SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #995 (63), Tuesday, August 17, 2004
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TITLE: NATO in Baltics 'Dubious'
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said NATO's expansion into the Baltic States is of dubious merit and, although Russia is not bothered by it, it fears NATO air patrols over the former Soviet republics could accidentally spark confrontations.
"From a military point of view, NATO military jets are no threat for Russia," he said Saturday. "The problem is not the planes, the geography cannot be changed even though they are capable of reaching St. Petersburg in 2 to 3 minutes."
"The thing is these four plans can not intercept al-Qaida, Taliban or anyone else," he added. "The only thing they can intercept is a mythical Soviet threat."
Ivanov was speaking at a news conference in St. Petersburg where he held three days of talks with his U.S. counterpart Donald Rumsfeld.
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization four months ago and NATO aircraft have been guarding their skies ever since.
"It's not our business to discuss how the money of taxpayers from NATO member countries is spent," Ivanov said. "But the security of NATO has not improved with the Baltic States joining it. These countries are consumers of security, but not its producers."
Rumsfeld suggested that the Baltic States and Russia should sign an agreement to limit the presence of ordinary forces in the region to lower the risk of military accidents between the new NATO members and Russia.
Ivanov also attacked the Baltic States' view on the history of relations with the Soviet Union.
"From our point of view, the Baltic States have a poor human rights record," he said. "At least by the standards of European countries and the EU they do," he added. "The construction of monuments to SS servicemen is unacceptable."
He was referring to recent reports that Estonian World War II veterans are erecting a monument to soldiers who fought for the country's independence. The monument was inaugurated this month in Sinimae in Northeast Estonia, where an SS division comprising 70,000 Estonian troops fought the Red Army in 1944.
Estonian Prime Minister Juhan Parts has condemned plans by Estonian veterans to build more memorials for soldiers who served in the SS, which was the branch of the German armed forces at the forefront of war crimes in World War II.
"The time has come to understand that the time to build things like that has passed in Estonia," Interfax quoted Parts as saying Thursday.
Parts said he respected soldiers who fought for the freedom of Estonia, "however a memorial displaying a German soldier with a slogan 'for those who fought for a free Europe' has nothing to do with a historical reality."
Ivanov told Rumsfeld that Russia has no agreement to avoid dangerous military activity with the Baltic States even though it has such agreements with the United States, Norway and other NATO member countries.
Rumsfeld said such an agreement would improve security.
"This is quite a new problem," he said. "I absolutely agree that neighboring countries have to have agreements to avoid dangerous military developments. The U.S. has such agreements with many countries."
The men were speaking after The Washington Post recently reported that the Pentagon intends to relocate 70,000 to 100,000 military personnel from bases in Western Europe and Asia. A large number of troops will be sent to bases in the U.S. and some are to transfer to Eastern Europe, closer to Russia.
Changes in location and the numbers of U.S. troops stationed abroad are explained by the demands of the global war on terrorism and by new opportunities as technology develops, the newspaper reported Saturday, quoting anonymous sources in the White House.
Ivanov said Rumsfeld had informed him in detail of the Pentagon's plans.
Next month Russia and the U.S. plan to conduct a joint military exercise in the sea off Norway to check the level of cooperation between the two navies.
"Large forces of Russia's Northern Fleet will be involved in this training exercise," Ivanov said. "The main goal will be training on the operative compatibility of the Russian and the U.S. fleet."
The Russian minister also raised concerns about dangerous developments in Georgia, saying he expressed "certain fears and concerns which the Russian Federation has in this connection," but did not specify which.
"It is at least good news there was no shooting last night [Friday]," Ivanov said.
TITLE: Gymnast Recalls 1954 Olympics
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Galina Shamrai, a member of the first Soviet team to go to the Olympics, says the Russian team has it much easier this time around. Her team endured blatant hostility from referees and other athletes at the 1954 Helsinki Games and knew defeat meant more that just returning home without a medal.
Helsinki hosted the second post-World War II Games but the first for Soviet athletes. For a generation of athletes like Shanrai, then a 16-year-old gymnast from Tashkent, the event provided a first glimpse of the outside world.
"We could feel nothing but hostility coming from all sides - our competitors and the referees - but we knew that we had to win no matter what," Shamrai, 72, said in a telephone interview in which she rarely minced words.
Shamrai came seventh in individual competition in what ended up being her first and last Olympics. Her team won nine gold medals, while the Soviet Union took a total of 22 gold medals.
Though winning was the top priority for each member of the Soviet team, they did not have particularly good training facilities ahead of the Games, Shamrai said. Gymnasts worked out in an old building in Vyborg, just across from the Finnish border, and even had to sew badges onto their own uniforms identifying themselves as players in the Soviet team.
"We stayed and trained in an abandoned navy school building where conditions were literally Spartan: no running water and sometimes no light," Shamrai said.
Shamrai, the youngest athlete on the national team, said she did not understand at the time what was clear to the older athletes - that failure could lead to public disgrace and political persecution.
The Soviet soccer team, which lost 1-3 to Yugoslavia in Helsinki, was swiftly punished upon its return. (Yugoslavia went on to win the silver medal, and Hungary took gold.) Soccer club Russian Champions CDSA, which had five players on the national team, was disbanded "for undermining the prestige of Soviet sports and the Soviet state."
Shamrai, who luckily avoided persecution, takes special pride in the fact that her husband, Anatoly Ilyin, scored the winning goal against Yugoslavia for the national soccer team at the next Olympic Games, in 1956 in Melbourne.
She never again competed in the Olympics because of a knee injury, but she did go on to coach 18 medalists in a 23-year career with the Spartak gymnastics team.
Her career has taken several unexpected twists since she retired from Spartak in the late 1980s. After initially teaching gymnastics classes to mentally disabled children, she went on to work in the Moscow metro, sitting in the booth by the turnstiles, and finally delivering mail for the postal service.
The last job proved the most challenging, Shamrai said, because in addition to the usual newspapers and letters she had to deliver pensions to retirees. An old woman walking around with cash was an easy target, and she was attacked by muggers three times.
But no one ever got away with any money, Shamrai said. "The fact that I, in my 60s, could still run fast and run away from a hooligan or kick him hard in the balls helped me," she said.
She expressed satisfaction that she took part in the Olympics long before issues arose like doping.
"We did not know what dope was," she said.
Although she is no longer connected to gymnastics, she is eager to see how the Russian team performs at the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, which opened Friday.
However, she doesn't have high hopes for victory. "The best days for the Russian team are over. My only hope is in [Svetlana] Khorkina. She should deliver a good result," Shamrai said, referring to the 2000 Sydney Olympics gold medalist.
Like most old athletes, Shamrai has found herself on the brink of poverty after retirement. Her fortunes improved in January 2003 when she and some 600 other former Olympic athletes got a small increase to their pensions in recognition of what they have done for the country.
"I won't say how much I have now, but it is enough to buy things and not just smell the food at the store," she said.
TITLE: In-Fill Construction Spreads Into Center
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: In-fill construction that is already destroying trees, open spaces and yards on the outskirts is about to spread into the center of St. Petersburg, with a leading city construction company announcing last week its intention to build an elite residential complex in the Mikhailovsky Park behind the Ethnography Museum.
Korporatsiya S's $25million to $30 million project is for a 7,000-square-meter, six-story residential building, together with a 3,500-square-meter storage facility and a 1,000-meter exhibition hall that will both be given to the museum.
City Hall backs the project.
"The project is in the process of being approved by City Hall," Lyudmila Likhachyova, spokeswoman for City Hall's architecture committee, said Friday in a telephone interview. "We made about seven criticisms of it and, just a few days ago, the amended project was sent back to us, but I haven't looked at it yet.
"The project is quite risky from the point of view of public relations," she added. "It's risky, even taking into account that it offers a solution to the difficulties in financing cultural property through cooperation with a business, because all projects have provoked waves of public protests against construction in green areas."
The project was first announced in January 2002, but was suspended after it was resisted by Nikita Yavein, then head of City Hall's Committee for the Preservation of Historical Monuments, or KGIOP.
In a strange reversal, it was Yavein, no longer head of the committee, who was a member of a St. Petersburg Union of Architects panel that, at the request of Korporatsiya S, selected a design for the project from among eight proposed by leading city architects.
Likhachyova said the developer paid $10,000 to each member of the commission to chose the best project.
"There is nothing illegal in them getting money," she said. "This is a judging panel organized by an investor."
Korporatsiya S is well known in the city for its central-city projects that have received a cool reception from the public. Among them are an elite residential building in front of the Mikhailovsky Palace and a shopping center at 5 Kazanskaya Ulitsa in the Herzen University garden next to Kazan Cathedral.
"Every project we do provokes heightened interest from ordinary citizens and even from those who issued permission for us to build and law enforcement bodies," newspaper St. Petersburg Real Estate quoted Vasily Sopromadze, Korporatsiya S's , as saying last year.
"We will keep building no matter what," he added.
However, Korporatsiya S is tight-lipped about the Ethnography Museum project.
"It is too early to talk about it," Korporatsiya S manager Isaac Weisman said Friday in a telephone interview. "It is in a state of embryo. There is a tender being planned, so the exact parameters of the project won't be known for at least half a year."
In June, Maxim Sokolov, a former general director of Korpotatsiya S, was appointed to head the City Hall's committee for investments and strategic projects. Asked if this meant Korporatsiya S is getting a helping hand from within the city administration, Weisman denied it.
"The projects we run have been in the works for quite a while and he left us just recently," he said. "We don't need anybody's assistance dealing with technical questions, which is our main task."
Likhachyova said construction in in-fill areas will continue for another three years and will stop only when the number of sites runs out.
"This is inevitable after the city's failure to invest in the development of infrastructure as was the case every year under Communism," she said.
"A list of in-fill construction sites has been completed by City Hall recently," she added. "Most of them are already in somebody's ownership. The number of such areas is finite and it's shrinking quite fast."
Of the 320 sites on the list, more than half are in the city center. The list has not been approved by Governor Valentina Matviyenko because "it is incomplete," Likhachyova said.
In June, more than 50 editors and journalists from 30 St. Petersburg media outlets wrote to President Vladimir Putin asking him to halt in-fill construction in St. Petersburg because it was violating residents' constitutional rights.
Olesya Galkina, director of the Konsyerzh publishing house which initiated the action, says she keeps receiving answers from the presidential administration informing her that that information has been received by the Kremlin, but no reply from Putin. By law, he must reply before the end of this month, she said Friday in a telephone interview.
"I don't know what I can do anymore," she added. "People are fighting. Some are fighting, while others have given up. I have a sense that the authorities just spit on people's interests and will keep approving construction projects anywhere as long as there is a vacant site. Everything is for sale in the city now."
Galkina intends to organize a round table for the local media this autumn to make more noise about the problem. She still hopes not all the options to influence the authorities had been exhausted.
"We've got to do something on this matter," she said.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Convict Recaptured
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - A convict Denis Nikitin, who escaped from the hospital of a city prison on Wednesday morning, was detained the next afternoon, Interfax reported Monday, citing the police.
Nikitin, 27, was serving his fourth term in prison after being convcited of theft.
He was detained at an apartment of a woman friend that was one of the addresses the police checked.
Nikitin passed through six unlocked doors on his way out of the prison, the police said, quoted by Fontanka.ru.
Buildings Easier to Get
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - City Hall's construction committee has prepared a draft decree to simplify the way in which investors can acquire dilapidated buildings for renovation, Interfax reported Friday, quoting Yevgeny Yatsishin, head of the committee.
"Today federal legislation makes the process of handing over old buildings for renovation more difficult," he was quoted saying. "We have prepared a draft decree that would simplify the way damaged and old buildings would be handed over for renovation and relocation of residents."
Month of Sports Starts
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - City Hall has announced an official month of sports, Interfax reported Monday, quoting Oleg Vdovin, head of the city government sports committee.
"This year we have three very important events taking place almost at once, including the All-Russia Day of Sports People, the Olympic Games in Greece and the 80th anniversary since sports policy was set up in the city," Interfax cited Vdovin as saying.
The month of sport started Saturday and will finish Sept. 14, Vdovin said.
Tallinn Alleges Inciting
TALLINN (SPT) - The Estonian Nationalities Minister Paul-Eerik Rummo has accused "Russia's revanchist forces" of trying to inflame relations between different nationalities in the Baltic States, Interfax reported Monday, quoting the Estonian Chancellor's Office.
Out-of-date mentalities had led some Russians to target different ethnicities in the Baltic States in attempts to manipulate nationalistic sentiments, Interfax cited Rummo as saying at a meeting with Latvia's Minister for Integration Nils Muiznieks on Monday. This was bound to fail because it contradicts the interests of these people, Rummo added.
The ministers reached an agreement to run an international conference in the near future to show how the Baltic States solve integration problems.
TITLE: Monkey Family Robinson Gets Fright
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Two of six monkeys that were transferred from the Leningrad Zoo to an island in the middle of the Yelagin Island's Central Park of Culture and Rest in early July tried to escape their temporary home early this month.
Domna, a female pigtail macaque, escaped from the island by swimming back to the park on Aug. 7. A day later Taras, a male and head of the group, followed her. Scientists from the zoo tracked the fugitives down before they could leave the park.
It is presumed that Domna and Taras fled the island after having a stressful encounter with humans, who are forbidden to visit the island.
"We found the damaged documents of a man on the island," said zoo employee Boris Topolyansky.
"We assume that the man tried to get to the island and probably teased the monkeys, who responded aggressively," he said.
Zoo staff found a receipt for a mobile phone payment by the man and called him. When the man arrived to pick up his documents he had a bandage on his arm. This made the zoo staff think the monkeys had hurt him, but the man made no comment on the injury and left in a hurry.
The zoo has been putting groups of monkeys on the park's islands for several years as part of scientific research. However, this year a group of Pigtail macaques (Macacas nemestrina) were taken there just to have a rest.
"Monkeys love being in nature," Topolyansky said. "They become healthier and happier."
In nature, monkeys eat a broader variety of food, bask in the sun and have space for activities, he said.
"They eat bark, pick out the little worms from under the bark and eat grass," he added. "Their fur then becomes of better quality, they get more active."
Nevertheless, scientist Nina Savina, who supervises the monkeys, still brings them supplementary food from the zoo every day, Topolyansky said.
Pigtail macaques first lived on the park's island in 1998 and 1999.
At that time scientists were pursuing two goals: to study the processes of adaptation of monkeys born in a zoo to the natural conditions of the Northwest, and to research social and feeding behavior of monkeys in the wild conditions.
The results showed that monkeys born in captivity are able to quickly adapt to natural conditions, can find food, and survive.
Topolyansky said that this year the zoo expects that the monkeys' little vacation on the island will result in some babies since life in nature activates the animals' instinct for fertility.
However, zoo staff are concerned about the behavior of some of the park's visitors who break the rule and enter the island, he added.
"Monkeys consider the island their home and get angry if someone enters it. People should be aware that this type of monkey has fangs similar to a sheep dog's, but their reaction time is much faster."
Meanwhile, after their little adventure, Taras and Domna had to go back to the zoo. Scientists say that if a monkey tries to escape by swimming once, nothing will stop her from doing it again.
The remaining male monkeys will stay on the island for a while, maybe through September, until it gets cold.
TITLE: Putin Slashes the Top Brass
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin has signed a classified decree cutting the number of deputy defense ministers from 10 to four and restructuring the ministry's central staff, the Kremlin press service and ministry officials said Monday.
The presidential press service posted a brief statement on the Kremlin web site saying the number of Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov's deputies will be slashed to four, including two first deputies, and that there will be four departmental heads with powers similar to that of a deputy defense minister.
The statement did not provide further details of the long-anticipated reform or specify the date when Putin - who is on vacation at the Black Sea - signed the decree.
Ivanov told reporters Monday that one of the two first deputies will be chief of the General Staff, a post now held by General Yury Baluyevsky. Ivanov's other first deputy is Colonel General Alexander Belousov.
Ivanov said the other two deputy ministers will be in charge of armament and logistics. Those posts are currently held by General Alexander Moskovsky and Vladimir Isakov, respectively.
Ivanov also said that three directorates responsible for construction, finance and personnel will be transformed into departments and their heads will lose the rank of deputy defense minister. Notably, the ministry's so-called education directorate, which has provided political and moral drilling of servicemen since Soviet days, will lose its independence to become part of a personnel department likely to be headed by Ivanov's close ally General Nikolai Pankov.
In addition to directorates, the ministry has departments responsible for procuring arms and overseeing arms exports, among others, and recently gained control of the defense side of the country's nuclear industry.
The overall number of personnel in the Defense Ministry's central staff, which totals some 11,000, will undergo no serious cuts, Interfax reported. The armed forces have about 1 million staff.
TITLE: Kursk Families Eye Strasbourg
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Families of sailors who died in the Kursk submarine disaster in August 2000 are going to the European Court of Human Rights next autumn to force Russian authorities to reveal the truth about the cause of the disaster, Itar-Tass reported Thursday, the 4th anniversary of the disaster.
One initiator of the lawsuit is Roman Kolesnikov, father of one submariner, who said he is not convinced with the explanation the military prosecutor's office provided to the official investigation commission about the flooding of the ninth section of the submarine.
"I have incontrovertible evidence that submariners in the ninth section survived for more than two days and that they could have been rescued," Boris Kuznetsov, a lawyer for 50 families, said last year. "But according to the conclusion of the military prosecutor's office they were alive for only 4 1/2 to 8 hours."
Twenty-three survivors of two explosions sheltered in the ninth section, but how long they lived is disputed.
TITLE: Sela Founder Says Honesty and Active Living Pay
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A businessman should be honest about his goals in order to succeed, says Arkady Pekarevsky, the co-owner and vice president of the popular clothes store chain Sela.
"I am convinced that in order to be successful, a businessman should be sincere, and honestly express his position and the final goals. [Business] shouldn't be run through a set of complicated intrigues, because people are smart and feel when someone is trying to deceive them," he said.
Pekarevsky's goals became clear in the early 1990s, when he and cousin Boris Ostobrod founded Sela with the idea that purchasing clothes should be a "holiday" for people. "We always wanted to have a brand which would raise people's mood while providing affordable goods," Pekarevsky said.
Pekarevsky and Ostobrod divided the main business functions, with Ostobrod heading Sela's design office in Israel, and Pekarevsky going on to supervise Sela's sales throughout Russia and the CIS countries. The chain has been developing very successfully, with over 300 stores opened sporting the joyfully green Sela signboards.
For 38-year-old Pekarevsky, looking cheerful in a bright orange Sela-style shirt, the chain was a long way from his first business activities in high school during the Soviet Union stagnation era of the early 80s.
Pekarevsky, 16 years old at the time, sold watermelons and Christmas trees, later running a photography service.
"Progressive youth usually come from poor families," said Pekarevsky, whose mother worked as a seamstress and father as a factory worker.
"We never had a lot of money. And my mother always had to take additional orders to make clothes at home. In that situation I had to work," Pekarevsky said.
Pekarevsky said one of the most physically stressful temporary jobs that he had was to sell Christmas trees in the street in December.
"At night I worked as a watchman for those Christmas trees. It was cold, and I would sometimes hide in an entrance hall of a neighboring apartment building. Though sometimes I just took little naps right on the Christmas trees piled up outside" he said.
In 1985 when Pekarevsky was a student of the St. Petersburg Mining Institute, he and Ostobrod opened the first photo cooperative in the city called Blik or Speck, which was very successful for a while.
The idea of Sela came from a desire to create a brand name clothes chain where people could buy not very expensive but good quality casual clothes of bright colors, Pekarevsky said.
Pekarevsky said one of the media sources that did a story about Sela nicknamed it a "Sewing McDonalds."
"In a way I'd agree with that description. Our stores were also planned to have a festive atmosphere, to provide a quick and effective service, and not to price items too high," he said.
Sela is also quite an international company. The brand's designs come from the company's Israeli office, headed by Ostobrod, the president of Sela Corporation. The clothes production takes place in China, where "an enormous team of Sela's employees exercise very strict quality control," Pekarevsky said.
So far Sela sells its product only in Russia and a number of former Soviet republics, though it plans to open stores in Europe and elsewhere in the world in the future, Pekarevsky said.
"We sell bright clothes for people who lead an active life, and who have a young soul," he said.
Pekarevsky keeps his life bright through a number of different hobbies. He plays sports and likes to travel to unusual places.
Two years ago he spent a week at Shoaling, and he recently went to Tibet. "I was just deeply interested to see how people live there, what wisdom they have," he said.
"Such trips and experience help me be much more philosophical about the problems that accompany the life of a businessman," Pekarevsky said.
Pekarevsky said that he learned a lot about communications from Dale Carnegie's books.
Vladimir Denisov, general director of department store Kupchinsky, which has a Sela section, said Pekarevsky's communication skills and hard work have always impressed him.
"In a short period of time Pekarevsky and Ostobrod managed to develop a very successful business, and it was thanks to their industrious nature. As for Arkady, he has an excellent ability to find a common language and understanding with anyone, which is very important for a businessman," Denisov said.
TITLE: Neste Stations Switch to Citibank ATMs
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Neste St. Petersburg gas stations will be equipped with Citibank automatic teller machines, replacing the International Moscow Bank ATMs.
Citibank will install 30 cash machines at Neste gas stations by the end of 2004, said Citibank's spokesperson Lyudmila Botsan in a telephone interview Monday. A total of 40 of Citibank's ATMs already successfully operate at British Petroleum stations in Moscow, some of the machines also equipped with web terminals, Botsan said. St. Petersburg will receive simple ATMs, without Internet.
"We offered Neste to equip all of their stations with our ATMs, but they chose a different bank. A different bank's machines will not bother us, as we have our own clients," Delovoi Peterburg quoted head of International Moscow Bank's St. Petersburg branch, Alexander Konyshkov, as saying Friday. "We will not dismantle our cash machines at Neste stations voluntarily. In any case, the network of our cash machines will not shrink. We can transfer our ATMs from Neste stations to other locations within the same districts," Konyshkov told Delovoi Peterburg.
"Our contract with Neste was signed on a fixed number of cash machines. The contract was completed. Neste did not support our proposal of further cooperation," Konyshkov said via e-mail Monday.
The number of International Moscow Bank ATMs will grow, Konyshkov said. The bank plans to install 30 more cash machines in St. Petersburg by the end of 2004, he said.
Just like Citibank, International Moscow Bank is a bank employing foreign capital, so Neste's decision could not have been dictated by the Finnish fuel company's desire to exchange a Russian bank for a Western one, Konyshkov said.
The initiative to install new cash machines at Neste stations came from Citibank, Andrei Karyakin, Citibank's PR manager in Moscow said in a telephone interview Monday.
Besides Neste, Citibank will supply eight cash machines to Shell St. Petersburg gas stations. One more Shell station, which is under construction, will be similarly equipped with a Citibank machine upon completion.
Citibank will open two or three new offices in St. Petersburg before the end of the year, and continue cooperating with Lenta, as the partnership proved to be very efficient, Karyakin said. All of St. Petersburg's Lenta stores are equipped with Citibank's terminals.
Automatic gas stations are considered to be a difficult location for ATM installments, Delovoi Peterburg wrote.
Several of Balt Trade stations are equipped with Sberbank's ATMs. Faeton stations plan to install cash machines in 2005. St. Petersburg Fuel Company announced it will open St. Petersburg Gorodskoi Bank miniature terminals, for cash withdrawals and deposits using VISA and MasterCard, Western Union transfer processing and submitting applications for Visa and MasterCard, Delovoi Peterburg wrote.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Pulkovo Rail Link
ST. PETERSBURG (Prime-Tass) - Construction of a rail link to St. Peters-burg's Pulkovo Airport from the Balti-isky Station will cost an estimated 1 bil-lion rubles ($34 million), the regional Oktyabrskaya railroad reported Friday. Construction costs do not include the costs of the carriages, the railroad noted. Currently, the railroad company's experts are preparing a feasibility study for the link, which will be considered by state-owned Russian Railways.
Meat Imports Down
KURSK (Bloomberg) - Russia, the world's largest poultry importer, has bought 30 percent less meat from abroad this year, as import quotas took effect, Itar-Tass said, citing Agriculture Minister Alexei Gordeyev.
Russian poultry production grew 18 percent this year, Gordeyev told a press conference in Kursk Friday. The country's total meat output increased 5 percent last year, the best result in 14 years, Gordeyev said.
Russia implemented quotas on meat imports last year to help producers and as a response to European Union limits on Russian grain sales. The country's imports of frozen and fresh beef plunged 54 percent to 52,948 tons in the first quarter of this year, from a year earlier, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said last month.
Alrosa Borrows $100M
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) - Alrosa, which mines a quarter of the world's rough diamonds, picked Citigroup and Societe Generale to organize a $100 million loan to refinance debt.
The three-year facility may be increased to $300 million, Alrosa said in a statement.
"The funds will be used by Alrosa to refinance short-term debt," Alrosa said.
The Russian mining company plans to raise diamond prices by an average 10 percent to match increases by rivals including De Beers, Alrosa said in May.
TITLE: Galleries Aim to Develop the City Fine Art Market
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: ... His dark, strange images are masterworks of technical virtuosity. Russians still place a heavy emphasis on mastering the craft of one's art, something that has, regrettably, been lost in the West. Arkady devoted 12 years to studying the rigorous disciplines in Russian art schools, and it shows.
Like thousands of Russian artists, Arkady is trapped in hopeless poverty.
Victoria Hammond
"Letters from St. Petersburg"
Filled to the brim with art shops, St. Petersburg offers but a handful of specialized art galleries.
Home to many remarkable masters and a number of people looking to invest into quality works, the city art market promises good profits to newcomers able to fill the vacant niches in gallery business, experts say.
The Russian art auction organized by Sotheby's in May reached record sales of 11 million pounds, making Russian art a success in the world's mainstream, Vremya Novostei wrote this month. And this year's Art-Moscow - the country's main auction of contemporary art - sold artworks for a total of $1.7 million, the highest sales in Art-Moscow's existence.
While Moscow, with about 100 galleries, finds it hard to satisfy the country's growing demand on art, there are hardly 20 specialized private galleries and no art auctions held in St. Petersburg. In comparison, the average number of art galleries in a small western European city is 200.
"There is practically no art market in the city," said Yulia Borodina, art director and co-founder of the Matiss Club gallery, which opened in St. Petersburg in August 2003. Matiss Club deals in underground art, including the works of Levon Lazarev, Vyacheslav Shraga and Georgy Kovenchuk. St. Petersburg will never form an art market as big as Moscow's due to limited cash flows, Borodina said, even though the works of some St. Petersburg-based artists form the foundation of the late 20th century art museum collections.
Art market growth largely depends on developing the culture of buying and selling art - something lacking in St. Petersburg, where artists continue to offer their works at a discount behind their agent's back, Borodina said. The relations between artists and galleries are not legally regulated, to say nothing of other factors, such as the rental price on the gallery depending on the gallery owner's connections with the authorities, she added.
The markup at the city's galleries is up to 100 percent, with individual pieces ranging from several hundred to several thousand U.S. dollars. Profitability depends predominantly on the gallery agent's personal relations with his pool of artists and the amount of effort the agent makes when promoting an artist, which can sometimes take years, Borodina said.
PASSING CUSTOMS
When artworks are transported abroad, the gallery files the export certificate necessary for passing through customs. "I can get permission to carry artwork out of Russia permanently or temporarily. However, I can never predict exactly how many works will be sold at an event abroad and how many I will be taking back, so I was officially advised to file them as gifts to make up for the gap in the customs regulations," Borodina said.
In her book "Letters from St. Petersburg", released this year, Victoria Hammond wrote that "the Russian law prohibiting unregulated art exports "attains new heights of skullduggery because it masquerades as governmental protectiveness."
"This crazy law, which is of no benefit whatsoever to individuals or the country as a whole, is a psychological hangover from the paranoid mentality of the Iron Curtain days," Hammond said.
This year's amendment to the law, which allows private persons to import artwork into Russia free from customs VAT, is of controversial value, because it is effective only in cases when the artwork is part of a person's luggage and not when it travels as cargo, art dealers say.
THE AGE FACTOR
Export procedures are even more complicated for artworks over 50 years of age. Pieces aged 100 years and more are usually prohibited for export out of Russia alltogether, which makes it very difficult for galleries selling antiques.
However, art critics say the trend in the world market is to invest heavily into modern art. New York's Christie's auction beat all records ever set in the history of contemporary art auctions when its sales reached a total of $128 million in May. At the prestigious Basel art auction, art works dating from the first quarter of the 20th century no longer occupy the prime spots they held only seven years ago, owner of Moscow's E. K. Art Bureau Yelena Kuprina told Vremya Novostei this month.
SOCIAL REALISM SELLS
Meanwhile, a specific kind of "blue chip" works have been accumulating in Russia.
"Polishing their academic skills on a daily basis, Soviet artists produced whole collections of quality landscapes, still-lifes and portraits, said Leonid Shishkin, the owner of a number of galleries that specialize in Soviet academism.
Shishkin, who has been successfully selling art in Moscow at the Shishkin Gallery and the Gallery of Soviet Art, opened an affiliate Lviny Mostik or Lions Bridge in St. Petersburg in mid-June.
Lions Bridge sells art works of the social realism period from the 1920s to the 1970s. The works range from massive propagandist paintings by Konstantin Korovin, that cost up to $80,000, to "Soviet impressionism" pieces by Isaak Levitan and Nikolai Tarkhov.
"For about a decade after we opened the Shishkin Gallery in Moscow, where unique pieces such as works by Nikolai Roerikh and Alexander Benua were sold, we targeted expats as major clients. But then Russians began squeezing foreign buyers out of the market by making bigger offers. This is why we opened the Gallery of Soviet Art, where more affordable works under $2,000 were available," Shishkin said.
While westerners have a certain price limit in their mind, which they are not prepared to exceed when making a bid on art, Russians can raise the bids from $100 to $3,000 easily if they like a painting, Shishkin said. "If a Russian likes the painting, nothing can stop him," he said.
However, foreigners often prefer impressionistic paintings with energetic free strokes, while Russians, brought up in the classic traditions of the 1930s and the 1950s, go for meticulously strict academism instead, Shishkin said.
In Shishkin's opinion, social realism will only grow in value, as a mark of the bygone epoch. St. Petersburg's mid-20th century artists, such as Andrei Mylnikov and Nikolai Bargenkov, are not well-represented in the market, Shishkin said. "I try to exhibit several St. Petersburg artists of that time in Moscow on a regular basis," he said. Prices on Stalin-era's academic works, such as those of Arkady Plastov and Fyodor Bogorodsky, are lower in Russia than abroad, Shishkin said. In autumn this year, Shishkin plans to hold his first auctions in St. Petersburg.
"St. Petersburg is quickly catching up with Moscow in terms of the number of people willing to buy quality art products," Lions Bridge director Anna Mileyeva said, explaining the reasons for launching the gallery in the city. Besides, in St. Petersburg people are more interested in art than in cars to boost their image, she said.
Social realism is "an ideal antique product for Russia - old enough to have acquired a museum flare, and young enough for the customs to allow its exports," Kommersant's art analyst Anna Tolstova wrote in June. It is conservative enough for a countr, where the all-times sales champion is Ivan Aivazovsky, and fashionable enough for foreigners looking for Stalinist relics and for Russian kitsch lovers eager to buy writer Vladimir Sorokin's stylizations, Tolstova said.
GALLERY MARKET
It is the galleries that will raise the tastes and the art dealing culture in St. Petersburg, said Edward Emdin, the owner of Sol Art gallery, which has been working in St. Petersburg since 1992 and specializes in contemporary art.
Both artists and galleries will benefit from following the internationally accepted rules in art business, Emdin said.
The United States, a leading gallery market around the world, passed legislation on tax benefits for galleries under Ronald Reagan. In France, gallery business develops under the umbrella of the ministry of culture. In Russia, gallery business is not separated from any other, be it the sale of television sets or cotton socks.
Rules change in the process of the game, and there is much bureaucracy involved, but overcoming it is a part of a gallery's job, Emdin said.
The analysis of the Kompania magazine published last month shows that the Russian art market is developing along the same lines as the Western one. In the U.S., the boom in art purchases coincided with the period of stock market's trading slowdown, Kompania wrote. The world's leading investment banks - Citigroup, UBS, Deutsche Bank, J.P.Morgan Chase - provide consulting services for their clients wishing to invest in art. The same service recently emerged in Russia as well. However, Kompania said, most people trust galleries' advise more.
"There are a myriad of unoccupied niches in gallery business left," Matiss Club's Borodina said.
TITLE: The Winning 'Spirit' of the 1930s?
TEXT: Two seemingly unrelated events happened last week, which taken together explain a lot about the essence of current domestic and foreign policy. First, Hamburg University decided not to award an honorary doctorate in economics to President Vladimir Putin, as was originally planned for Sept. 10 as part of a summit meeting with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.
The official pretext was that the university had failed to fill out the necessary paperwork, yet in reality a protest that originated in the university itself was responsible for what one German newspaper called a "diplomatic disaster." Some 50 faculty members, along with more than 1,400 students, felt it unacceptable to have Putin associated with the university due to "the violation of international law in Chechnya, suppression of free media and human rights organizations in Russia." The university decided that Putin's record of recent months might taint the academic institution's reputation. And apparently even the German Foreign Ministry was unable to bring pressure to bear upon academia's free spirit.
As ceremonial and insignificant as this event might seem, it is a real blow to the president's image in Europe. Add to that the crumbling relationship with another long-standing supporter of Putin's policies, British Prime Minister Tony Blair (outlined recently in an article in the Financial Times and by CNN International), the uneasiness, to say the least, within the U.S. White House over the Yukos affair and events in Georgia, and the broader picture starts to become clear.
Throughout his first term in office, Putin carefully crafted an image of an enlightened politician, an economic liberal, a strong statesman - albeit somewhat autocratic - fit to be a member of the club of world democratic leaders. Yet the shameful Yukos affair, publicly acknowledged as Putin's moral defeat even by his domestic cohorts, which may have already enriched some bureaucrats by as much as $1 billion through insider trading; the unwise display of imperial ambitions and muscle-flexing vis-a-vis the small sovereign state of Georgia; ambiguous laws that have stripped state benefits from the poor while making the bureaucracy better off; the ongoing search for internal and external enemies eager to destroy Russia's image abroad - taken together, all this has destroyed Putin's glamorous image in a matter of a few months.
The only question left unanswered, which is currently being debated in the foreign media, is whether Putin is as corrupt as his predecessor or whether he is simply no longer in charge: make your choice between the bad and the even worse. The second event I had in mind has to do with the 2004 Summer Olympics, which opened in Athens last week, or to be more precise, it has to do with the uniform selected for the Russian team to march in at the opening ceremony.
The uniform, ordered by the Russian Olympic Committee and produced by the Russian company Bosco Di Ciliegi, in partnership with the Italian fashion house ETRO S.P.A., is a modern remake of the uniform worn by Soviet athletes in the 1930s.
As a commentator for state-owned Channel One television explained to the nation, the uniform is supposed to promote nostalgia for the 1930s. Nostalgia for what, exactly, you may ask. For the time when millions of peasants who resisted collectivization were sent to Siberia? For the largely artificial, Stalin-orchestrated famine in Ukraine and Kazakhstan that left some 5 million people dead? Or maybe nostalgia for the Great Terror, which resulted in many more millions of Soviet citizens being killed or dispatched to the gulag? Bosco Di Ciliegi's web site gives another, no less astonishing explanation for the uniform design: "At the heart of the design of the 2004 Russian Olympic team's ceremonial uniform are the idealistic sentiments of the 1930s - the cult of the sporting spirit and body of that time." Really? Does it not sound all too familiar?
Does it not remind one of the 1936 Nazi Olympics with its cult of muscles and power, immortalized in the infamous film "Olympia," by Leni Riefenstahl. Clearly the Kremlin and its ideologues, eager to promote the "spirit" of the Stalinist 1930s to the nation as a source of inspiration, are doomed in the outside world.
Twenty-first-century Europe, if for no other reason than self-preservation, will never accept as an equal partner a state that is constantly looking back to its darkest past as a source of motivation and inspiration.
Today Putin is refused an honorary academic degree, tomorrow Europe's leaders may choose to shut the doors - just as they decided to do with Belarussian dictator Alexander Lukashenko. And there was one other minor, yet related, event last week: At the request of the Central Bank, CreditTrust bank was declared bankrupt and the Central Bank filed a fraud case against it with the law enforcement authorities.
The event would not merit a mention if not for one tiny detail: Leonid Tyagachyov, the president of the Russian Olympic Committee, which ordered the ambiguous uniform, was re-elected as chairman of the board of CreditTrust as recently as March. The lesson is clear: Corrupted morals and backward thinking do not make for good business, just as they do not make for good politics - domestic or international.
Yevgenia Albats, who hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio on Sundays, contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times.
TITLE: Meddling Rather Than Regulating Makes Land Problem Worse
TEXT: The policy being implemented by the St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast governments on the use of land set aside for agriculture is strange.
As is well known, with the passing of the Land Code and the federal law on agricultural land, buying and selling land is legal. One would think that for Russia, with her huge expanses of land, the appearance on the market of such a high liquid asset as land would provide great opportunities for economic development. However, these opportunities are yet to be realized.
The problem is that there is a huge gap between the right to deal in land, and the existence of a market on which to trade on the other. The government should use various normative acts and laws to regulate the land market to fill this gap. But the government is in no hurry. As a result, what is now flourishing is a black market for land.
It is an iron law of economics that if there is demand for goods, but the goods are in short supply, a black market appears. In this case, such a market has been created by players in the cottage business - developers who buy agricultural land from former collective farms and state farms, as well as from ordinary farms, and officials from district administrations who give permission for these deals and for the subsequent development of agricultural territories.
In the absence of the necessary regulations, drawing up documents for the development of land classified as agricultural is difficult. It is possible, however, since the Land Code permits it. The most important thing is that for this to happen, the designation of the land must be changed from agricultural to "under development." Since no suitable legal procedure exists, the issue often gets solved the traditional Russian way - through bribery.
It would seem that none of this is necessary given that we have so much land of all types of classifications, including land for settling, where building houses is much easier. The problem is, however, that there just isn't enough land in areas needed by the market, such as on the outskirts of the big cities. The demand on the out-of-town cottage development market is growing rapidly.
According to estimates by those involved in the market, it grew on average by at least 30 percent to 40 percent on the outskirts of St. Petersburg in the first half of this year, and on territories adjoining the Gulf of Finland or those neighboring scenic lakes, by 50 percent to 70 percent. Due to the shortage of land for settlement, more than half the land on the market is agricultural land. This is the case both in the oblast and in the city. Without a normal mechanism, the development of such land continues chaotically - in the sense that the process is not being controlled by the federal government.
For a long time the government didn't notice this, or pretended it didn't notice, allowing officials on these sites to line their pockets with bribes. However, at some point the scale of this development grew so large that scandals occurred.
I have mentioned this before, but I shall bring it up again briefly. In November, then chief city architect, Oleg Kharchenko, announced at a city government meeting that due to the uncontrolled development of land for agricultural use, as many as hundreds of hectares within the precincts of St. Petersburg were slipping out of town-planning regulation. In February, at a conference dedicated to the prospects for housing construction, the head of the Vyborg district, Viktor Kolesnikov, announced that "the bold boys from Moscow" were buying up hectares of land from the Prigorodny state farm for nothing and building on it. Such activity leads to an increase in the lack of land for engineering and social infrastructure, and also, as a rule, is accompanied by breaches of the city plan. As participants of the conference confirmed, an identical situation is occurring with state-farm land in other districts too. Governor Valentina Matviyenko ordered things to be sorted out and for order to be restored.
As a result of this sorting-out process, it has become clear that in the last four years, about 2,000 hectares of agricultural land have been resold in St Petersburg, which works out at about 10 percent of all the city's agricultural land. The percentage to have been reclassified officially (i.e. on the governor's instruction) is less than a third. The rest, one can only assume, was transferred into development status mainly for bribes. In the oblast, according to information from the local cadastral board, the rates at which land is being taken out of the category of agricultural use are basically the same as in the city - about 10 percent over the last few years.
The government has started to get worried, and get itself in gear. Yet instead of creating a suitable procedure, it has essentially begun to create even more obstacles for the development of agricultural land. As has already been established, in St. Petersburg the main motive became the so-called "subsistence security" of the city. The government decided that the cultivating of carrots, cabbage and potatoes was much more important to Petersburgers than the construction of houses. So they have decided to bring in tough quotas for the use of agricultural land.
In various administration committees, seemingly intelligent individuals hold forth with ardent speeches saying that if vegetable growing in St. Petersburg is not stimulated, then vegetables will have to be brought in from elsewhere, and prices will rise. However, if one looks closely at our shop counters, then it's easy to see that there is no such problem. Counters are overflowing with vegetables from various firms from the oblast, Pskov and other nearby regions where there is no deficit of agricultural land and never will be because there isn't the same demand for cottages there as in St. Petersburg - and never will be.
Strangely enough, the government of the Leningrad Oblast has also toughened up on reclassification of agricultural land. Here, of course, there is no mention of "subsistence security" since such an idea would just be laughed at. They are, however, creating the State Unitary Enterprise (GUP) Lenoblzem, which will buy up agricultural land from private owners (those of former collective and state farms), change their classification and sell them on for development. Not without reason, those on the cottage construction market, warn that Lenoblzem will have a monopoly on the market. The likely consequences of this are clear: extremely high prices for plots of land. Cynics say: "Officials want to receive the same bribes, only legally, in the form of the paid services of the state-owned enterprise."
On the whole, the government's current policy, both in the city and the oblast will only lead to higher prices for cottages and more corruption. Just as agricultural land has been built on before, it will continue to be built on. Fighting the market is no good. It is much more sensible to regulate it. Although, admittedly, to do that the politicians have to put their heads together.
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: Unnatural Acts
After months of bad press, here at last was an act of genuine humanitarianism by U.S. troops in Iraq that could have been trumpeted to the skies: a unit of National Guard troops - part-time citizen-soldiers from Oregon - rescuing a group of prisoners from sadistic torture by the security forces of the newly "sovereign" Iraqi government. Yet the incident was buried by American brass, who repudiated their own soldiers - and backed the Iraqi torturers.
It happened on June 29 - the first full day of Iraqi "sovereignty" - when a Guardsman on routine patrol in an observation tower near a Baghdad prison saw Iraqi guards beating bound and blindfolded prisoners with metal rods, The Oregonian reported last week. The soldier called in the atrocity, and men from his unit were ordered into the prison. There they found dozens of prisoners - including children - bloodied, bruised, shot, starving, crammed into concrete pens, lying in their own filth. Torture implements were scattered through the compound, said the paper: "rods, rubber hoses, electrical wires and bottles of chemicals."
The Guard troops - many of whom said they'd been shamed by the American atrocities at Abu Ghraib - disarmed the Iraqi security men and began giving first aid, water and food to the prisoners. They questioned the mysterious Iraqi civilian in charge - an "obese man" in swank mufti. He told them there'd been no torture at all - and anyway, these prisoners were just street scum: "thieves, users of marijuana and other types of bad people," according to the written account of the incident provided by eyewitness Captain Jarrell Southall and corroborated by the other soldiers.
There was no claim that the prisoners were insurgents or terrorists. Most of them had been rounded up in the poorest sections of Baghdad during broad, brutal "security sweeps" ordered by Iyad Allawi, the former terrorist chieftain and Baathist Party enforcer now serving as the unelected overseer of the Bush Regime's Iraqi plantation. (In this, the prisoners doubtless shared the fate of their brethren in Abu Ghraib, where the Red Cross says that 70-90 percent of the thousands of captives taken by the Americans were innocent of wrongdoing.)
Having stopped the torture, the Oregon
soldiers asked for further orders: What should they do now? The request was relayed far up the chain of command, and the answer came back from on high: Go away - and give the prisoners back to the men who were torturing them. Give back the weapons, give back the torture tools, stop helping the prisoners, mind your own business.
And that was it. The American troops, outraged but obedient, withdrew. The prisoners - the wounded men, the bleeding children - were bound up again and shoved back into the stinking pits. Why? It's simple. Because the Iraqi security goons were doing exactly what George W. Bush wanted them to do.
One year ago this month, we noted here that Bush had begun hiring agents of Saddam's murderous security service, the Mukhabarat - "an instrument renowned across the Arab world for its casual use of torture, fear, intimidation, rape and imprisonment," as the Washington Post described it then. Top Bush officials confirmed they were secretly putting dozens, perhaps hundreds of Saddam's most vicious killers and rapists on the U.S. payroll, the Post reported.
We must admit to shockingly childish naivete in that earlier column. Although the Eye did voice some mild criticism of Bush's Mukhabarat embrace ("a monstrous copulation of rapacious conquerors with bloodthirsty scum," was the demure phrase), at the time we assumed Bush was simply looking for local proxies to do his dirty work, so American soldiers wouldn't have to. Now, of course, we all know that Bush and his top legal advisors had already spent months concocting devious "justifications" for a systematic torture regimen to be used by U.S. forces throughout a global gulag of hidey holes, secret prisons, holding pens and concentration camps. The Abu Ghraib crimes that so shamed the Oregon soldiers are just one small chunk of a giant dungheap that is very slowly but surely oozing into view - and creeping up toward its Oval originators.
So Bush obviously didn't want the Mukhabarat as a proxy for the dirty work; he was glad - even eager - to have Americans taint themselves with such evil. Saddam's men were not substitutes but reinforcements, allies, comrades-in-arms in the noble crusade to put a more pliable strongman on Iraq's throne. Of course, the American military presence in Iraq - planned years ago by Bushist cadres - is wildly unpopular among the conquered. Thus for Bush's great work of looting and dominance to continue, the Iraqi people must be beaten down - with metal rods, if necessary.
And that's what it's all about: loot. Bush's own auditors confessed last month that at least $8.8 billion in Iraqi oil money controlled by the Americans is now unaccounted for, Colonel David Hackworth reports in DefenseWatch. This secret siphon - doubtless sloshing into offshore accounts around the world, as Hackworth notes - is on top of the tens of billions in tax dollars openly pumped to Bush's corporate cronies and campaign donors.
But that's just the short-end money. Getting a stranglehold on world oil supplies through the strategic Iraqi bottleneck - the ultimate object of the whole blood-soaked exercise - will be worth trillions as reserves begin running out in the coming decades. For Bush is not just thinking of himself, you see; no, he's fighting to secure the future for generations of corrupt elitists yet unborn.
And for that, he needs terrorists, torturers, ruthless goons - not a bunch of Oregon boy scouts gumming up the works with acts of mercy.
For annotational references, see Opinion at www.sptimesrussia.com
TITLE: Alexy Tells Putin Icon Is Copy, Pope Not Needed
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexy II emphasized Friday that Pope John Paul II is not welcome in Russia, reiterating that an icon the pontiff once hoped to return to Russia personally in a conciliatory gesture is a copy of a revered 16th century work.
The patriarch told President Vladimir Putin that the icon - known as the Mother of God of Kazan - will be turned over to the Russian Orthodox Church at the Cathedral of the Assumption in the Kremlin later this month, Itar-Tass reported. But he said the icon, now at the Vatican, is "one of many copies" of the original.
"For that reason there is no need for the pope himself to bring it," Alexy was quoted by Itar-Tass as saying. The Russian Orthodox Church had already said last year that the icon is a copy and could "under no circumstances be considered a reason" for a visit by the pope, and there was an agreement for other Vatican representatives to bring it to Russia. But the patriarch's statement underlined the persistent animosity between his church and the Vatican.
John Paul had been hoping to return the icon himself and become the first Roman Catholic pontiff to visit Russia, but tense relations with the Russian Orthodox Church have prevented such a trip.
Papal spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said last month that the icon would be taken to Russia on Aug. 28 by a Vatican delegation. Itar-Tass reported that two Roman Catholic cardinals are to bring the icon to Russia, where Alexy told Putin it will be handed over at the Kremlin cathedral.
"There is nothing new in negotiations with the Roman Catholic Church, except that on the Day of the Assumption, Aug. 28, the icon of the Mother of God of Kazan, which was stored in the Vatican, will be returned," Alexy said. But he added, "It is one of many copies, not the original miracle-working image that disappeared at the beginning of the 20th century."
The icon, which first appeared in the city of Kazan in 1579, is revered by Russian believers for its purported ability to work miracles, including the rout of Polish invaders from Russia in the early 17th century. It hung in the Kazan Cathedral on Red Square and the Kazan Cathedral in St. Petersburg before being taken to the West after the 1917 Revolution.
Alexy said that a joint commission including representatives of the Vatican, the Orthodox church and the Culture Ministry had opened the metal plating on the icon at the Vatican and determined that it was an 18th century copy, the report said.
The Vatican has never officially contested the finding. The icon at the Vatican was purchased in the 1970s by a Catholic group that later presented it to the pope.
Tensions between Russia's dominant church and the Roman Catholic Church have deep historical roots, but they have increased markedly since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and communist restrictions on religion faded.
The aging pope's hope for a historic visit to Russia have been part of his efforts to promote greater Christian unity, a millennium after the Great Schism divided Christianity between eastern and western branches.
The Russian Orthodox Church has strongly opposed a visit, accusing the Vatican of poaching for converts in Russia and other traditionally Orthodox lands.
TITLE: CEC Wants All Deputies on Lists
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Central Elections Commission will propose a raft of amendments to the elections law this fall to make all the seats in the State Duma elected by proportional representation, the country's top elections official said.
The amendments, which some political analysts said would increase the Kremlin's control over regional officials, would abandon the first-past-the-post system altogether. Instead, all 450 Duma deputies would be picked from party lists, Central Elections Commission chief Alexander Veshnyakov told Kommersant on Wednesday.
Of the 450 deputies elected to the Duma, 225 are currently elected from party lists and 225 from single-mandate districts.
The amendments to the election law are to be discussed at the Central Election Commission at the end of this month and presented to the Duma for approval in its fall session, Veshnyakov told Kommersant newspaper.
Veshnyakov said the proposed changes would be drawn up after consultations with "lawyers, the media, civic organizations and Duma deputies."
"What the presidential administration is trying to do is to create an election system that can guarantee under any circumstances the dominance of the party of power," said Andrei Ryabov, an analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center.
Ryabov said that the Kremlin currently has to find compromises with regional elites to win their support in the single-mandate elections. But with just party lists, such compromises would not be necessary, he said.
"Instead, they will stand in line in Moscow to ask the presidential administration to help their candidates," Ryabov said.
Yury Korgunyuk, an analyst with the Indem think tank, said that it was not enough for the Kremlin to have United Russia control the Duma. It is also "looking for levers to control the governors," he said.
Korgunyuk added that the idea to amend the election law was not Veshnyakov's, but the Kremlin's. "Veshnyakov has never come up with his own initiatives," he said.
Korgunyuk said the Kremlin might still balk at the move, if it felt that it needed the governors' help for United Russia to win elections in some regions.
United Russia Deputy Oleg Kovalyov, who chairs the Duma Management Committee, said Thursday that he backed Veshnyakov's proposals, because they "would help parties to get stronger and to be more responsible."
"If deputies are not affiliated to a political party, they are no one," he said. "A single voice is not heard in the Duma."
Veshnyakov also said that he would recommend the barrier for parties to break into the Duma in future elections stay at 5 percent.
Under a 2002 amendment to the elections law, the barrier was to be raised to 7 percent.
TITLE: OLYMPIC DIARY
TEXT: BOXING - Britain's one-man boxing team, Amir Khan made a fine start to his Olympic campaign by outclassing local hope Marios Kaperonis on Monday.
The gifted 17-year-old lightweight, a title contender after spectacular performances in the run-up to the Games, soon recovered from a tentative start to show off his dazzling skills.
Fired up by a partisan crowd, Kaperonis opened a 3-0 lead in the first round but struggled once Khan stepped up a gear and was trailing 31-12 on the scoreboard when the referee stopped the contest with 41 seconds remaining in the third round. (Reuters)
BOXING - An arbitration panel on Monday upheld the expulsion of a Kenyan boxer who failed a drug test from the Olympics. The Court of Arbitration for Sport rejected an appeal against the disqualification of bantamweight David Munyasia. In the first doping case of the games, Munyasia was barred by the International Olympic Committee last week after testing positive for the banned stimulant cathine in an out-of-competition test. (AP)
JUDO -The International Judo Federation's executive committee failed to reach a conclusion on the case of Iranian world champion Arash Miresmaeili on Sunday and was to meet again Monday.
Miresmaeili was due to fight Israel's Ehud Vaks in the first round of the under-66 kilogram class on Sunday but was overweight at the weigh-in.
Iran said Monday that its athletes should boycott any contest against Israelis.
The comments by government spokesman Abdollah Ramazanzadeh set Tehran on collision course with Olympic officials who could punish Iran for letting politics intrude on its sporting ideals.
IJF spokesman Michel Brousse told reporters: "Before speaking of sanctions we have to know exactly why he failed his weight." (Reuters)
TENNIS - Andy Roddick is watching his back with the Australian women's water-polo team ready to pay $500 to the first girl who lands a kiss on the U.S. Open champion at the Athens Olympics.
"I'm thinking it's going to be a hit-and-run attack while I am standing in line for food or something," said the American tennis champion, aware there is a price on his head. (Reuters)
FENCING - Fencing world No. 1 Andrea Cassara of Italy eased into the semifinals of the men's foil Monday with a comfortable 15-8 win over Britain's Richard Kruse.
Fellow Italian Salvatore Sanzo also made it through but Italian hopes of a medals clean sweep were dashed when Simone Vanni, the 2002 World Champion, was beaten by Russian Renal Ganeyev, seeded 28 before the competition began.
Sanzo made it through to the last four with a 15-10 win over Wu Hanxiong of China but there was disappointment for Vanni who levelled his match against the 18-year-old Ganeyev when he was trailing 13-14 but then lost the final point. (Reuters)
SHOOTING - Suzanne Balogh of Australia pulled away from the field to win the gold medal Monday in trap shooting. (AP)
ATHLETICS - United States sprinter Lauryn Williams said on Monday she would have no problem competing in the same team as Marion Jones in the Olympic 4x100 meters relay.
Even if Jones, who is under scrutiny by U.S. anti-doping officials, were eventually charged with an offence and the U.S. were stripped of any relay medal they might win, "it's fine with me" that Jones runs, Williams told a news conference. (Reuters)
SAILING - A member of Denmark's sailing team was arrested on charges he struck and killed a British pedestrian while speeding in his car on the way to see his country's handball team play. (AP)
ATLETICS - Ethiopia has dropped women's 10,000 meter world champion Berhane Adere and men's defending Olympic marathon champion Gezahegne Abera from its Olympic line-up. (AP)
SWIMMING - American backstroker Aaron Peirsol accused Kosuke Kitajima of using an illegal dolphin kick at the start of the Olympic 100-meter breaststroke Sunday night that helped propel the Japanese star to a gold medal.
"He knew what he was doing. It's cheating," said Peirsol, who spoke out after watching teammate and world record holder Brendan Hansen finish second. (AP)
CYCLING - With a late burst of power, Sara Carrigan of Australia swept away from Germany's Judith Arndt on the final straight Sunday to win the Olympic road race title on a day marred by the bad crash of defending champion Leontien Zijlaard-Van Moorsel. Van Moorsel will defend her Olympic time trial title on Wednesday despite the heavy bruises on her arms and neck sustained in the crash. (AP)
WATER POLO - Brenda Villa scored four goals and Kelly Rulon had a pair Monday as the world champion United States began the pursuit for an Olympic gold medal with a 7-6 win over Hungary.
Olympic gold medallist Australia opened with a 6-5 win over Italy, with Kelly Heuchan and Kate Gynther scoring two goals apiece. The Australians edged the United States in the last second of the Sydney 2000 final to win the first Olympic gold medal presented in women's water polo. (AP)
Tuesday's Highlights
GYMNASTICS - The women are set to take center stage with the team title Tuesday, one of the television highlights of the Games. Defending champion Romania, powered by Daniela Sofronie's athleticism; Svetlana Khorkina's Russia, the U.S., and China should provide a keenly fought contest. (Reuters)
SWIMMING - The final of the women's 200 meter freestyle, one of the most open races on the women's schedule takes place Tuesday. Germany's Franziska van Almsick has held the world record for a decade but this is her last chance to win Olympic gold. Alena Popchanka of Belarus is the reigning world champion and Britain's Melanie Marshall is the fastest in the world this year. (Reuters)
SWIMMING - Michael Phelps became the youngest man ever to hold a world record when he beat the old Men's 200 meter butterfly mark set by fellow American Tom Malchow in 2001. Phelps has lowered that mark twice since and could go even faster in Athens in Tuesday's final. (Reuters)
SWIMMING - Amanda Beard is ranked No. 1 in the world this year 200 meter individual medley but four swimmers, including Ukraine's reigning Olympic and world champion Yana Klochkova, are less than a second adrift. Katie Hoff of the U.S., Australia's Alice Mills and Germany's Teresa Rohmann are also aiming for Tuesday's final. (Reuters)
SHOOTING - In the 50 meters men's pistol event, traditionally dominated by the former Eastern Bloc and China, Russia's Mikhail Nestruev and Italy's Bruno Francesco head the field. (Reuters)