective system for organizing service to residential structures. Only the pre-Revolutionary form of the practice of providing the yard keeper with an apartment holds promise.
The yard keeper back then was in effect a building manager, and only the fulfillment of such a comprehensive range of responsibilities can justify the incentive of providing housing, which is an expensive undertaking for the city.
To avoid the fate of the previous administration, the new leadership in St. Petersburg should take practical steps that correspond to declared principles, and not the interests of individual bureaucrats.
Vladimir Gryaznevich is a political analyst with Expert Severo-Zapad magazine. His comment was first broadcast on Ekho Moskvy in St. Petersburg on Friday.
TITLE: Chris Floyd's Global Eye
AUTHOR: By Chris Floyd
TEXT: End Game
Well, that's it then. The show is over. The scales have fallen. The monstrous gears of the dark satanic mills that spewed their poison fog across the land have ground to halt at last.
George W. Bush's performance in his nationally televised interview last week was so abysmal, so completely divorced from the waking reality of the rest of the world, that even his faithful spear-carriers in the far-right horde - not mention the power-worshipping poltroons of the mainstream media - reacted as if they'd been slapped upside the head with a particularly dank and smelly mackerel. They're shocked - shocked! - to find incompetence in this establishment!
As the delusion and dissembling tumbled from Bush's nervously pursed lips, his stalwarts at the National Review and the Wall Street Journal bemoaned his "bumbling," his strange "disconnection," and the "patently dishonest" answers he offered to questions about the larcenous boondoggle he calls a budget. The great gray goose of The New York Times - which had notoriously stovepiped the lurid WMD fantasies of would-be Iraqi strongman Ahmed Chalabi and his Pentagon paymasters directly into the public discourse, fanning the fever for war - reeled in disbelief at the president's "fuzziness and inconsistency" on Iraq and his frightening inability "to distinguish real threats from false alarms."
From hard right to soft center, the collective lament arose: "What's happened to our hero? Why is he suddenly shuffling, shifting, skulking, why is he telling such lies?" The answer of course is that nothing has happened to Bush; he has always shuffled, shifted, skulked and told lies, like some kind of nightmare reanimation of Richard Nixon's corpse. (Indeed, the main wormtongues at Bush's ear - Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld - learned their dark arts in the Nixon White House.) That the media poltroons themselves were guilty of "patently dishonest fuzziness and inconsistency" in eagerly swallowing - nay, abetting - the Stalinist manipulations of Bush's reekingly false public image is a truth not likely to be universally acknowledged any time soon by, er, the media.
But if speaking truth to power is not exactly their bag, our poltroons do know a trend when they see one. And the pack could hardly ignore a big hunk of red meat like Bush's poll plunge - a 10-point drop after arms inspector David Kay admitted that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction. Of course, Kay's declaration was hardly a revelation to anyone who'd been paying attention; but with all them scary black folk out there raising a profitable ruckus - Kobe! Michael! Janet! - how could any decent poltroon be expected to focus on trivia like the pointless slaughter of 10,000 innocent people in Iraq? It's much easier to whip up some old-timey race-baiting tabloid brew than ask serious questions about White House warmongering.
Thus, at first, the media seemed content to confine Kay's myth-shattering admission to the usual ghetto of arcane political wonkery. But then a funny thing happened: This one little flicker of truth burned through the poison fog like the million-mile lash of a solar flare. The public, long swaddled in Bushist propaganda and poltroonish diversions, suddenly heard some hard, true, simple facts: There were no WMDs. There were no WMD programs. There was nothing for Saddam to threaten America with, nothing for him to pass on to al-Qaida. The case for war was based on nothing.
From this, the public drew the only possible conclusion: Their president was either a murderous liar or a dangerous fool. As neither attribute is especially beguiling in a government official, Bush's poll numbers - already weak despite the heroic media effort to maintain the fiction that he was a "popular war leader" - went south in a big way. The Oz-like Bush Machine has long maintained its illegitimate power by projecting an illusion of invincibility, but when Bush sank beneath the magic 50-percent approval threshold, even the poltroons began to notice the ugly reality behind the regime's bright sham.
So what next? The Bushists have only ever had two methods of masking the rapacious truth of their extremist ideology: sham and blood. Now that the sham is unraveling, right and center, they have just one card left to play: the death's-head joker - war.
The regime has already announced a "major spring offensive" in Afghanistan, with military brass and Bushist operatives in Congress "guaranteeing" the capture of Osama bin Laden, the AP reports. It shouldn't be hard to do: His hiding place in the mountains of Pakistan has been well-known for more than two years. In fact, one might have rousted him out before now, if one hadn't been too busy stuffing one's cronies with boodle from Babylon. Of course, the breathtaking stupidity of announcing the attack months beforehand will give bin Laden plenty of time to prepare; the likely result will be the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of American soldiers - and thousands of local civilians - in a cynical ploy to goose Bush's poll numbers before the election.
But an "Osama bounce" could prove as fleeting as the "Saddam spike." So there's more mischief afoot. The American military is now engaged in its largest troop rotation since World War II. Bush has also forcibly extended the service terms of thousands of reserves and National Guard forces - a stealth draft to feed fresh meat into the Iraqi maw. The upshot, as analyst James Conachy notes, is that, by late summer, Bush will have 120,000 battle-hardened troops back in the Homeland, ready for new adventures.
The road to Damascus? Code Red and martial law? The possibilities are endless - for this gang of grifters will certainly not go gentle into that electoral good night.
For annotational references, see the Opinion section at www.sptimesrussia.com
TITLE: Iraqi Police Nab Hussein Cohort
AUTHOR: By Lee Keath
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAGHDAD, Iraq - A special Iraqi police unit arrested a senior Baath Party leader on the U.S. military's most-wanted list during a raid Sunday on his home in a Baghdad suburb.
The capture of Mohammed Zimam Abdul Razaq leaves only 10 top figures still at large from the list of 55 issued after the Saddam Hussein regime fell. Abdul Razaq was No. 41, and the four of spades in the military's "deck of cards" of top fugitives.
Deputy Interior Minister Ahmed Kadhum Ibrahim touted the arrest as evidence that the still-rebuilding Iraqi police force "can be depended upon in the fight against terrorism" - looking to give his troops a boost a day after police in the turbulent city of Fallujah were overwhelmed by dozens of gunmen in one of the best organized guerrilla attacks yet.
At least 25 people, mostly police, were killed in the raid, more than 30 people were wounded, and the attackers freed dozens of prisoners at the station. The assault raised questions about whether Iraqi security forces are ready to take the front line against the insurgency when the United States hands over power to the Iraqis on June 30.
The top U.S. administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, suggested Sunday on ABC's "This Week" program that the Bush administration might be open to compromise on when the transfer of power to Iraq will take place.
"The U.S. is here for a long commitment," he said. "The job is to get a democratic, stable, unified Iraq at peace with itself and with its neighbors. And that will take time. It isn't going to end on June 30."
The captured Abdul Razaq once headed Saddam's Baath Party in the northern provinces of Nineveh and Tamim, which include the cities of Mosul and Kirkuk. He earlier served as interior minister, and Ibrahim said he kept a "personal prison" behind the police academy where "innocent people" were held in dog cages.
Abdul Razaq was presented to reporters at the Interior Ministry, where he sat next to Ibrahim on a couch, wearing a black traditional Arab robe and a white headdress. He was then handed over to the U.S.-led coalition, Ibrahim said at a press conference later.
Police caught Abdul Razaq's trail when they were tipped off that his son was trying to obtain weapons and fake passports, Ibrahim said.
Police watched the elder Abdul Razaq for 10 days before the special operations unit - trained by U.S. experts - moved in on his house in the Baghdad suburb of Saydiya on Sunday afternoon and found him on the second floor, Ibrahim said. Abdul Razaq offered no resistance.
Ibrahim called on the highest ranking figure still at large from the U.S. list, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, to surrender.
If al-Douri turns himself in, "he will be treated with dignity," Ibrahim said. Al-Douri, the former vice chairman of the ruling Revolutionary Command Council and a member of Saddam's innermost circle, is No. 6 on the U.S. most-wanted list.
TITLE: Jackson 'Rings' Victory Bell at BAFTAs
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON - Fantasy epic "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" was named best film at the British Academy Film Awards on Sunday, while "Lost in Translation" co-stars Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson took the top acting honors.
"The Return of the King" was nominated for 12 awards, known as BAFTAs, and won five: best picture, cinematography, adapted screenplay and special effects, as well as film of the year as voted by the public.
In accepting the prize for best film, New Zealand-born director Peter Jackson honored the trilogy written by Briton J.R.R. Tolkien.
"We were a bunch of Kiwis and some Australians" who brought to the screen "one of Britain's most beloved books - a fantastic property," Jackson said.
The third installment in the film trilogy is nominated for 11 Academy Awards, which will be held Feb. 29. The British awards have become an important pre-Oscar stop since being moved to before the Academy Awards.
"The Return of the King" beat Anthony Minghella's Civil War saga "Cold Mountain," Sofia Coppola's quirky "Lost In Translation," Tim Burton's whimsical "Big Fish" and Peter Weir's seafaring saga "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World" to take the best-film prize from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.
Weir won best director, and his naval adventure won four awards in all.
Renee Zellweger was named best supporting actress for "Cold Mountain." The civil war drama led the nominations with 13, but won only two awards - Zellweger's and best music.
The best supporting actor went to Bill Nighy as amiably dissolute rock star Billy Mack in the British romantic comedy "Love, Actually."
"Lost In Translation," only its young director's second feature, won three BAFTAs.
In taking the best actress award, 19-year-old Johansson beat her own performance in "Girl With a Pearl Earring," as well as Uma Thurman for "Kill Bill," Naomi Watts for "21 Grams" and Anne Reid for "The Mother."
Johansson thanked the British Academy "for acknowledging a 19-year-old American actress" and then thanked her mother for "taking me to auditions and buying me hot dogs afterward."
The ceremony at a movie theater in London's Leicester Square was sprinkled with Hollywood stars, including Zellweger, Thurman, Penn, Johansson and Johnny Depp , who arrived late and made a last-minute dash up the red carpet.
TITLE: Same-Sex Couples Wed in San Fran
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SAN FRANCISCO, California - Hundreds of same-sex marriages kept City Hall offices open and buzzing through the weekend, with gay and lesbian couples waiting hours to exchange vows and conservative activists promising a relentless legal challenge.
By Sunday night, dozens of gay and lesbian couples were lined up outside City Hall, insisting they would camp there all night to be at the front of the line when offices re-opened Monday morning.
Since San Francisco officials began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples last week, hundreds of gays and lesbians have wed, many rushing to California from around the country. City Hall was kept open through the weekend, and on Sunday the line of would-be spouses grew so overwhelming that authorities turned away hundreds of waiting couples.
Despite the President's Day holiday, the controversy was expected to continue - along with the weddings.
The Arizona-based Alliance Defense Fund sued to block the same-sex unions, and San Francisco Superior Court Judge James Warren has scheduled a hearing Tuesday in the case. A second legal challenge filed by a California group is also scheduled for a court hearing Tuesday. Briefs were due Monday.
More than 1,000 marriage licenses have been issued to same-sex couples since Thursday, although some may choose to wait before actually getting married. Hundreds have already gone before city officials to exchange vows and be declared "spouses for life," often in ceremonies scattered around the interior of the ornate City Hall.
New Mayor Gavin Newsom touched off the wedding spree by ordering officials to issue licenses to same-sex couples, declaring that he was merely ensuring equal treatment of gays and lesbians. Newsom later officiated personally at the weddings of his chief of staff and policy director, both of whom married their longtime partners.
Critics have pointed to a ballot initiative approved by California voters in 2000 that says the state will only recognize marriages between a man and woman. Randy Thomasson, the director of the Campaign for California Families, one of the groups challenging the marriages in court, said last week that Newsom "can't play God."
TITLE: Fedorov Hits 1001 NHL Points
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: VANCOUVER, British Columbia - As excited as Sergei Fedorov was about becoming the first Russian-born player with 1,000 NHL points, he was more thrilled about adding number 1,001.
Fedorov reached the milestone with a second-period assist, then set up the game-winner with 7:10 left in the third in the Anaheim Mighty Ducks' 2-1 win over Vancouver on Saturday night.
"I think so because it got us two points," Fedorov said when asked if his second assist meant more. "Even though I got a point the last game in Calgary, we lost the game. All I was thinking was just try to play well and do my job and try to win the game, and I got all those. A couple points went in and we won."
Fedorov reached the milestone three minutes into the second, winning a draw cleanly back to Keith Carney, who beat Johan Hedberg with a one-time slap shot from the point.
Fellow Russian center Artem Chubarov tied it 6:54 into the third, but Fedorov helped put Anaheim ahead to stay six minutes later. The smooth-skating Russian drove wide in the Vancouver zone and threw the puck at the net, where Petr Schastlivy deflected it on goal.
Hedberg made the first save, but Schastlivy, playing his second game since being acquired from Ottawa, outfought Brent Sopel in front and tucked in the rebound.
"Sergei was unbelievable tonight, he was just a star and it was great to see him get his 1,000th point," said Anaheim coach Mike Babcock.
Fedorov, , who was born in Oskov, Russia, received a short, polite ovation from the Vancouver crowd after the accomplishment was announced.
"I think every Russian player is happy for Sergei," Chubarov said.
Jean-Sebastien Giguere, starting for the second straight night, made 34 saves for the Mighty Ducks, who have won three of their last four games but remain last in the Pacific Division.
The Canucks blitzed Anaheim late, but couldn't solve Giguere, who made 17 third-period saves, including several from point-blank range. Giguere got some help when Matt Cooke and Daniel Sedin, off his foot, both hit the post in the third.
"It was nice to hear that ping, I haven t heard much of those this year, said Giguere, 9-22-4 this season after being named last year s playoff MVP.
Vancouver, which dropped a 4-1 decision to Atlanta on Friday night, has lost three straight since the All-Star break to fall six points behind first-place Colorado in the Northwest Division.
Hedberg, playing just his third game since early December after missing six weeks because of a broken hand, made 31 saves for the Canucks. He kept the game close with a great right pad save off Steve Rucchin on a short-handed breakaway in the final seconds of the second period, but was upset with the two that got by him.
"It s the time of the game when you want to come up with the big save and I didn't do it," Hedberg said of Schastlivy's winner before turning his attention to Carney s long blast.
Fedorov, a 14-year NHL veteran who spent his first 13 seasons in Detroit before signing with Anaheim this summer, has 419 goals and 582 assists. The 34-year-old is the fifth European player, and 67th in NHL history to reach 1,000 points.
"It's one of those things you didn't really expect it. It's very personal," said Fedorov, who was born in Oskov, Russia. "It's been a long road. Hopefully, I got a few more to go."
A three-time Stanley Cup Champion in Detroit, Fedorov has 19 goals and 28 assists for the Mighty Ducks this season.
Toronto forward Alexander Mogilny has been stuck at 989 points much of the season while recovering from injury.
"I would like to share this with Alex Mogilny," Fedorov said.
TITLE: LA Lakers' O'Neal, Bryant Glisten in All-Star Game
AUTHOR: By John Nadel
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LOS ANGELES - Shaquille O'Neal got the Most Valuable Player award and Kobe Bryant played the most minutes. LA Lakers fans couldn't have asked for more.
In addition, the first All-Star game in the Los Angeles area since 1983 was competitive from start to finish and wasn't decided until the final minute.
O'Neal made nine dunks in a 24-point, 11-rebound performance that helped the Western Conference beat the East 136-132 on Sunday night to become the 12th player from the host city to earn All-Star MVP honors.
Bryant scored 20 points in 36 minutes after arriving late and missing the team picture.
"LA traffic," he explained.
The Lakers no doubt hope the performance of their stars is a sign of what's to come after the All-Star break, since they've struggled with injuries and other problems following an 18-3 start.
"Both of them are about winning," said Minnesota's Kevin Garnett of O'Neal and Bryant - his teammates in this All-Star game. "Whenever they step on the court, it's all business, and you have to anticipate that every time you play the Lakers."
O'Neal shot 12-of-19 while playing 24 minutes in relief of Houston's Yao Ming, who was pretty good himself with 16 points in 19 minutes.
Yao started at center for the West after edging O'Neal in fan balloting.
"I'm not really one known to be taking over All-Star games," O'Neal said. "This is a couple days you spend with the best players in the league, so I just wanted to come out and have a good time.
"I said to myself, 'If it's going good, nobody is really shining, I'm going to go ahead and go for it.' Third and fourth quarter, got a few dunks, scored a few buckets."
O'Neal also thrilled the fans at Staples Center by making like a point guard on a couple occasions. He dribbled the length of the court and slammed in his eighth dunk for a 126-123 lead.
His final dunk with 1:56 to play tied it at 129.
"I had a lot of fun," he said. "A couple of people told me if I get it, there's an opening, they want me to go coast-to-coast. A couple of times, I had a couple openings. A couple of times, I didn't finish them, but the one in the fourth quarter, I crossed [Tracy McGrady] up at half and it was a big hole and I just took it."
San Antonio's Tim Duncan, co-MVP with O'Neal in the 2000 All-Star game, made a short bank shot over Jamaal Magloire with 26.1 seconds left to give the West a 133-132 lead.
After Duncan's big shot, O'Neal shadowed McGrady, forcing the Orlando star into a turnover. Two free throws by the West's Ray Allen and another by Duncan completed the scoring.
O'Neal missed 12 games because of a strained right calf and one due to suspension since Jan. 2.
Bryant sat out 13 games due to a sprained right shoulder and a severe cut on his right index finger since Jan. 12.
Both seem fine now.
"I feel as healthy as I've been in a long time," said Bryant, who missed all but the last game of a seven-game road trip leading up to the All-Star break. "I'm looking forward to getting to practice tomorrow and starting the second half of the season."
Regarding O'Neal, Bryant said: "He's not your typical big man. He can handle the basketball and do a lot of creative things on the perimeter. He had an incredible game today - running the floor, getting second-chance opportunities. It was showtime, man. He had a great game."
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Sacramento Kings center Brad Miller injured his right ankle late in the third quarter of Sunday night's All-Star game.
Miller had eight points on 4-of-5 shooting and three rebounds in the game. The injury initially was described as a sprain, but X-rays were inconclusive.
The two-time All-Star was to be re-evaluated in Sacramento on Monday.
Miller went down hard under the East basket shortly before time expired in the quarter. He got up slowly and walked to the bench unaided, but left the court later.
"He looked like he was in pain," said Peja Stojakovic, his Sacramento teammate. "I hope it's not that bad. I feel really bad for him. Hopefully he'll be ready soon. Let's hope it's nothing serious."
Miller is averaging 15.0 points, 10.8 rebounds, 4.7 assists and 1.3 blocks for the Kings this season - all career highs. He was selected for his second straight All-Star game, his first since joining the Kings in an offseason trade.
Sacramento, leading the Los Angeles Lakers by six games in the Pacific Division, hosts the Boston Celtics on Tuesday night.
(AP)
TITLE: Earnhardt Wins Daytona 500
AUTHOR: By Paul Newberry
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: DAYTONA BEACH, Florida - Dale Earnhardt Jr. was reminiscing about his father when someone brought over a cell phone.
Even U.S. President George W. Bush couldn't resist the urge to congratulate Earnhardt after his emotional victory in Sunday's Daytona 500 - six years to the day that his late father won NASCAR's premier race for the first, and only, time.
This one was straight from a storybook. The son of the seven-time series champion takes the checkered flag in the race that consumed his father - and eventually took his life.
Not far from the spot where the Intimidator died in a last-lap crash, his son was carried on the shoulders of his crew, feted by an adoring crowd and even praised by the guys who tried to beat him.
"Considering what this kid went through, losing his father here at the Daytona 500 ... it's nice to see him get his victory here, too,'' said Tony Stewart, the victim of a daring pass by Earnhardt with 20 laps to go. "I think his father's really proud."
Bush was on hand to start the race, but left at about the midway point. Shortly after Earnhardt's emotional win, the president put in a call.
"Take it easy," Earnhardt drawled at the end of their brief conversation, reflecting the laid-back style of a driver who likes to wear his hat backward and hang out with rock bands.
While this product of the MTV era is a different man than his hardscrabble father, Junior didn't fall too far from the tree.
His pass of Stewart - with no drafting help, the cars nearly trading paint through the trioval at 190 mph - would have made the old man proud. And Junior's passion for Daytona is right up there with his father's.
The Intimidator failed to win the 500 on his first 19 tries - losing in just about every way imaginable. He finally broke through on the 20th attempt in 1998, a victory that had not been approached in popularity until Sunday.
"To be honest, this is more important to me than any race I run all year," Earnhardt Jr. said. "There's more emphasis on winning the race because of what happened here."
He remembered his father's increasing frustration as his Daytona quest was felled by a blown tire here, a wreck there.
"You would see it year after year after year," Earnhardt Jr. said. "Not many things, if anything at all, bothered that man. But I could see it on his face. I could tell it bothered him."
Showing the impatience of youth, the 29-year-old Earnhardt won the race on just his fifth try. And Daddy was along for the ride.
"He was over in the passenger side with me," Junior said. "I'm sure he was having a blast."
After Earnhardt's pass at the end of lap 180, Stewart tried valiantly to catch up. He briefly pulled beside the No. 8 car coming out of turn two, but Junior showed his muscle on the backstretch and kept Stewart in the rearview mirror.
That's where he stayed. Earnhardt pulled away on the final lap, winning by about four car lengths while the crowd of 180,000 - many of them wearing Junior's red and white colors - erupted in celebration, overwhelming security to leap onto the catch fence in front of the main grandstand.
Earnhardt came back around and stopped his car at the checkered finish line. He pumped his fist and jumped into the arms of his crew, who lifted him on their shoulders for all to see. Then, he climbed back in and attempted a few doughnuts in the grass - just like his father after the 1998 race.
The Earnhardts became the third father-son combination to win the Daytona 500, joining Lee and Richard Petty and Bobby and Davey Allison.
Stewart led 97 laps - nearly half the 200-lap event - but didn't have enough to hold off Earnhardt, who set the pace for 59.
Daddy would have been proud.
"There are days when I feel I'm as good as he was," Junior said. "Sometimes, I forget just how good he really was."
TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: Saturn Coach Quits
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Oleg Romantsev has quit as coach of Saturn Ramenskoye because of health problems, the Russian premier league club said on Monday.
"Oleg Romantsev twice asked to be relieved of his coaching duties, citing poor health and the second time the management agreed to his request" Saturn said on their website.
The former Russia manager has had a history of poor health.
Romantsev, who turned 50 last month, underwent an operation to remove kidney stones in 2002 and also spent time in hospital with heart trouble three years earlier.
Saturn said the search for a new coach had already begun and the appointment should be expected in the coming days.
The Russian league season begins on March 12.
Romantsev was appointed Saturn coach last September, replacing Vitaly Shevchenko, sacked following a string of poor results. Saturn finished seventh last season.
Romantsev was fired as coach of Spartak Moscow last June after 15 years in the job following a bitter feud with club president Andrei Chervichenko. He had led Spartak to nine league titles.
He also guided Russia to the 2002 World Cup finals in South Korea and Japan but was sacked after the team failed to progress from what was regarded as one of the easiest first round groups.
Pantini Found Dead
n ROME (Reuters) - Investigators ordered an autopsy Sunday to determine the cause of death of former Tour de France champion Marco Pantini who was found in a hotel room in central Italy with sedatives near his bed.
The cause of death of the 34-year-old rider was not immediately known but investigators ruled out violence.
Pantini, who had been suffering from depression, was found dead in a hotel in the Adriatic coastal resort city of Rimini late Saturday.
Pantini won the Giro d'Italia and the Tour in 1998 but his career was later blighted by doping accusations.
Tunisia Wins Cup
RADES, Tunisia (Reuters) - Hosts Tunisia won the African Nations Cup for the first time Saturday, beating Morocco 2-1 to be crowned continental champion almost 40 years after it appeared in their first final.
Ziad Jaziri got the winning goal in the second half, profiting from a bad error by the Moroccan goalkeeper Khalid Fouhami.
He failed to clear a 52nd-minute cross by the Brazilian-born left wing Clayton, just getting a hand to the ball to set it up perfectly for the onrushing Jaziri to tap into the net.
Roddick Serves 16 Aces
SAN JOSE, California (AFP) - Top seed Andy Roddick smashed 16 aces to beat third seed Mardy Fish 7-6 (15/13), 6-4 in an all-American final to win the 52,000-dollar top prize at a 380,000-dollar ATP tournament.
Roddick rose to 3-1 against Fish, who lived with Roddick's family in 1999 when the two played on tennis teams at Boca Raton, Florida.
Roddick repeated his triumph over Fish in last year's ATP Masters Series Cincinnati final, although Fish forced the former world number one to save two match points in that title showdown.
The San Jose title was Roddick's 12th career ATP crown but his first since he captured his first Grand Slam crown last September at the US Open. Affirmative Reaction
BRISTOL, Rhode Island (AP) - A student group at Roger Williams University is offering a new scholarship for which only white students are eligible, a move they say is designed to protest affirmative action.
The application for the $250 award requires an essay on "why you are proud of your white heritage" and a recent picture to "confirm whiteness."
The stunt has angered some at the university, but the administration is staying out of the fray. The school's provost said it is a student group's initiative and is not endorsed by Roger Williams.
Kissing for Posterity
MANILA (AFP) - More than 5,000 Filipino couples kissed simultaneously for 10 seconds to welcome Valentine's Day and set a new world record, organizers said.
Organizers of the "Lovapalooza" in Manila, an attempt to break the record for most people kissing simultaneously in one area, said 5,122 smooching couples broke the old record set by 4,500 couples in the Chilean capital Santiago last year.
Sniper Count Hits 24
COLUMBUS, Ohio (Reuters) - The shooting of a sport utility vehicle on a highway in central Ohio at the weekend has been found by ballistic tests to be the latest in a series of two dozen such attacks in the area, police said on Sunday.
Investigators recovered a bullet from the vehicle which was struck on Saturday and matched it to eight others, all fired from the same weapon, the Franklin County Sheriff's office said in a statement.
No one was injured in the latest shooting, which brought to 24 the number of vehicles struck around Columbus. But the attack, the third consecutive one in broad daylight, indicates the shooter is getting bolder, said the sheriff department's chief deputy.
Cyprus Debate Goes On
LARNACA, Cyprus (AP) - Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders agreed in New York on Friday to resume negotiations next week on reunifying Cyprus before the island joins the European Union on May 1. The sides hope to reach a comprehensive settlement by late March, with a final plan going before the two Cypriot communities in separate referenda in April.
The two sides are scheduled to meet again Thursday. The negotiations will focus on a UN blueprint for reunification that calls for a single state with Greek and Turkish Cypriot federal regions linked through a weak central government.
Cyprus was divided in 1974 after a coup and Turkish invasion. If the island is still divided on May 1, the EU laws and benefits will apply only to people in the Greek Cypriot south.
Haitian Revolt Builds
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) - A rebel force trying to oust President Jean-Bertrand Aristide grew in size as former exiled paramilitary troops joined the insurrection and aid workers hurried to get doctors and supplies to the cut-off north.
Rebel roadblocks have halted most food and fuel shipments since the unrest began. Emergency supplies of flour, cooking oil and other basics are projected to run out in days in northern areas, where roadblocks are guarded by rebels.
The rebels launched a rebellion on Feb. 5 from Gonaives, 70 miles northwest of Port-au-Prince. Although the rebels are thought to number less than Haiti's 5,000-member police force, exiled paramilitary leaders and police have reportedly joined them.