SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #991 (59), Tuesday, August 3, 2004
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TITLE: Metro Station Proves Haven for Pickpockets
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Foreign visitors to St. Petersburg should avoid the Canal Griboyedova entrance to Nevsky Prospekt metro where pickpockets work in full sight of police, a recent victim of petty theft at the station warns.
U.S. citizen Herb Blount spoke out after his wallet was stolen at the end of July and became convinced that police are colluding with thieves after a series of events he witnessed when he reported the incident. Meanwhile, police sources admit there is a problem but say the law prevents them from tackling it.
Blount says that when he reported the theft of his wallet containing 40 euros he discovered two Americans, one German and a couple from Sweden reporting similar incidents at the same police station.
Blount, who is married to a Russian, said that two men where being detained for pickpocketing at the station, and that one of them had been caught red-handed by the Americans.
"[The two Americans] explained to the police with my wife interpreting, that, actually, they caught the guy that was behind bars. They actually, physically caught him," Blount said in a telephone interview Friday.
After the Americans caught the pickpocket, they took him to nearby beat cops who assisted in taking him to the police office which is situated in the metro station.
"[A] policeman searched this young guy and found in three pockets three big lots of money and a razor blade. The police gave it all back to the guy, including the razor blade. It was obviously used to cut pockets to get the stuff," Blount said.
The police seemed unwilling to take any of the cases further, Blount said, despite having, in the Americans' case, detained the prime suspect, and in his own case having had a face-to-face encounter with the likely perpetrator at the doors of Kanal Griboyedova.
"It was obvious we were facing 'the police block.' They didn't want to do anything. And eventually they gave a piece of paper to the other two Americans [telling them] that they have to go down the next day to get their statement in English and sign it," he said.
One of the Americans got his wallet back, but with no money in it, Blount said.
These events, which took place on after Navy Day celebrations on July 25, were followed by an unnerving sequence of incidents that convinced Blount of police complicity in the actions of pickpockets at the metro station.
On the following Wednesday Blount recognized the man who had been detained for robbing the Americans the previous Sunday at the metro station.
At 9 p.m. the following night Blount showed up to the metro station again, to check if the guy was there. He was not. But other pickpockets had been at work in the area.
"There were five Italians and they were explaining something to the police. When I was walking up to these five Italians I saw the man who was at the doors on Sunday night who had probably taken my wallet as he was saying something angrily to the Italians and then left," Blount said.
Blount says it is obvious that the police know this is a regular place for pickpockets, but do not do anything to prevent them from committing their crimes.
The police say there are reasons for this.
"Yes, we know it's a very big problem here with pickpockets. We know all of them, but we can't do much. The legislation is put in such a way that the only thing we can do is to hold them behind bars for three hours and that's it," said a police officer on duty at the Kanal Griboyedova metro station on Friday. He declined to be identified.
"It's very hard to prove according to the law that they stole a wallet because usually what they do is immediately empty them and throw them away. In case if they got caught with a wallet, they say they just found it and were on their way to the police to give it up," the policeman said.
The only way to avoid unpleasant situations is to be more careful with money in such places, the policeman said.
Blount later recalled the uncomfortable details of the moment he was robbed.
"On the Sunday evening at about 11 p.m. I was returning from the Navy Day celebration with my wife. I was walking through the door to go into the metro station when I felt several young men pushing though the door. My wife was in the center of the door, so I was trying to protect her by putting my arms up to guard her and pushed one of the guys back because he was really pushing," Blount said.
"All of a sudden I sensed a feeling in my left front pocket where my wallet was. I stuck my hand in there, touched the wallet, but it was on its way out. I didn't realize [what was happening] for a split-second. When I put my hand back there, there was nothing. I saw the man's face behind the door. I know who he is," he said.
The cops who work Kanal Griboyedova know that foreigners can feel vulnerable in the crowded metro.
"I have already noticed how foreigners are learning for themselves. Now they are very often seen carrying their backpacks in front of them," the policeman at the metro said smiling.
Based on what he has seen, Blount does not believe that problems with interpreting the letter of the law are solely to blame for the police failing to tackle the pickpockets.
"If they don't do anything about it, it points to collusion," he said.
Blount said he loves the people of the city and he has friends here, but he cannot understand how pickpockets walk around so openly with nothing obviously being done about it.
"If this happened in Germany and they had no evidence to detain them, they would have keep them away. Why wouldn't they keep them away? I don't understand it," Blount said.
TITLE: Residents Ready to Fight On
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: After three years of unsuccessful attempts to stop a fill-in construction project in a culturally important park, a group of St. Petersburg citizens from a nearby building says it is ready to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights with the support of Groza ('Thunderstorm') a city-wide public legal rights organization.
The construction of a new building on 60A Ulitsa Lyonya Golikova in the Krasnoselsky District will resume Nov. 1 after it was postponed in June by the City Hall Investment and Tender Commission. At that time the commission recommended that the project developer, 47th Trust, "solve arguments with local residents," the residents group said.
Sergei Suglobov, head of the residents group said he no longer trusts city authorities after everything he and his neighbors have been through since 2001, when the project was initiated.
"All this was started in 2001 when [then] Govornor [Vladimir] Yakovlev signed a decree to reduce the part of Alexandrino Park which is under UNESCO protection. It is protected because there are summer houses located there which belonged to well-known 18th century figures such as General Sheremetyev, General Vorontsov and so on," Suglobov said in a telephone interview Monday.
"It's not only us who will lose something, but all city residents. This park is a protected area for public use. But after the decree was signed, all that is protected are lakes," he said.
47th Trust has already chopped down 150 bushes in the area and installed a fence in preparation for construction there, Suglobov said.
On July 23 Governor Valentina Matviyenko submitted to City Hall a decree to abolish her previous decision on the construction, which was then handed over to the Investment and Tender Commission by Alexander Vakhmistrov, head of the Construction Committee, Suglobov said.
"That's why there's a question over who rules the city - Govornor Matviyenko or the construction lobby. During the last [gubernatorial] elections I didn't vote for anyone. It's because I don't believe authorities any more," he said.
47th Trust was not available for comment Monday.
"The European Court of Human Rights seems to be the only option city residents have left to help them resist the practice of fill-in projects in conditions where the local construction lobby has such and influence in local courts," said Groza representatives.
"Most of the lawsuits filed on the same issue were lost by residents and this is not a big surprise," said Alexei Smirnov, head of Groza in a telephone interview Monday.
"Courts act according to judicial facts which are papers with stamps and it is very easy for construction companies to obtain such papers. If an expert opinion costs $15,000, citizens are not able to collect such money, but for a construction company this is nothing," he said.
There are up to 25 lawsuits currently in city courts against fill-in construction projects and 7 cases have already been lost, Smirnov said.
One of the rare successful cases occurred at the end of July, when a group of citizens from a building located on 10th Line, a street on Vasilyevsky Ostrov, succeeded in postponing a construction in their yard until their case is heard in September. Authorities of Vasilyevsky Ostrov District administration ordered a construction company to stop its activity in the yard after meeting with angry residents and their lawyer.
At the end of July Groza initiated a four-month long action plan against fill-in construction projects. Its main goal is to collect information from all of such "conflict zones" in the city and pass them to local courts. Cases that go against residents will be passed to the European Court of Human Rights, Groza representatives say.
Groza has started spreading orange ribbons among the population and asking people to hang them out of their windows to demonstrate against fill-in projects.
"We've already handed out about 1,000 ribbons and are going to spread another thousand this week," Smirnov said.
"They have been seen in some of the yards around Malookhtinskyi Prospekt. In some places ribbons hang from almost every window," he said.
On Friday over a dozen people gathered near City Hall Housing Committee offices with posters displaying slogans such as "Investment is not a reason for lawlessness," "Fill-in projects are theft of our land," "St. Petersburg is not a concentration camp," and others.
City Hall had no comment either on the protest on Friday or on the case in Krasnoselsky District.
"Yes, the situation has existed for quite a while, but we have no comment at this moment. It's because Valentina Ivanovna [Matviyenko] is on holidays. In two weeks time we could comment, depending on how the situation has developed," said Andrei Kibitov, spokesman for the governor in a telephone interview Monday.
TITLE: Hotel Chef Shows Award-Winning Food is Surreal Thing
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The chef who will represent Russia at an international culinary competition in Canada said he found inspiration in the surrealist art of Spanish painter Salvador Dali.
Food based on Dali's nightmare colors and melting forms may not sound very appetizing, but it is the young chef's artistic philosophy which is winning him awards.
Andrei Seryogin of the newly opened Renaissance St. Petersburg Baltic Hotel had Dali's "Constancy of Memory" in mind when working on his parfait during the contest held last week.
"The painting depicts a deformed clock hanging on a tree," Seryogin said. "The approach has transformed a piece of food into a piece of art, focusing on symbols of time, space and eternity."
The Russian national contest, held in St. Petersburg at the end of July, brought together junior chefs, with all participants being under 27 years old and representing hotels and restaurants-members of the Russian branch of Chaine des Rotisseurs.
The Chaine des Rotisseurs is an international society engaged in promotion of the culinary and hospitality arts. Established in France in 1248 by Louis IX, it was dismantled on the wake of the French Revolution but revived in Paris in 1950.
The Chaine brings together both professional caterers and amateur gastronomes from 123 countries. Each participating country has a national office.
The Russian branch of the Chaine des Rotisseurs was established two years ago by Thomas Noll, general manager of the Corinthia Nevskij Palace hotel, who is now the association's president. Remarkably enough, 16 out of 18 professional members of the Russian society come from St. Petersburg.
According to Alevtina Telisheva, a representative of the Russian branch, some 40 percent of the members of the association are amateur gourmets, including, among others, Vladimir Gusev, director of the State Russian Museum and Yury Schwartzkopf, director of the St. Petersburg Philharmonia.
Each member country holds annual competitions, with the winners subsequently attending an international final held in one of the member countries. Last year the final was organized in South Africa.
No other culinary competition in Russia can lead its winners to an international final. Andrei Seryogin is traveling to Canada later this year to compete against his foreign rivals in the international final of the Chaine des Rotisseurs.
"It is very important that our association exists above political interests," Telisheva said. "Happily, we are united entirely by our passion for food, and our interest in the exchange of knowledge and opinions about high cuisine."
Ruslan Burmistrov, the executive chef of the Renaissance St. Petersburg Baltic Hotel, said it is very useful and inspiring to have a branch of the Chaine des Rotisseurs in Russia.
"It brings here some of the world's greatest culinary traditions, which is all the more important considering that during Soviet years the art of cuisine in Russia degraded into the obshchepit [a faceless system of centralized catering]," Burmistrov said.
At the national competition, participants received a list of fifty products, and were given 30 minutes to compile a menu, featuring a starter, a main course and a dessert. The participants were free to use any of the ingredients, which remain secret before the start of the contest, and vary with every competition.
"In that part of the contest, we had to scrupulously describe and explain what we do, and how all the products are used, to show our ability to plan our actions and present a consistent concept," Sergyogin said.
In the second part, the chefs had three hours to make four servings of each dish, and it is essential that all samples of the dish were identical.
The international jury featured representatives from Germany, France, Finland, Austria, Italy, England and Russia who evaluated all stages of the cooking process, how tidy the chefs kept their kitchens, and how they treated their ingredients.
"It was extremely exciting to watch the jurors during the contest, and reading their faces which reflected surprise, admiration and appreciation," Telisheva said. "And it was all the more captivating because it was impossible to predict the result."
Albert Helms, general manager of the Renaissance St. Petersburg Baltic Hotel, is a former chef himself. He said Seryogin possesses the crucial quality for his job - a passion for cooking.
"He is very young, very calm and very motivated, and he loves to cook," Helms said. "Without a passion for food, he wouldn't have made it."
The hotel's restaurant is called "Canvas" with all dishes served on square plates and treated as works of art," Burmistrov said.
"In every dish, we invest not only our knowledge of food but our taste in art as well, serving food for mind and soul as well."
TITLE: Suspected Killers of African Student on Trial
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Three young men accused of stabbing an African student to death in a racially motivated attack in February went on trial at the Voronezh regional court on Monday.
Roman Ledenev, 19, Yevgeny Shishlov, 21, and Vladimir Kakushkin, 16, have admitted to killing Amaro Antonio Limo, a 24-year-old medical student from Guinea-Bissau, but denied that the attack was racially motivated, Interfax reported. Limo was stabbed a few hundred meters from his dormitory in central Voronezh on Feb. 21 in a killing that prompted a wave of protests by African students in the southern city.
Police detained the three suspects March 17 and later learned that two of them, Ledenev and Shishlov, were once members of a banned ultra-nationalist extremist organization, Russian National Unity, a regional prosecutor's office official told Interfax.
Searches of the suspects' apartments turned up racist literature, said the official, who was not identified.
If convicted on charges of racially motivated murder, the suspects face sentences of up to life in prison.
Limo's death put the spotlight on racial tensions in Voronezh, a city of nearly 1 million residents. Foreign students - who number about 1,500 - have documented seven killings and about 70 attacks over the past five years against current or former students.
The murder lead to a three-week protest in which foreign students boycotted classes and demanded safety guarantees from regional law enforcement officers. Investigators initially denied that the killing was racially motivated but later acknowledged that it was under media and student pressure.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Kidnappers Held
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Three suspects that allegedly kidnapped a local businessman were detained in the city last week, Interfax reported Friday quoting the police.
The businessman's wife approached the police after July 28 when a former business partner of her husband and two other men came into their apartment and demanded debts of $15,000, Interfax cited the police as saying.
After the man refused to give up the money, he was taken by kidnappers, who said they would bring him back only after they got the cash.
All the men have been detained. The businessman was found with signs of strangling on his neck and numerous bruises and sent to hospital for treatment.
Bootie Contest
VOLOGDA (SPT) - The biggest valenok or typical Russian felt boot in the world has been produced by a businessman in Vologda and will be presented to the Guinness Book of World Records, Interfax reported Monday.
The boot, sized 120 in Russian sizes, is 87 cm long and 157 cm tall and weighs 7.5 kilos.
"[We] looked through the book and didn't find anything about felt boots there. Somebody has long hair and we will have the biggest felt boot. We got into contact with the headquarters of the book in England via the Internet and they told us that we have to film everything," Interfax quoted Nikolai Saikin, the local businessman.
The felt boot was made in three hours with traditional tools, Saikin said. Governor's Odyssey
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Governor Valentina Matviynko is off on holidays starting Monday, Interfax reported Friday quoting the City Hall press-service.
Matviyenko will be out of St. Petersburg until Aug. 15, leaving her duties to Vice Governor Victor Lobko, the report said, adding that there will be no city government meetings until Aug. 17.
The governor will spend her holidays on the Mediterranean Sea and plans to visit Greece where she worked as Russia's ambassador between 1997-1998, NTV reported Thursday.
Relocation, Relocation
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - City Hall faces resistance from the management of big industrial plants while trying to fulfill its plan to relocate most of them from the city center to remote industrial areas, Interfax reported Monday quoting officials from the Economics Committee.
"[It's] being perceived in a negative way by managers of most of the plants because they have an opportunity to rent out their spaces semi legally," Intefax quoted an Economics Committee source as saying.
By 2005 City Hall plans to invest 200 million rubles ($6.8 million) to develop draft plan to build infrastructure in the industrial areas around the city. There are 40 plants on the City Hall list that are planned to be relocated from the city center, the source said.
City Hall has plans to set up infrastructure in industrial areas and distribute them on privileged conditions to businesses that are ready to get involved with the relocation program.
Drug Pusher Seized
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - A member of an international crime gang that specialized in drug deliveries was detained by the State Drug Control department July 28 in the city center, Interfax reported Thursday quoting department officials.
A young man, a citizen of one of the Baltic states whose name and nationality is not given to the public for investigation reasons, was detained on Nevsky Prospekt carrying 1,000 pills thought to be ecstasy, the report said.
The suspect had been under the surveillance of the Drug Control department for about six months. During this time operatives established that the suspect was delivering drugs from the Baltic States to Russia. Finns Buy Stroimaster
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Finland's Kesko has agreed to buy a 55 percent-stake in a Russian hardware store chain Stroimaster for a maximum of 13.4 million euros ($16.15 million), Finland's top retailer and wholesaler said on Friday.
"Stroimaster is one of the major DIY (Do-It-Yourself) store chains in the St. Petersburg area. Its market share is about 20 percent of the total sales ... through DIY chains," Kesko said in a statement.
"The price is 8.3 million euros and the additional price tied to the results of 2005-2009 is 5.1 million euros at maximum," it added. Kesko said the four-store chain, which employs 830 staff, is seen posting sales of some 70 million this year.
Stroimaster is owned by Teks group, which confirmed Kesko's plans but declined to comment. 4 Stroimaster stores operate in the city and one more is set to open by the end of the year. Teks plans adding 10 new stores in St. Petersburg as well as in other major cities, company representatives said.
$20M for Ramstore
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Migros Turk TAS, Turkey's largest supermarket chain, said it will borrow $20 million to invest in its Russian stores.
The four-year loan from ABN Amro will bear an interest of 2.75 percent over the London interbank offered rate, Migros said in a statement to the Istanbul Stock Exchange.
Migros' Russian unit, a joint venture with Turkish construction company Enka Insaat ve Sanayi AS, operates malls and supermarkets under the Ramstore name.
The venture, Ramenka, plans to add Ramstore supermarkets in St. Petersburg to tap raising demand, Mete Doguoglu, its deputy general director. has said.
TITLE: Chechen Newspaper Faces Closure Threat
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: An independent Chechen newspaper based in Ingushetia has been effectively shut down after its editor was summoned to the Interior Ministry in Nazran and told to stop publishing critical reports of the federal military campaign in Chechnya.
Timur Aliev, editor and publisher of the weekly newspaper Chechenskoye Obshchestvo, or Chechen Society, and a freelance reporter for The Moscow Times, sister paper of The St. Petersburg Times, was summoned Wednesday to the Interior Ministry and warned against printing critical articles.
"The investigators told me right away that I was publishing an anti-government paper," Aliev said by telephone from Nazran, where his paper is based.
The newspaper has reported extensively on allegations of human rights abuses by pro-Moscow authorities, Russian soldiers and security forces operating in Chechnya.
Aliev said investigators took a friendlier tone after he showed them a photograph of him posing with Ingush President Murat Zyazikov during a recent meeting with human rights advocates active in Ingushetia.
But police repeated their threat to have the paper closed. When Aliev said that they had no authority to do so, investigators recommended that he relocate the paper to Grozny, Aliev said. He said that the investigators had copies of the paper's most recent critical articles.
Aliev was recommended to suspend publication of the paper for some time.
The head of the state-run company that prints Chechenskoye Obshchestvo was also summoned to the local Interior Ministry. He later told Aliev that he could no longer print his paper.
TITLE: Former Kyrgyz Leader Dead at 71
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan - Absamat Masaliyev, former leader of Kyrgyzstan who headed the Central Asian nation's Communist Party both before and after the Soviet collapse, has died, the government said. He was 71.
Masaliyev died Saturday from a heart attack, the government said.
In 1985, he became the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party in Kyrgyzstan in wake of changes in Soviet Communist leadership that saw Mikhail Gorbachev's ascension.
He remained in office until 1990 when he lost elections in the country's first-ever presidential elections, as the Soviet republics sought to assert their sovereignty in moves that led the next year to the disintegration of the Soviet Union. The election was won by Askar Akayev, who remains president of independent Kyrgyzstan.
The election loss led Masaliyev to quit the party, but he became leader of still-surviving Communist Party and in 1995 won a seat in the upper chamber of parliament representing his southern home region of Osh.
Later that year, Masaliyev challenged Akayev unsuccessfully again, but drew strong support in the south. In 2000, he won a lower parliament seat and held that post until his death.
Absamat Masaliyevich Masaliyev was born in 1933 in southern Kyrgyzstan in the village of Alysh to an ordinary family.
In 1953, he began studies at the Kyrgyz Mining Technical School in southern Kyrgyzstan, and continued in 1956 at Moscow Mining Institute where he earned a degree in mine engineering.
A state funeral for Masaliyev is to be held Tuesday.
TITLE: Duma Set to Limit Beer Ads
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The State Duma passed a bill in its second reading Saturday placing severe restrictions on beer ads that could cost media outlets millions of dollars in revenue.
The draft law bans the broadcasting of beer commercials on TV and radio between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m. and prohibits advertisers from maintaining that beer is "crucial in achieving success in sports and personal life."
In a rare display of solidarity, 432 out of 450 deputies voted in favor of the bill with only one abstention.
The bill, due to have its final reading Thursday, must then be approved by the Federation Council and President Vladimir Putin before becoming law. It has been under consideration by the Duma for more than two years.
Its passage has sparked an outcry from brewers and advertisers.
Beer commercials are estimated to account for roughly one tenth of the TV ad market, which amounted to more than $720 million in the first half of 2004, or 36 percent more than in the same period last year, according to figures released by the Association of Communications Agencies of Russia on Thursday.
In addition to time restrictions, the draft law prohibits beer advertisers from using images of "people or animals" and requires them to devote at least 10 percent of ad space to health warnings. Beer advertisements would also be banned from the front and back pages of magazines and inside sports facilities and cultural institutions.
"Attractive, obsessive and aggressive beer advertising makes it extremely attractive for consumption," Vladimir Vasilyev, head of the Duma's Security Committee, told parliament Saturday.
He added that persistent beer advertising was behind increased consumption in recent years, particularly by teenagers.
Vasilyev was supported by many of his colleagues, some of whom outdid themselves in their fervor to limit beer ads.
Liberal Democratic Party leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky proposed completely banning any advertising of the drink, as well as its public consumption. His amendments were rejected.
"It is necessary to ban public consumption of beer," Zhirinovsky told Ekho Moskvy on Friday. "Let those that want beer go to pubs and drink this garbage there. The habit of drinking it on the street has been forced on us by commercials, and therefore youngsters think it is OK."
The new bill also received the full support of the Russian Orthodox Church, whose spokesman, Vsevolod Chaplin, accused the media of creating a "beer subculture" that "brainwashes the young."
"Our Western guests have told me many times that in their countries such a volume of beer advertising specially targeted at the young ... would be impossible," he told Interfax.
Not surprisingly, advertisers and brewers begged to differ on the draft bill's merits.
"This is barbarity, wild and irresponsible petty tyranny. This is nothing but cheap populism," Vladimir Yevstafyev, president of the 130-member Association of Communications Agencies, said in an interview Sunday.
"Anyone knowledgeable [about the industry] would never have written something so incomprehensible."
Yevstafyev said that banning beer ads in stadiums was problematic: "Would broadcasting foreign matches with prominent outdoor beer ads violate the law?" Furthermore, he said, a ban could hurt TV stations and many Russian sports teams.
The head of the Russian Brewers' Union, Vyacheslav Mamontov, questioned the motives for pushing through the bill.
"It looks like the Duma had nothing else to do and wanted to pass something that would appeal to voters," he said Sunday, noting that it coincided with the highly unpopular replacement of social benefits with monetary compensation.
Beer commercials - often part of a series and featuring amiable characters in comic situations - have flooded the airwaves in recent years, as the booming beer industry has been one of the market's top performers.
It is still too early to say how the bill, if signed into law, would affect the market, Yevstafyev said. But he predicted that brewers would not cut their advertising budgets but instead look for alternatives to television.
The TV stations, however, could lose "hundreds of millions of dollars" in revenue, he said, which could negatively affect the quality of programming.
Both Yevstafyev and Mamontov questioned whether governmental decrees were effective in successfully regulating the advertising market.
"A talented man will always find a way around these restrictions," Yevstafyev said.
TITLE: State Will Charge a Fee To Tell What It Is Doing
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - For the first time Russian citizens are to be granted access to information about the government's work - but they will have to pay for it, according to a bill prepared by the Economic Development and Trade Ministry.
According to the 32-page draft, submitted to the government Thursday, citizens will have to pay to get "information about the activities of government bodies and local administrations" and the officials who work in these and other state organizations, the draft posted on the ministry's web site said.
"This is something new for Russia," an official at the ministry said on condition of anonymity Friday. "In Russian law, there is no law on how citizens can use their right of access to information from government bodies."
Although Article 24 of the Constitution guarantees citizens' rights of access to information, no law currently regulates relations between citizens and government bodies.
The only general rules governing how citizens can access information date from 1968, in a resolution passed by the USSR Supreme Soviet. But these are confusing and allow bureaucrats the right to deny people information on government bodies.
The draft law does not explain what kind of information citizens will have the right to access, but the Economic Development and Trade Ministry's press service said Friday that a news conference Tuesday would give "explanations about the issue."
However, the draft says that citizens will be denied access to secret and confidential information.
And while clearly stating that citizens will have to pay for information, the draft fails to explain how much the fee for the service, including duplication and delivery of the information, will be.
But information on government and local administrations given orally will be free.
Citizens will also be able to access free information about the structure of departments, officials' biographies and what information government bodies require to submit official applications.
Journalists, the draft says, will be able to access information for free.
The government will set the fee for information given by federal organizations, while local administrations will set their own fees.
The draft provides for fines of up to 3,000 rubles for officials who give false information.
Vladimir Pribylovsky, the head of the Panorama think tank, said that the country needed a law to regulate access to information, but was skeptical concerning the law's application.
"If government bodies do not want to give you information, they can make such a high fee that citizens will not want to get that information anymore," Pribylovsky said. "Nothing will really change."
Dmitry Orlov at the Agency for Political and Economic Communications, said the law would violate the constitutional right of free access to information.
TITLE: Train Station Set to Become Fun
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Varshavsky station, a 19th century city train station closed for renovation in May 2001, will be turned into an enormous movie theater cum entertainment center.
Moscow-headquartered film distribution and entertainment operator Investkinoproject and St. Petersburg's largest holding company Adamant are investing a total of $40 million into the reconstruction of the station, Investkinoproject's general director Alexander Timofeyev said Monday. The project's completion is expected by September 2005.
The new center will be called Le Train Bleu to commemorate the Calais-Mediterranean Express, more commonly known as Le Train Bleu, that ushered European aristocrats on vacation to the Mediterranean Sea in the late 1800s. "A list of devoted riders [of Le Train Bleu] included Churchill, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Toscanini, Rachmaninoff... ," Armchair France guidebook explains.
Declared by the New York Times to be one of the most beautiful trains of the world, the renovated Train Bleu was overly popular until the 1950s, when air travel gradually replaced train rides.
Timofeyev said that Le Train Bleu was the symbol of true success in the transportation industry - this is why Investkinoproject decided to use the story as the leitmotif in the reconstruction of one of the city's oldest train stations.
The idea of the project belonged to Investkinoproject, that picked Adamant as the developer. Investkinoproject is acting as a co-investor and partner in terms of advising on the concept of construction, Timofeyev said.
The investment funds were raised by Investkinoproject and Adamant, Timofeyev said, refusing to specify the stakes each company holds in the project.
Investkinoproject is also in possession of a share package and the land-leasing rights, Timofeyev said. He did not reveal the amount of the package.
Adamant representatives were not available for comments.
The 32,000 square meter center will accommodate nine screens, bowling, casino, billiard, gaming machines, a 3D ride, coffee-shop and several restaurants. The building will also include a shopping mall, developed by Adamant, featuring several chain boutiques. According to the architectural concept, worked out by Italian designer Jovanni Bartoli, both the outside and the inside facades of the stations will be fully preserved.
However, the colossal statue of Lenin, hovering over the front entrance to the station, will be gone. Instead, a 19th century locomotive train will be installed above the entrance gate.
The city authorities had been offering the Varshavsky station to Adamant for several years, said expert Alexei Shaskolsky of the St. Petersburg Institute for Entrepreneurial Issues. "In its turn, Adamant saw the project as a potential upswing from cloning shopping centers - one thing Adamant must have become bored of by now," he said.
Requiring comprehensive approvals from the city executives, the Varshavsky station project is more troublesome to fulfil than the multiple shopping centers previously built by Adamant, Shaskolsky said, referring to Mercury, Balkansky, Zanevsky Cascade and other centers. At the same time, the project is worth the trouble as an endeavor that promises tasty profits and creates further possibilities for Adamant to become involved in the area's surrounding locations, he added.
Located in proximity of the busy Naberezhnaya Obvodnogo Kanala and Moskovsky Prospekt, densely populated by well-to-do Russians, who presently have no other choice but wait in the traffic every time they want to reach a decent entertainment center, Le Train Bleu will be a definite success, Shaskolsky said.
The center will help to revive the currently run-down area around it, Shaskolsky said. Smolny's Izmaiylovsky Prospekt project which is planned to connect the "old" and the "new" Izmaiylovsky's as a new radial thoroughfare will add to the picture.
In Shaskolsky's opinion, the cinema market in St. Petersburg will take another three years to saturate. Only then, will the movie theaters begin to experience harsh competition, he said.
TITLE: Wordly Hotelier Explores Russian Hospitality
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Since graduating from a hotel management school in France 35 years ago, Henri Blin has not held a single job in France.
Before he was invited to work as general manager of St. Petersburg's Grand Hotel Europe, Blin had lived in Monte Carlo, Cameroon, Tunisia, Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates.
Blin arrived in St. Petersburg in January this year, on the coldest day of last winter. After landing at what Blin called "a nice provincial airport" - Pulkovo 2 - he got a chance to experience the local climate for the first time, for he had never been to Russia before.
"Other job offers I received were in Morocco and Lebanon - both countries I had been to before," said Blin, who has spent the past 12 years in the heat of Dubai as the regional vice president of operations at Intercontinental Hotels, United Arab Emirates. "I like change. Cultural change, change of work," he said.
"I may now say something that people here would not understand, but I am waiting for the winter to come back," Blin added over jasmine green tea on a hot July afternoon.
Blin is also very fond of the city. "There is something magic about the words 'St. Petersburg'," Blin said.
"In school, what we learned from Russian history was mostly beginning from Peter the Great until the Bolshevik Revolution. We learned of the cultural exchanges between France and Russia that happened after the Napoleonic war." Most of that history took place here, sparking Blin's interest in the city long ago.
Half a year after he came to work in St. Petersburg, Blin is not disillusioned.
Russian hospitality was a true discovery, he said. "It is not what they give, it is the way they give it," Blin said of Russian hosts. Blin's second pleasant discovery was the beauty of local women - something he had never seen to such an extent in all his other travels, he said. When asked what he thought of Russian men, Blin said he didn't look.
Married to an Asian beauty, Blin said he discovered that he was highly adaptable to foreign cultures ever since his first internship abroad, in England. It must be something in his genes - all of his three sisters got married to foreigners, and one of his brothers-in-law was Russian.
Blin said his family has more Russian friends in St. Petersburg than foreigners. Meanwhile, he has been taking Russian classes and is in the stage of trying to put his sentences together, he said.
However, there is an imbalance between private hospitality and the ways Russians have to welcome guests at public places, Blin said. When it concerns public places, Russians are much more reserved, he said. "It might be the certain education, the system of the past.
"The good news is that it is changing fast for the better," he said. "And it is up to us - the managers - to provide the appropriate training to the Russian staff, so that they learn to apply the genuine feeling of hospitality that everybody has here to the thousands of guests we receive every day," Blin said.
"I don't teach people. I want to enhance what they already have inside by explaining the guests' expectations," Blin said, referring to Grand Hotel's staff, whom he found surprisingly youthful. "For some reason, maybe because the hotel is 130 years old, I did not expect to see so many young staff members," Blin said, smiling.
Blin is new at the Kempinski chain. He said he had serious plans about promoting both the hotel and the city in the West.
St. Petersburg has been the most talked about travel destination in the West since over a year ago, Blin said. However, he added, the anniversary that gave St. Petersburg "a fantastic exposure" in 2003 is over, and the city authorities are doing nothing more to market the city abroad. "Updated marketing of St. Petersburg as a destination is necessary all the time, because people in the West have so many other choices," Blin said. In that, he added, "hotels have a role a play."
There is a big shortage of city hotels in the summer, but many rooms remain empty in the winter, he said. As arrivals to the city are increasing, the airport will hopefully gradually expand, he said. As for traveling throughout St. Petersburg, proper taxi service is still hard to find, Blin said.
Another major problem that severely hurts St. Petersburg as a travel destination is the hassle involved in obtaining a Russian visa, which is also very expensive. Blin said he recognized that the difficulties exist for Russian nationals going abroad as well. Reaching a compromise regarding the visa issue is a pressing matter for the city, he said.
Yet, with all the incongruities on hand, Blin said St. Petersburg is an "absolutely European city," just as Peter the Great had conceived it. Blin said he saw nothing Asian about it.
Meanwhile it was Asia that had made Blin open to other people and cultures.
Decades of working in hotel management in Asia did not just help him acquire fluent Filipino and colloquial Thai, but also taught him to accept other peoples' different ways of behavior, Blin said.
In Blin's view, the key to improvement lies in concentrating on things that work well. "How much time do you want to spend analyzing the weaknesses of people? It will get you nowhere," he said.
Europe's director general Andrei Mikeshin said Blin has not been living in St. Petersburg long enough, and has been spending too much time at work, to have formed a solid opinion of St. Petersburg.
On the other hand, Blin's working output is unique, Mikeshin said. Having been here for only half a year, Blin has already worked out a whole training program for the staff, he said.
"Blin is amazingly determined. Once he sets a goal, he reaches it," Mikeshin said.
Mikeshin supports Blin's idea of marketing the city abroad. "What else can we do if the city government plans to spend only $200,000 for that purpose in 2004?" he said.
Hans Sebesta, managing director at Baltschug Kempinski Hotel Moscow said that Blin looks at Russia in view of its solid fundamentals, such as education, culture and history, and sees great potential.
Sebesta attributes Blin's somewhat romantic perception of St. Petersburg to his occupation. "Blin is watching St. Petersburg partly gain back its historical position," Sebesta said.
However, Sebesta added, being actively involved in the business world, Blin is well aware of the "existing contradictions in both St. Petersburg and Russia as a whole."
TITLE: The Kremlin Shows Its True Face
TEXT: I have never been so concerned about the future of this country as I am today. I don't expect the government to start rounding up dissidents, a practice stopped by Mikhail Gorbachev in the mid-1980s. And I don't think they'll reactivate the gulag.
There is no compelling economic or political justification for a return to a system that proved so incredibly inefficient, especially since Russia no longer has a need for slave labor.
Instead, I fear that the regime will adopt the practice, popular in some Latin American autocracies, of simply killing people on the streets or making them disappear. This sort of thing occurred in Ukraine not so long ago, and it continues in Belarus today. It may have even begun in Russia: The St. Petersburg journalist Maxim Maximov vanished a month ago.
My pessimism is a reaction to the Kremlin's ruthless actions over the past month. During President Vladimir Putin's first term, the Kremlin at least came up with cover stories to account for its policies, such as the need to strengthen the state and regain control by putting the fear of God into the oligarchs.
Or the goal of increasing economic growth by attracting foreign and domestic investment. Or the desire to restore a measure of the social justice eroded during the Boris Yeltsin years. Skillfully peddled by the Kremlin's spin doctors, these cover stories were readily consumed both at home and abroad.
But in the last month the Kremlin has shown its true face. The highly publicized Yukos case is just the most glaring example.
Few still believe that the reason for the government's assault on Yukos was that Mikhail Khodorkovsky planned to sell the oil major to an American company, or that Khodorkovsky wound up in jail for breaking an unwritten agreement not to venture into politics. Such factors might explain why Khodorkovsky was the first major oligarch put behind bars (after Vladimir Gusinsky and Boris Berezovsky were driven out of the country), but they are not the main reason.
By driving down the value of Yukos shares to a three-year low - the company's stock has lost 60 percent of its value so far - the Kremlin has made perfectly clear that its aim is to hand over the company at a cut-rate price to the new oligarchs in epaulets who make up Putin's inner circle. And the Kremlin has made no effort to conceal its motives. This means that the West has lost whatever leverage it once had over the Kremlin.
The second cause for pessimism has received far less press than the first. The State Duma recently passed two new laws. One aims to deprive Russia's poor and needy of a range of subsidies and discounts on transportation, medicine and other essentials. The second, a law on the federal bureaucracy, ensures that 2.5 million federal employees will receive free medical care at the nation's best medical facilities (controlled by the Kremlin's Department of Business Affairs), free use of public transportation, the right to free apartments, dachas, subsidized vacations and more. In short, all the goodies once enjoyed by the Soviet bureaucracy, and which constitute a bonus worth thousands of dollars on top of already generous salaries that were increased by five to 12 times in May and June.
There isn't room here to go into the Kremlin's possible motivation in pushing these laws through parliament. What's amazing is that the Kremlin has made no effort to separate these two laws in the public consciousness. After all, the move to cut subsidies for millions of Russians has proven deeply unpopular, and has driven down Putin's approval rating. The Kremlin has made clear that it no longer cares about public opinion.
No constraints on the Kremlin remain any longer. The Kremlin chekists have crossed the Rubicon; they have no choice but to keep following the course they have set in the past few months.
There is no best-case scenario for what happens next, but it's easy to envision the worst-case. Russia is on the fast track to becoming a corporate, fascist-type state. The assault on Yukos will be repeated all across the country against all sorts of businesses, both large and small, though companies in the natural resources, telecommunications and finance sectors are most vulnerable.
In their campaign to seize control of other people's property, the Kremlin chekists will have to come up with a blanket justification. The "war against the oligarchs" line won't work once they start going after medium-sized and small businesses.
One way to keep people silent as their neighbors and fellow citizens are plundered is the skillful deployment of nationalism, dividing business owners into the patriotic and the unpatriotic.
"You're either with us or against us." The rest will follow.
Yevgenia Albats, who hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio on Sundays, contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times.
TITLE: City Artists Shouldn't Measure Their Worth In Privileges
TEXT: Today I want to talk about the recent scandal involving the St. Petersburg administration's attempt to deprive artists of the right to rent studios at reduced rates.
In the city there are several thousand artists (or, more truthfully, members of "old Soviet" creative unions). They rent premises for low prices for their creative work.
How does one determine who is now an artist and who is not an artist at all; whether the artist is using the studio for non-profit work or for his own needs? You'll agree it's a difficult situation, even if you look it from a formal perspective. If you look informally at who is a good artist and who is bad, then you are on a sticky wicket.
It's obvious - simply by definition - that not everything is legitimate here. When privileges are on offer, all kinds of crooks try to get hold of them.
But the government needs something with which to top up its budget. For this reason the State Property Management Committee decided simply to raise the rental rate without considering the details. It also intended to take payment several years in advance. The best thing really would be to have these studios completely privatised.
The artists have grown obstinate. A number of them, along with the sculptor and head of the St. Petersburg Artists' Union, Albert Charkin, arrived at the Legislative Assembly with banners bearing the slogans: "[Governor Valentina] Matviyenko, don't be grudging, buy paintings!"; "St Petersburg is for the rich, the bandits and the thieves"; "Culture's grave-diggers are Russia's grave-diggers"; "The artists' canvasses bind the feet of the city administration"; "Shame on the officials of the cultural capital" and also a quotation from Nekrasov - "There have been worse times, but none as mean!" Incidentally, Albert Charkin himself is the sculptor of numerous statues, and earlier, in the role of an unnoticed Carbonari and freemason, said: "If the studios are going to be sold, then the artists will either have to leave for the West, or change their profession".
I don't think the demonstrators achieved much just by citing the classics. But they did attract the attention of a few city- and even world-famous leaders of the arts community, like the famous Mitki group of modern artists. It soon became quite clear: these people, and others from the same class, are the ones who can cripple the St. Petersburg government's reputation to such an extent that no replenishment of the budget will make up for it.
The government has come to this realization. Matviyenko said that she "understood the emotional flaring-up of passions" surrounding the studios, and considers the decision of the State Property Management Committee to be "not quite correct."
She went on: "Sometimes, in trying to achieve such a worthy aim as improving mutual relations, officials don't act completely successfully," she observed. "The aim of the decision was to help artists acquire studios as their own property, so that they could gain more certainty in the future.
"But the explanatory work was not carried out. The form of the decision should have been different."
In sum, having agreed that despite the abolition of the order the State Property Management Committee will continue checks of the whole use of artists' studios, officialdom has largely backed down.
Artists who occupy premises according to the law will rent them according to the old conditions. In other words, everything will remain as it was before.
This begs the question: was it worth stirring up trouble just to back down? Should they have backed down? The argument that artists need special premises for their work - and almost free of charge at that - is easy to criticize in our so-called "mean" times. So why not then allocate separate premises to music groups?
Don't they need somewhere to rehearse? And what about independent theater groups forced to rent premises on market prices? The list goes on.
In a word, claims that artists carry out a specific function in the "cultural capital" does not stand up to criticism. Why shouldn't artists live by the same rules - those of the market - by which everyone else lives? (One could say, thank God they live at all). Nevertheless, what is happening here is a kind of feudal privilege system like those in the aristocracy in past centuries or among the Soviet elite in the times of allocation. (In fact, the idea that the state should provide its artists with their own premises appeared in the course of the Stalinist battle against egalitarianism. They were not provided for free or for rental, but for a compromise).
To sum up this episode, we can reach two conclusions: one regrettable and one celebratory. We'll begin with the latter: public opinion remains a huge force, and this means the government is reluctant to argue with it over trivial matters.
This is worthwhile remembering for the future. Furthermore, there has been another resolution abolished on the quiet, and that is the decree on the increase in rent for educational institutions.
The one regrettable conclusion is that the government has no system, no character, and is unable to make a prognosis.
What kind of partisan style of government is it? They come up against opposition and retreat. This is not a regimented army - it's a horde. It's not for nothing that the people in the know point out that centuries have past and still the Tartar-Mongol tradition, the principal culture of incursion, is alive and flourishing.
Vladimir Gryaznevich is a political analyst. with Expert Severo-Zapad magazine. This comment was first broadcast on Ekho Moskvy in St. Petersburg on Friday.
TITLE: Chris Floyd's Global Eye
TEXT: Generation Gap
America calls its soldiers who fought in World War II "the greatest generation." They are hymned by Hollywood, celebrated by publishers and politicians, hailed at every turn. And for their troubled descendants, whose military misadventures stretch from My Lai to Abu Ghraib, the clean-limbed victors of the "last good war" do indeed shine out like heroes from a lost golden age.
Yet despite the vast tonnage of celluloid and printer's ink devoted to their praise, what is perhaps the truest, highest measure of their worth has been almost universally neglected. And what is this hidden glory, which does more honor to the people of the United States than every single military action ordered by their corruption-riddled leaders during the past 50 years? It's the fact that in the midst of history's most vicious, all-devouring, inhuman war, only about 15 percent of American soldiers on the battlefield actually tried to kill anyone.
In-depth studies by the U.S. Army after the war showed that between 80 to 85 percent of the greatest generation never fired their weapons at an exposed enemy in combat, military psychologist Lt. Colonel Dave Grossman reports in Christianity Today. Many times they had the chance, but could not bring themselves to do it. They either withheld their fire altogether or else shot into the air, to the side, anywhere but at the fellow human beings - their blood kin in biology, mind and mortality - facing them across the line. This reticence is even more remarkable given the incessant demonization of the enemy by the top brass, especially in the Pacific, where the Japanese - soldiers and civilians - were routinely portrayed by military propaganda as simian, sub-human creatures fit only for extermination.
Yet even with official license given to the most virulent prejudice, even with the sanction of a just cause (self-defense against aggression), even with the incitements of mortal fear, of grief and anger over slain comrades, even with all the moral chaos endemic to warfare, American soldiers killed only with the greatest reluctance, in the direst extremity. These were not "warriors," bloodthirsty automatons with stripped-down brains and cauterized souls, slavering in Pavlovian fury at the bell-clap of command. No, they were real men, willing, as Grossman notes, to stand up for a cause, even die for it, but not willing, in the end, to transgress the natural law (implanted by God or evolution, take your pick) that says: Do not kill your own kind - and every person of every race and nation is your own kind.
You would think that this apotheosis of human transcendence, achieved, in the best democratic fashion, by ordinary conscripts - farmboys and dock workers, factory hands, bank clerks, guitar players, teachers, cab drivers, hobos, card sharks, college men - would have been inscribed on plates of gold and fixed to the walls of the Capitol for all time, a blazon of national greatness. Just think of it: Soldiers who hated to kill, who went out of their way to avoid killing or even firing their weapons, who held on to their essential humanity in the face of the severest provocations - and yet still won battle after battle, marching to victory in history's greatest war.
But far from celebrating this example of genuine glory, the military brass were horrified at the low "firing rates" and anemic "kill ratios" of American soldiery. They immediately set about trying to break the next generation of recruits of their natural resistance to slaughtering their own kind. Incorporating the latest techniques for psychological manipulation, new training programs were designed to brutalize the mind and habituate soldiers to the idea of killing automatically, by reflex, without the intervention of any of those "inefficient" scruples displayed by their illustrious predecessors.
And it worked. The dehumanization process led to a steady rise in firing rates for U.S. soldiers during subsequent conflicts. In the Korean War, 55 percent were ready to pump hot lead into enemy flesh. And by the time the greatest generation's own children took the field, in Vietnam, the willingness to slaughter was almost total: 95 percent of combat troops there fired with the intent to kill.
Today, in the quagmire of occupied Iraq, the brutalizing beat goes on. "Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, it's like it pounds in my brain," a U.S. soldier told the Los Angeles Times last month. Another shrugged at the sight of freshly killed bodies. "It doesn't bother me at all," he said. "I'm a warrior." Said a third: "We talk about killing all the time. I never used to be this way ... but it's like I can't stop. I'm worried what I'll be like when I get home." A few military officials are beginning to worry too, noting the high rates of suicide, mental damage and emotional torment among combat veterans.
But the warlords of the White House - notorious battlefield shirkers who prefer to do their killing by remote control - have little regard for the cannon fodder they churn through in their quest for dominance and loot. "Training's intent is to re-create battle, to make it an automatic behavior among soldiers," says Colonel Thomas Burke, Pentagon director of mental health policy. Any efforts to mitigate the moral schizophrenia induced by this training would undermine "effectiveness in battle," he adds.
Yet strangely enough, this "warrior ethos" has singularly failed to produce the kind of lasting victories won by those 15-percenters of yore. Could it be that the systematic degradation of natural morality and common human feeling - especially in the service of dubious ends - is not actually the best way to achieve national greatness?
For annotational references, see Opinion at www.sptimesrussia.com
TITLE: Terror Alert Raised at U.S. Financial Targets
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON - Federal authorities warned of potential Al Qaida bombing attacks on prominent financial institutions in New York, Washington and Newark, prompting increased security and concern from the unusually detailed information unearthed on the plot.
"The quality of this intelligence - based on multiple reporting streams, in multiple locations - is rarely seen, and it is alarming in both the amount and specificity of the information," Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said at a hastily arranged news conference Sunday.
A cache of recently obtained information - including photos, drawings and written documents - indicates that Al Qaida operatives have undertaken meticulous preparations to prepare a case for five specific buildings: The Citigroup Center building and the New York Stock Exchange in New York, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank buildings in Washington and Prudential Financial Inc.'s headquarters in Newark.
Ridge raised the terror threat level for financial institutions in the three cities to orange, or high alert, the second highest level on the government's five-point spectrum. Elsewhere, he said, the alert would remain at yellow, or elevated.
"Iconic economic targets are at the heart of [the terrorists'] interest," Ridge said.
The fresh intelligence did not give crucial details about when, where or how terrorists may strike, Ridge said, but government analysis indicates terrorists may prefer to use car or truck bombs or other means to physically destroy targets.
Briefing reporters in New York, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said that starting Monday, trucks would be banned from the Manhattan-bound side of the Williamsburg Bridge, which connects Brooklyn and lower Manhattan. Commercial vehicles also were banned from the inbound of the Holland Tunnel from New Jersey, among other measures.
In Newark, police set up metal fences surrounding the Prudential Plaza building, blocked off two city streets and toted assault rifles.
And in Washington, Mayor Anthony Williams put the entire city on an orange alert, although the Homeland Security Department has not officially raised the threat level outside financial-sector buildings. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey said teams of bomb-sniffing dogs would sweep areas around the World Bank and IMF headquarters, and officers will conduct more traffic stops of large vehicles in the area.
Officials have warned that the Al Qaida network, blamed for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, may launch a large-scale assault in hopes of disrupting the Nov. 2 elections.
TITLE: Poland Marks Warsaw Uprising
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WARSAW - In a gesture of humility, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder bowed on the steps of a memorial to the Warsaw Uprising against the Nazi occupation and expressed shame Sunday for the "immeasurable suffering" inflicted by Germans when they crushed the revolt 60 years ago.
Schroeder became the first German chancellor to attend an anniversary of the two-month uprising, which ended with 200,000 Warsaw residents dead and most of the city systematically destroyed by the Nazis.
He bowed on the steps of the Warsaw Uprising Memorial as a lone trumpeter played taps. Just before, sirens sounded across Warsaw at 5 p.m., the hour the uprising began on Aug. 1, 1944.
"Today we bow in shame in the face of the Nazi troops' crimes," Schroeder said. "At this place of Polish pride and German shame, we hope for reconciliation and peace.
"Never again must we allow such terrible wrong. This task unites the peoples of Europe."
Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski called Schroeder's visit historic.
"We were divided by an abyss filled with pain and blood," Kwasniewski said in his speech. "Today we welcome the chancellor as a representative of a friendly and close nation, as an ally and a partner."
But when Schroeder joined Secretary of State Colin Powell and Britain's Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott at another monument to Polish freedom fighters, he was booed by a crowd that included many uprising veterans. One man held up a sign, "Heil Schroeder."
"Schroeder's presence is against my sense of what is right," said Leokadia Borzezinska, who watched Warsaw burn in 1944 as an 8-year-old girl. "The uprising is a very Polish experience."
Wojciech Wiewiorowski, 76, who was showing his grandson places where he fought, told The Associated Press, "I do not feel good about this. We have a proverb in Poland that says Germans are better off one meter under the ground."
Remembrance of the 63-day battle against Nazi troops by Poland's poorly armed and out-manned Home Army resistance movement and civilians - even children - has provoked an outpouring of patriotism in Poland.
Powell expressed "admiration for the spirit that kept freedom alive during those terrible days of World War II," drawing an allusion to Poland's military support in Iraq.
"The important thing is that Poland and the United States are united today," he said. "Poland will never be alone again."
Nearly five years after the Nazis invaded Poland, starting World War II, the Home Army rose up, with Soviet troops just outside Warsaw and Allied forces advancing eastward after the D-Day landings. After the Poles were crushed, the Germans imprisoned fighters and expelled civilians, many to concentration camps.
In contrast to the communist era, Poles now could also bitterly recall in public that Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's Red Army stood by on the east bank of the Vistula River while the Germans quashed the uprising. Stalin also prevented British and American planes from airlifting supplies to the insurgents by refusing them permission to refuel at Red Army airfields.
"There were difficulties in reaching Poland, but attempts were made," Powell said Sunday.
Stalin maintained the uprising was an irresponsible act that would set back the war effort. But it is widely believed his real motive was fear that the rebels would become Poland's future leadership and resist his scheme of bringing eastern Europe under communist domination.
Russian President Vladimir Putin sent a message to Kwasniewski praising the resistance fighters for contributing to the Allied victory.
In a second message addressed to all Poles, he suggested that both countries put past animosity behind them and work for relations "free of stereotypes."
Polish-born Pope John Paul II paid tribute to "the heroes of the capital" in remarks to Polish pilgrims at his summer residence in Castel Gandolfo, Italy.
Relations with Germany have vastly improved since the collapse of communism in 1989 ended Europe's division. On May 1, Poland joined its western neighbor in the European Union.
"I consider it a great personal honor to have been invited and a big-hearted gesture to my country, which brought such immeasurable suffering to the Poles with the war it started," Schroeder said after meeting Polish Prime Minister Marek Belka.
TITLE: Christians Under Fire In Iraq
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAGHDAD - Iraq's top Shiite Muslim cleric on Monday condemned as "hideous crimes" the coordinated bomb attacks on five churches in Baghdad and Mosul that killed 11 people and marked the first major attacks on Iraq's minority Christians since the insurgency began.
Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani said in a statement that the Sunday assaults on Christian churches "targeted Iraq's unity, stability and independence."
The unprecedented attacks against Iraq's 750,000-member Christian - hitting four churches in Baghdad and one in Mosul - appeared to confirm community members' fears they might be targeted as suspected collaborators with American forces amid a rising tide of Islamic fundamentalism.
Many of Iraq's Christians have already fled to neighboring Jordan and Syria to escape violence in the insurgency-wracked nation.
"We condemn and reproach these hideous crimes and deem necessary the collaboration of everyone - the government and the people - in putting an end to aggression on Iraqis," said the cleric, who is based in the southern city of Najaf.
TITLE: Slip-Up at Diana Memorial
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON - It was meant to be the perfect tribute to the "people's princess" - a pool of water designed for children to frolic in, rather than a stark stone obelisk to be stared at. But bad luck and apparent poor planning have thwarted the hopes behind the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain in London's Hyde Park.
On Sunday, the circular moat lay drained of water behind a 7-foot-high link fence to keep people out.
"It's disappointing. We came to the park specially to see it, and it's just a dry stone circle," said Australian tourist Ruth Petersen, 26.
The $6.5 million fountain, opened in a grand ceremony by Queen Elizabeth II less than a month ago, was closed indefinitely after three people, including a child, slipped and injured themselves while wading in it.
Environmental experts blamed the designers, claiming it should have been obvious that a granite moat combined with flowing fresh water would be a breeding ground for slippery algae.
Culture Minister Tessa Jowell criticized some of the visitors to the memorial for dropping litter, including diapers, into the fountain and allowing their dogs into the water.
TITLE: Federer Proves Unstoppable As Roddick Loses Again
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TORONTO - Roger Federer won his third straight title Sunday, beating Andy Roddick 7-5, 6-3 in the final of the $2.5 million Tennis Masters Canada.
The top-ranked Federer, who won his eighth event of the year, extended his winning streak to 23 matches and raised his career record against the No. 2-ranked Roddick to 7-1.
"Andy, I'm sorry you didn't win another final,'' said Federer. "But in the future I'm sure we'll play many, many more great matches and you'll get your fair share of them.''
Roddick defeated Federer in the semifinals of this event last year and went on to win the tournament. Since then, Roddick is 0-3 against Federer, including a four-set loss in the Wimbledon final.
"I'd like to congratulate Roger,'' Roddick said. "You're certainly becoming very annoying.''
Federer was the more solid of the two before a sun-drenched sellout crowd of 12,000 spectators at Rexall Centre. Roddick often went to the net, attempting to dictate the match, but was often thwarted by solid returns or passing shots.
"I thought I played the big points pretty well,'' Roddick said. "He just made great shots.''
Federer's 23-match win streak is the longest on the men's tour since Pete Sampras won 24 straight five years ago.
The match marked the first time the top seeds in this event met in the final since 1995, when Andre Agassi defeated Sampras.
Roddick was trying to become the first champion to successfully defend the title since Agassi accomplished the feat in 1994-95.
Federer got a break in the 12th game and took the first set. After gaining the advantage with a stellar backhand that handcuffed Roddick at the net, Federer captured the win when Roddick's forehand went long.
Roddick then hurled his racket into the nearby photographer's pit in frustration.
TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: In a Lotto Trouble?
BERLIN (Reuters) - Israel's top tennis player Anna Smashnova-Pistolesi may not be able to compete at the Athens Olympics because of a sponsorship row over whose clothes she should wear.
Smashnova-Pistolesi, the world number 17 and a winner of nine career WTA titles, is one of her country's best medal hopes at the Games starting on August 13.
However, the Israeli Olympic Committee has said there is a real possibility the player will not be at the Games if she does not accept wearing only the clothes of the team's sponsor.
Smashnova-Pistolesi's regular clothing sponsor, Lotto, says it will allow her to wear the clothes of Speedo, the Olympic team's supplier, for all events in Athens expect her matches.
Speedo, however, insists Smashnova-Pistolesi should wear its clothes at all times.
Drawn In The USA
NEW YORK (Reuters) - AC Milan squeezed past Manchester United 9-8 on penalties after the two sides drew their Champions World Series match 1-1 in New Jersey Saturday.
The Italians won the shootout at the Giants Stadium in East Rutherford after United captain Roy Keane and goalkeeper Tim Howard hit the post with their penalties.
United, who also lost on penalties to Bayern Munich in Chicago and were beaten 2-1 by Celtic in Philadelphia, took a 33rd-minute lead through Paul Scholes in the final game of their U.S. tour.
But Andriy Shevchenko equalised in injury time for Milan, who were also scheduled to face Chelsea in Philadelphia yesterday.
Windies Winded
LONDON (Reuters) - West Indies captain Brian Lara must now be rueing his words after a 210-run defeat in the First Test and another comprehensive beating Sunday left his team trailing 2-0 in the four-test series.
Lara had suggested England had no "Plan B" in their bowling attack if lanky strike bowler Steve Harmison did not perform.
The derisory remarks might have been well-founded after Harmison took 23 wickets in England's historic 3-0 series win in the Caribbean earlier this year.
Yet so far in this series Harmison has only taken three wickets with much maligned spinner Ashley Giles grabbing 18.
Giles finished with match figures of nine for 122 as England eased to a 256-run second test win at Edgbaston.
"Giles is bowling better than ever," captain Michael Vaughan said at Edgbaston. "The team is playing well but it is down to individuals putting in good performances."