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Chechen rebel envoys have contacted federal authorities about possible talks on disarmament in the first serious move toward negotiations in the two-year-old war, officials said Thursday. The overture came just as President Vladimir Putin's 72-hour offer for talks - his first such proposal - was expiring. Putin in the past has repeatedly rejected Western calls for negotiations, insisting that the rebels must be eliminated. Viktor Kazantsev, the presidential envoy in the Southern Federal District, whom Putin appointed to oversee negotiations, said he had spoken with representatives of rebel leader Aslan Mask hadov but gave no details of the meeting. |
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 The very symbol of sub-standard housing, the lowly krushchyovka, may be being given a new lease of life, at least if the Danish Foundation for the Construction of Attic Apartments in Russia has its way. |
All photos from issue.
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ESSEN, Germany -President Vla di mir Putin declared the "doors wide open" to foreign investment in his country, telling Germany's top business executives Wednesday that tax and customs reform have created a good business climate in Russia. The 15 countries of the European Union accounted for a full 40 percent of Russia's foreign trade last year and were responsible for 64 percent of direct investment in Russia, Putin told the heads of some of Germany's most powerful companies, including Daimler-Chrysler and Bayer. |
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Putin to NATO? BRUSSELS, Belgium (Reuters) - NATO Secretary General George Ro bert son on Wed nes day played down a report that President Vladimir Putin would become the first Russian or Soviet leader to visit NATO headquarters during a visit to Belgium next month. |
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MOSCOW - The government signed off on the draft 2002 budget this week while voicing concerns about the impact of crumbling global oil prices on planned revenues. Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin offered assurances on Tuesday that Russia would make good on future debt repayments. |
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MOSCOW - Russian airplanes bound for international destinations may be grounded if the government does not offer guarantees for insurance of risks against terrorist acts or war. |
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DeltaCredit, a branch of the U.S.-Russia Investment Fund, is continuing its efforts to perk up the local mortgage market, despite the generally unfavorable climate in a sector that lacks funds and credit-worthy consumers. Over the last year, DeltaCredit has approved about 500 loans nationally for a total value of $16 million. |
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OPEC producers on Wednesday decided to leave oil supplies unchanged at the expense of their own budgets, rather than take any blame for contributing to the world's slide into recession. |
 Arkady Yevstafiev settled into his new office as head of Mosenergo on Tuesday as a battle over control of the electricity supplier showed some signs of abating. The longtime ally of UES chief Anatoly Chubais faces an extraordinary shareholders meeting in a few weeks that will decide whether Unified Energy Systems gets to keep its candidate at the helm or whether the post should go to somebody else. |
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Dutch Trade Mission ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Gerrit Ybema, the Netherlands foreign trade minister, will be in St. Petersburg from Sept. 27 through Sept. |
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WE'RE on the verge of a new kind of patriotism. A growing chorus is telling Americans that one of the best ways to demonstrate that the country won't be cowed by terrorism is to continue to buy shares of stock and retail goods. Vice President Dick Cheney said he hoped Americans would "stick their thumb in the eye of the terrorists and . |
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SOMETIMES random juxtapositions tell us a lot about the real state of affairs around us. This week, for instance, President Vladimir Putin has been in Germany, telling all who will listen in his fluent German that Russia is a great place to invest, that the future here is bright, that his slate of reforms has created a good business climate in Russia. |
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TWO and a half thousand years ago, in his "Critius" dialogue, Pla to told the story of Atlantis, a prosperous state that collapsed under the weight of its own wealth and the arrogance of its people. Putting this into modern economic parlance, Atlantis perished because its GDP was excessively large. |
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Dining out and drowning a dog are two concepts that have perhaps never been brought together. Until the cafe Mumu came along, that is. Drawing its name from the teary Turgenev tale of the deaf-mute serf Gerasim who puts his pooch to death in the nearest pond, Mumu is certainly one of the oddest choices for a theme restaurant you could hope to find. Especially when you see the decor, which has spared nothing in realism, with plenty of stuffed dogs dotted here and there, including one with a brick around its neck, its eyes bulging as it plunges to its death. In this atmosphere, some may find enjoying a meal rather difficult. But one would be best to put such qualms aside, as the food is excellent. |
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 Plenty of space, good equipment and air conditioning are not something local rock clubs are famous for. But Red Club, which was launched last Friday, provides all of this and more. |
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Throughout next month, one of Petersburg's most unlikely museums, the Freud Dream Museum, will continue its project of commemorating Freud the doctor and Freud the cultural icon by mounting a series of art exhibitions and lectures under the title "Arts and Dreams. |
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The Fourth International Early Music Festival has chosen a striking picture to go on the festival booklet: a reproduction of a painting from the 16th century, by an anonymous master of the Fontainebleau school. |
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NME Russia has been launched, and the first issue is already available for from 25 to 30 rubles, depending on where you buy it. Simply looking at the cover gives you a strange feeling, with the familiar NME logo under the unshaven Slavic face of the frontman of Ocean Elzi, a band that comes from Ukraine and has been forced upon young audiences by the powerful duo of Real Records and Nashe Radio. The content is similarly eclectic: the combination of Pulp's Jarvis Cocker and Splean's Alexander Vasiliev seems extremely strange. Though the result could have been much worse, the slant toward the new pop/rock acts of the Nashe Radio kind is disappointing. |
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 The vintage suspense mysteries of Cornell Woolrich, with their bravura plots and romantic fatalism, remain eminently readable, and "Phantom Lady" (1944) and "Deadline at Dawn" (1946) are durable entertainments. |
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Crash Injures 90 BERLIN (AP) - Two trains filled with morning commuters and schoolchildren collided head-on Thursday in southern Germany, injuring 90 people, eight of them seriously, police said. The accident occurred on a single-track section outside the Bavarian town of Lindau, near the Austrian border, police said. |
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Redskins Cut George LANDOVER, Maryland (Reuters) - The Washington Redskins released much-traveled quart erback Jeff Geor ge on Wed nes day after making a dismal 0-2 start to the season in which they were outscored 67-3. |
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