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The Ideal
Soviet Man
Prime Minister Zubkov’s
election chances. Page 4
First Nuke
Shipment
Made
To Iran
By Jim Heintz
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
MOSCOW — Russia has made
its first shipment of nuclear fuel
to an Iranian nuclear power
plant at the center of the interna-
tional tensions over Tehran’s
atomic program, the Foreign
Ministry said Monday.
Iran contends its plant in the
southern city of Bushehr is
strictly for civilian purposes, but
the project concerns the United
States and others who fear
Tehran could use it to advance
efforts to build nuclear weapons.
Russia is building the
Bushehr plant — construction
that has been frequently delayed.
Officials said the delays were due
to payment disputes, but many
observers suggested Russia also
was unhappy with Iran’s resis-
tance to international pressure to
make its nuclear program more
open and to assure the interna-
tional community that it was not
developing nuclear arms.
Russia announced last week
that its construction disputes
with Iran had been resolved
and said fuel deliveries would
begin about a half year before
Bushehr was expected to go
into service.
“All fuel that will be deliv-
ered will be under the control
and guarantees of the Interna-
tional Atomic Energy Agency
for the whole time it stays on
Iranian territory,” the Foreign
Ministry said in a statement.
“Moreover, the Iranian side
gave additional written guaran-
tees that the fuel will be used
only for the Bushehr nuclear
power plant.”
Iran confirmed that it had re-
ceived the shipment, the official
Iranian news agency IRNA re-
ported.
“The first nuclear fuel ship-
ment for the Bushehr atomic
power plant arrived in Iran Mon-
day,” IRNA quoted Iranian Vice
President Gholam Reza Aghaz-
adeh as saying.
Aghazadeh said the Bushehr
plant was 95 percent complete
and would begin operations
“next year.” He indicated the re-
actor needed 80 tons of nuclear
fuel during the initial phase of
operation, but did not provide
further details.
The U.S. has been pushing
the U.N. Security Council to pass
a third round of sanctions against
Iran for its refusal to suspend
uranium enrichment.
See IRAN, Page 2
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2007
International
Wargames
Russia, Sweden on joint
exercises. Photos, page 11
Putin To Be PM in Future Government
By Oleg Shchedrov
REUTERS
MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin
said on Monday he would become
prime minister in a future Russian gov-
ernment if his close ally Dmitry
Medvedev was elected president, giving
Putin a new role after he leaves the
Kremlin.
A 42-year-old lawyer with no politi-
cal base of his own, Medvedev is virtu-
ally certain to win next March’s presi-
dential election since most Russians will
vote for whoever the highly popular
Putin endorses.
“If Russian citizens express their con-
fidence in Dmitry Medvedev and elect
him as the country’s president, I will be
ready to head the government,” Putin
In the Ring Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov attends a party congress outside Moscow on Saturday. The opposition Communist Party on
Saturday backed Zyuganov to run for president next March against Kremlin-backed Dmitry Medvedev. See story, page 2.
Criminal Investigation Sought Over Conscription
By Galina Stolyarova
STAFF WRITER
A scandal is brewing over alleged viola-
tions in the draft of a high school stu-
dent into the army.
The St. Petersburg pressure group
Soldiers’ Mothers is demanding a crim-
inal investigation into the circumstances
surrounding the drafting of Vladimir
Timofeyev, an 11th-grade student at
evening school No. 153. Ella Polyakova,
the chairwoman of Soldiers’ Mothers
claims the draft was illegal.
“It is against the law to draft pupils
attending high schools,” Polyakova
told a congress of his United Russia
party held near Moscow’s Red Square.
“(We) shouldn’t be ashamed or
afraid of transferring the key powers of
the country, the destiny of Russia to the
hands of such a man,” Putin added in
his speech.
Medvedev, 42, was later adopted by
the congress as United Russia’s presi-
dential candidate. Delegates voted 478-
1 in a sober, Soviet-style ceremony held
without debate.
In his brief acceptance speech,
Medvedev listed priorities such as
strengthening Russia’s position in the
world, preserving the Russian nation,
looking after the young and the old.
“All this is in Vladimir Putin’s strat-
egy. I will be guided by this strategy, if
said. “Besides, the police grabbed
Timofeyev and declared him eligible
without even consulting his medical
chart.”
Colonel Yury Klyonov, aide to the
chief military commander of the
Leningrad Military District argued
that Timofeyev was drafted legally
and no violations occurred in the pro-
cess.
“Before he joined the evening
school, Timofeyev had attended a rail-
way college,” Klyonov said. The official
accused Timofeyev of playing truant
and poor conduct.
WWW.SPTIMESRUSSIA.
Hyundai Plant
Coming to City
Korean carmaker will open
a local factory. Page 10
I am elected president,” Medvedev
said.
“But carrying out an idea can only
be successful with the participation of
its author. I have no doubt that in the
future Vladimir Vladimirovich (Putin)
will use all his resources, all his influ-
ence in Russia and abroad for the ben-
efit of Russia.”
Putin signaled Medvedev, a first
deputy prime minister and chairman of
state gas giant Gazprom, last week as
his preferred successor. The constitu-
tion bars Putin from a third term.
Analysts said the choice of a loyal
longtime colleague signaled Putin’s de-
sire to keep a grip on power after leav-
ing the Kremlin. The two men have
worked together for 17 years.
“While in college, he regularly
skipped classes without a satisfactory
reason and his grades were low,” Kly-
onov added. “And when at school he
almost made a point of not attending
lessons.”
Sergei Strelchenko, head of the St.
Petersburg military-medical commis-
sion, told reporters on Monday that
6,194 local conscripts are officially listed
as wanted by the police for dodging
conscription.
Fear of hazing and of combat in
Chechnya are causing so many young
men to avoid the draft or desert the
CENTRAL BANK RATE
Putin walked into the congress hall
side by side with Medvedev to applause
from the serried ranks of dark-suited
delegates. Both men wore dark suits
with white shirts and ties and stood to
attention as participants sang the na-
tional anthem.
In a brief speech, Putin said there
was no intention to change the balance
of power between the president and the
prime minister in a future government.
Some commentators had speculated
Putin might want to rewrite the consti-
tution to beef up the role of the premier
because most power resides with Rus-
sia’s president, who is commander of
the armed forces, sets foreign policy
and picks the prime minister.
See PUTIN, Page 2
ALEXANDER NATRUSKIN/REUTERS
army that police are being pressed into
service to round up conscripts.
Yelena Filonova, a St. Petersburg-
based lawyer, who used to work with
the Soldiers’ Mothers organization and
represented the interests of a number of
conscripts in cases of alleged hazing or
illegal drafting, said the police often use
questionable tactics.
“The police can plant drugs or
bullets in young men’s pockets and
then offer them a choice between the
army and prison. I would suggest
sewing up big pockets,” Filonova said.
See DRAFT, Page 2
2 ❖ Tuesday, December 18, 2007 N E W S
PUTIN
Continued from page 1
Putin praised Medvedev as a man
whose “main principles in life are the
interests of its government and its citi-
zens.”
He also announced a big pay rise of
14 percent for public sector workers,
which will come into effect on February
1, just over a month before the election.
The military will get 18 percent.
In a further sign of Putin’s intention
to keep a grip on power next year, Rus-
sian media reported that Putin could
IRAN
Continued from page 1
“This fuel shipment gives the Iranians
one more reason to suspend their enrich-
ment program,” White House
spokesman Gordon Johndroe said. “If
they’re getting fuels from the Russians
now, Iran doesn’t need its own program.”
The American effort became more
difficult earlier this month with the re-
lease of a new U.S. intelligence report
that concluded Iran had halted its nu-
DRAFT
Continued from page 1
“When arrested, they are not allowed
to call home and their families may not
know for months what happened to
them, and of course they do not have a
chance to protest.”
Sergei Yakushchenko, head of the
DENIS SINYAKOV/REUTERS draft department of the board of the
Ksenia Sukhinova, 20, poses after Leningrad Military District, said the au-
We Have a Winner! winning the Miss Russia beauty contest
in Moscow on Friday
tumn draft plan was filled in its entirety,
Changes Loom for SPS, Zyuganov Promises to Fight Medvedev in Vote
By Dmitry Solovyov
Yabloko Political Parties REUTERS
MOSCOW — The Communist Party
on Saturday nominated leader Gen-
By David Nowak ing voters. At least 20 percent of the nady Zyuganov to run for president in
STAFF WRITER electorate voted for liberal parties in March — a vote where he faces a
MOSCOW — One is talking about a 1993, not including independents, many daunting challenge against President
change in leadership. The other is talk- of whom also pushed a liberal agenda. Vladimir Putin’s preferred successor.
ing about changing its logo. Two years later, that figure dropped Putin has endorsed First Deputy
But after a disastrous performance to around 15 percent, where it hovered Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, but
in the State Duma elections and facing through 1999 until 2003, when official Zyuganov said he would have a good
millions of dollars of debt, the liberal results showed 10 percent voted for lib- chance if no candidate wins an outright
parties Yabloko and Union of Right eral parties. majority in the first round.
Forces have managed to come to an It was in the 2003 elections that “I believe we have a good chance in
agreement on one thing: Something has Yabloko and SPS dropped out of the this election, and should this election be
to change. Duma for good, failing to reach the 5 more or less fair, a second round of vot-
Yabloko announced Friday that it percent threshold, which has since been ing is inevitable,” Zyuganov told re-
would not support its veteran leader, bumped up to 7 percent. porters at a party congress.
Grigory Yavlinsky, to run for president The two parties failed to garner 3 The Communists are the largest op-
in the election in March but would in- percent between them on Dec. 2. position party in the newly elected State
stead back Vladimir Bukovsky, a So- Party officials insist that the last two Duma, but they received just 12 percent
viet-era dissident who has been living in Duma elections were riddled with fraud of votes, compared with 64 percent for
London for years. and that their results United Russia.
In a further sign of were in fact much
a revolt taking shape Analysts say voters higher.
in the Yabloko ranks,
at least one senior willing to support
But sociologists
and political analysts
MN to Stop Publishing on January 1
member is calling for
liberal parties are say voters willing to By Max Delany
Yavlinsky to cede or support liberal par- STAFF WRITER
share power in the increasingly scarce. ties are increasingly MOSCOW — It may have outlived
party, which Yavlin- scarce. A core of 10 perestroika and survived the Yukos
sky has led since he percent to 12 percent affair, but now financial problems
co-founded it in 1995. of the electorate is believed to still back seem to have sunk the weekly news-
The Union of Right Forces, or SPS, liberal values. paper Moskovskiye Novosti.
is to hold a congress Monday at the Nonetheless, Yabloko, SPS, the lib- Following a management meet-
Hotel Izmailovo in eastern Moscow to ertarian Civil Force and the Demo- ing, the publication’s parent com-
nominate co-founder Boris Nemtsov cratic Party — which promotes joining pany, Obyedinyonniye Media, an-
as its candidate for the March 2 elec- the European Union — altogether gar- nounced Friday that the newspaper
tion and conduct a postmortem on its nered less than 4 percent of the Duma would stop publishing from Jan 1.
disappointing performance in the vote. Obyedinyonniye Media, owned
Duma elections. One senior member Around half of the 12 percent of lib- by Israeli-Russian businessman
has proposed a rebranding of the eral voters are “liberal economists,” Arkady Gaidamak, also runs a host
party. said Leonty Byzov, head of the analyti- of other media outlets, including the
Yabloko captured just 1.59 percent cal section of state polling agency VT- radio station Business FM.
of the vote in the recent Duma elec- sIOM. The company also prints
tions, while SPS garnered just 0.96 per- “They want free entrepreneurship Moskovskiye Novosti’s sister En-
cent. United Russia, whose ticket was and unhindered international invest- glish-language edition, The Moscow
led by President Vladimir Putin, won ment opportunities,” Byzov said. News, in partnership with RIA-
64.3 percent of the vote. “They realize that they can get this Novosti, the state news agency.
But even before the Duma elections, with United Russia without having to It was not immediately clear how
figures from the Central Elections risk the political turmoil that an outside Friday’s announcement would affect
Commission for the past 14 years make force coming into power would bring,” The Moscow News.
for disturbing reading for liberal-lean- he said.
send the Kremlin chief of staff to run
Medvedev’s election campaign.
The Vedomosti newspaper said
Kremlin chief of staff Sergei Sobyanin
and possibly the main Kremlin political
strategist, Vladislav Surkov, would head
Medvedev’s campaign.
“For the first time a presidential
candidate’s campaign staff will be
headed by the Kremlin chief of staff,”
Vedomosti wrote.
The Kremlin did not comment on Ve-
domosti’s report. In the past, successful
heads of the election campaign have gone
on to become chief of the Kremlin staff.
A senior United Russia source told
Reuters the choice would mean
clear weapons development program in
2003 and had not resumed it through at
least the middle of this year.
Although Russia has resisted drives to
impose sanctions on Iran, it also repeat-
edly has urged Tehran to cooperate with
the Vienna, Austria-based IAEA to re-
solve concerns over the nuclear program.
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov un-
derlined that position last week after a
meeting in Moscow with his Iranian
counterpart Manouchehr Mottaki.
Lavrov said resolving the contro-
versy is possible “solely on the basis of
and 85 percent of new conscripts have
already been sent to their military de-
tachments.
Yakushchenko said no requests for
alternative service were filed during the
autumn draft.
Mothers of draftees often complain
that the officers at military commissions
laugh in their faces when they ask about
their sons’ rights. They also say recruiters
refuse to provide a list of illnesses that
qualify one for an exemption and that
military doctors regularly ignore severe
Zyuganov took Boris Yeltsin to a
second round in the presidential elec-
tion in 1996 but was roundly beaten by
Putin four years later. He did not run
against Putin in 2004.
Zyuganov’s first deputy, Ivan Mel-
nikov, told the congress: “Now we must
react more promptly, because the
Kremlin’s calculations that its candidate
will automatically get the rating of the
current president is a theory that has
yet to be proven in practice.”
Zyuganov, who has criticized the
Duma elections as the dirtiest on
record, said he reckoned that the Com-
munists enjoyed the support of at least
one-third of voters. “This is very serious
and solid support,” he told reporters.
Upbeat and bellicose, Zyuganov said
Yeltsin and Putin had both shirked in the
past his proposal to hold public debates.
“[The authorities] are afraid of an
open political rivalry,” he said. “I offi-
“We do not see any commercial
profit in continuing the development
of Moskovskiye Novosti in its cur-
rent format,” Daniil Kupsin, general
director of Obyedinyonniye Media,
said in a statement.
The newspaper could however
be relaunched at some future date in
a new format, the statement said.
“A decision has been made to
redirect efforts into creating and de-
veloping successful media projects
that are more cost-effective and
profitable,” it said.
During the 1980s, Moskovskiye
Novosti rose to prominence as a
leading champion of Soviet leader
Mikhail Gorbachev’s policies of glas-
nost and perestroika.
Friday’s news also spells the end
for the paper’s current editor, vet-
eran newsman Valery Tretyakov.
Tretyakov, who founded independent
daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta in 1990,
was appointed editor in January 2006.
The St. Petersburg Times
Medvedev had a full set of Kremlin of-
ficials beside him as an extra assurance
that he would stick to Putin’s agenda
once elected.
“By doing so, Putin will in fact hand
over to Medvedev his full staff which
will smoothly carry on with what it is
doing now,” the source said.
Opinion polls show more than 50
percent of Russians are ready to vote
for anyone chosen by Putin. The Krem-
lin leader’s support helped United Rus-
sia win more than two-thirds of seats in
the lower house of parliament in an
election on December 2.
This victory would give Putin a pow-
erful political base as prime minister.
the nuclear nonproliferation treaty,
IAEA rules and principles and, cer-
tainly, with Iran proving its right to the
peaceful use of nuclear energy.”
Officials at Atomstroyexport, the
Russian contractor for Bushehr, raised
the prospect last week of creating a Rus-
sian-Iranian joint venture “to ensure se-
curity” at the Bushehr plant, according to
the RIA-Novosti agency. That could indi-
cate Russian interest in ensuring that en-
riched uranium at the plant is not stolen
or diverted. Depleted fuel rods also could
be reprocessed into plutonium.
illnesses during official examinations.
“Some of the mothers who come to
us say that they would have been happy
to pay a bribe but they do not have that
kind of money,” Polyakova of Soldiers’
Mothers said.
Even top military officials admit that
they are filling the armed forces with
unfit soldiers. According to Igor
Puzanov, chief commander of the
Leningrad Military District, only about
10 percent of recruits satisfy the stan-
dard physical-fitness requirements.
cially invite United Russia’s new presi-
dential candidate to such a dialogue.”
The Communist Party’s central com-
mittee approved Zyuganov’s candidacy
on Friday, and it was rubber-stamped by
congress on Saturday. In the lobby of the
congress, held in a Soviet-era state farm
on the edge of Moscow, posters of Stalin
and books about the dictator sold like
hot cakes.
Zyuganov, in his speech, said: “We
admit some of the mistakes made in the
past.
But at the same time we want to re-
mind you that it was in Soviet times
when our nation became a real super-
power and was the first to go into
space.”
Decrying low pensions and widening
social inequality, he said: “The Commu-
nist Party insists on nationalization of
natural resources and strategic sectors
of industry.
W E A T H E R
TUESDAY 9:57
WEDNESDAY 9:58
THURSDAY 9:59
FRIDAY 9:59
TUESDAY 3:52
WEDNESDAY 3:52
THURSDAY 3:52
FRIDAY 3:52
TUESDAY
High 2, Low 0
Sunny
WEDNESDAY
High 0, Low 0
Sunny
THURSDAY
High 3, Low 2
Cloudy
FRIDAY
High 2, Low 1
Rain
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
A fisherman sits on the ice of the Volga River in
Gone Fishin’ the town of Kalyazin, 160 kilometers north of
Moscow, on Monday.
I N B R I E F
Sponsor For Admiralty
■ ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A
sponsor, who preferred to remain
anonymous, gave 100 million rubles ($4
million) for the restoration of the Ad-
miralty tower and sculptures, Interfax
reported on Saturday.
The sponsorship was offered at the
auction of the second Gifts Store for St.
Petersburg’s Birthday that was held on
Friday. The auction offered 17 St. Pe-
tersburg monuments in need of restora-
tion. All the sites on offer for renova-
tion were bought by large companies or
private sponsors, who will allocate their
money for the restoration works.
World Ice Show
■ ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — World
ice skating stars will perform in a
unique show to take place on Moscow
and St. Petersburg’s main squares on
Wednesday.
The Two Capitals Ice Show will be
held at the outdoor skating rinks built
on Moscow’s Red Square and St. Pe-
tersburg’s Palace Square.
Moscow’s show will host Olympic
champion ice skater Alexei Yagudin,
Irina Slutskaya, Maria Petrova and
Alexei Tikhonov, Yekaterina Gordeyeva
and many other stars.
In St. Petersburg, the show will fea-
ture Olympic champion Yevgeny
Pluschenko, Tatyana Navka and Roman
Kostomarov, Sasha Cohen, Olympic sil-
ver medallist Stephan Lambel, Olympic
bronze Pillip Kandeloro, and others
skaters.
Tickets for the show will cost from
1,000 rubles ($41).
Death In Metro
■ ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — An
unknown man was found dead in a tun-
nel of the St. Petersburg metro between
Sadovaya and Dostoyevskaya metro
stations on Monday afternoon, Interfax
reported on Monday.
OKSANA YUSHKO/REUTERS
An emergency brigade was sent to
the tunnel. The identity of the dead per-
son and the reasons for the death are
being investigated.
Truck Line
■ ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — About
1,800 trucks were stuck in a queue to en-
ter Russia on the border of Latvia and
Russia as of Saturday morning, Interfax
reported.
The huge lines of trucks began to
appear on the border in the middle of
August last year, leading to complaints
from local residents.
Ryzhkov Won’t Run
■ MOSCOW (SPT) — Outgoing inde-
pendent State Duma Deputy Vladimir
Ryzhkov said Friday that he would not
run in next year’s presidential election.
“After serious consideration, I have
decided not to participate in the presi-
dential election in March,” Ryzhkov
said in a statement, Gazeta.ru reported.
Ryzhkov, a leading liberal politician,
said one of the reasons he decided not
to run was the fact that the Supreme
Court this year ordered that his Repub-
lican Party be disbanded for failing to
adhere to a law that requires parties to
have at least 50,000 members and 45 re-
gional offices. Without a party to nomi-
nate him, Ryzhkov would have to col-
lect 2 million signatures to get onto the
ballot.
Gunbattle Kills 5
■ MOSCOW (Reuters) — Four
Chechen rebels and a police officer
were killed in a gunbattle in Grozny,
Chechen Interior Minister Ruslan
Alkhanov said Sunday.
The group of three men and one
women resisted arrest during a search
of a residential district in the city on
Saturday night, sparking a conflict that
lasted until early Sunday, Alkhanov
said.
N E W S
Briton Charged With Murder
By David Nowak
STAFF WRITER
MOSCOW — A British citizen is in
custody on suspicion of killing his new
wife and her grandmother in their
apartment in the Tver region, investiga-
tors said.
William Cocks, 52, has admitted to
killing the two and has been charged
with murder, the Tver branch of the In-
vestigative Committee said Friday. If
convicted, he faces life in prison.
Cocks was found unconscious in the
apartment in the town of Udomlya on
Dec. 3 with a dozen stab wounds to his
lower arms, which investigators believe
were self-inflicted, said Karina Bege-
tova, a spokeswoman for the Investiga-
tive Committee.
The bodies of his wife, Irina Cocks,
a 35-year-old former stripper, and her
grandmother, Vera Romanova, 82,
were found in an adjacent room, Bege-
tova said.
Irina Cocks was found with 44 stab
wounds, mainly to her neck, chest and
Swiss Man Asks Minsk for Asylum, Then Leaves
By Natalya Krainova
STAFF WRITER
MOSCOW — A Swiss citizen who
asked for refugee status in Belarus has
returned to Switzerland without expla-
nation after spending 10 days in the
country, Belarussian officials said.
The Swiss asylum seeker, 32, entered
Belarus on Nov. 28 at a checkpoint on
the Poland-Belarus border, saying he
wanted to live and work in Belarus, said
Vitaly Aksyonov, head of the citizen-
ship and migration department in the
Brest region of Belarus.
Aksyonov dealt directly with the re-
quest of the Swiss man, whom he de-
clined to identify at the foreigner’s re-
quest.
“He filled out an application for
refugee status,” Aksyonov said Fri-
day.
Since he had no entry visa, applying
for asylum was the only way the Swiss
man could be allowed into Belarus,
Aksyonov said.
The man cited no political motives
for leaving Switzerland. “Nobody op-
pressed him there,” Aksyonov said.
The Swiss man arrived at the border
driving a Lada with a collection of
books authored by Bolshevik leader
Vladimir Lenin in the trunk, Noviye
Izvestia reported Friday. He claimed
that Belarus, Venezuela and Cuba were
the best countries in the world.
Postponement In
Khlebnikov Case
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
MOSCOW — A court on Mon-
day postponed the retrial of two
men accused in the 2004 murder
of the American editor of Forbes
magazine’s Russian edition be-
cause one of the men is still miss-
ing, a court spokeswoman said.
The trial of those suspected
in the killing of Paul Klebnikov
has been in limbo since the
Supreme Court overturned their
acquittal by a jury and ordered a
new trial.
The Moscow City Court was to
begin a closed-door retrial Mon-
day, but instead returned the case
to prosecutors while authorities
continue searching for Kazbek
Dukuzov, who disappeared earlier
this year, court spokeswoman
Anna Usacheva said.
Another man, Musa Vakhayev,
remains in Moscow, while a third
man linked to the case, Fail
Sadretdinov, was convicted in Jan-
uary on an unrelated crime and
sentenced to nine years in prison.
stomach, she said. Romanova had four
stab wounds to the neck.
Begetova said a preliminary investi-
gation indicated that Cocks killed the
two women and then attempted suicide
by slitting his wrists on Dec. 2.
Asked about the case, a British Em-
bassy spokesman said only that “an in-
dividual” was being afforded “all ap-
propriate consulate assistance.”
Begetova said investigators had no
idea what had prompted the killings
and were “not ruling out a motive
linked to the occult.”
Tarot cards were found scattered on
the floor of the room where the wife
and grandmother were found, she said.
A stripper’s pole was also found.
Cocks was taken to Udomlya’s main
hospital, where he was in stable condi-
tion, Begetova said.
He and his wife, who shared a love
for biking, married in November, Bege-
tova said. They met in 2004 in Spain,
where he was on vacation and she was
working as a stripper in a club. William
While his asylum application was
being processed, Belarussian authori-
ties checked the foreigner into a hotel
in Brest and allowed him to move
around the city of 300,000, which is lo-
cated near the Polish border, Aksyonov
said.
The one condition was that he re-
turn to the hotel before 11 p.m. for
safety reasons.
“Such a decision was made because
it gets dark early in winter, and the man
The Swiss man
arrived at the border
driving a Lada, with a
collection of books by
Lenin in the trunk.
doesn’t know the city and could easily
get lost,” Aksyonov said. “We didn’t
have the means to provide him with a
personal guide to show him around.”
The Belarussian migration service
began preparing the Swiss man’s asylum
paperwork, but before it could be com-
pleted, the would-be refugee suddenly
changed his mind and left Belarus on
Dec. 7, Aksyonov said.
Belarussian Interior Ministry
spokesman Oleg Slepchenko and Be-
The St. Petersburg Times ❖ 3
Cocks moved to Russia in 2006, and in
August, Irina suggested that they move
with the grandmother into the apart-
ment in Udomlya, Begetova said.
Cocks’ sister, Susan Irwin, 56, said
he had a mental breakdown last year,
Britain’s Sun reported Saturday.
Cocks’ daughter Hannah, 22, told
the paper: “I had a couple of calls say-
ing he was all right. He told me his girl-
friend was into witchcraft, she was a
psychic.”
She added, “My dad is just a normal
guy who likes going to the pub with his
mates. But he wasn’t well last year. He
kept saying someone was going to kill
him. He was getting paranoid so he
went to a mental hospital for 28 days.”
Begetova said Cocks would be
placed in a pretrial detention center
once doctors deemed him healthy
enough to be moved.
“We need at least two months to es-
tablish his mental condition, which
means obtaining his medical history
from his doctor in Britain,” she said.
larussian Border Guard Service
spokesman Yury Kozachenko con-
firmed the curious case but would not
provide further details.
Komsomolskaya Pravda suggested
on Friday that the asylum application
might have been a scheme dreamed up
by the Swiss man to get a free 10-day
vacation — a theory Aksyonov dis-
missed.
“I don’t think so, because he didn’t
go anywhere else [in Belarus] except
Brest,” Aksyonov said. “He could have
bought a [train] ticket for himself and
gone anywhere he wanted. He had
money with him.”
A Swiss Embassy official in Minsk
said by telephone that the embassy was
aware of the case from the media but
that it could not get involved because
the country in which a refugee asks for
asylum has no right to disclose informa-
tion about the applicant. “Especially to
the country where he is from,” said the
official, Dietrich Dreyer.
Swiss authorities will not investigate
the case, Dietrich said. “Switzerland is a
free country, and any of its citizens can
do whatever he wants,” Dietrich said.
Belarus has been dubbed in the
West as Europe’s last dictatorship. In
April 2006, Belarussian President
Alexander Lukashenko signed a decree
simplifying the procedure for granting
asylum to foreigners.
4 ❖ Tuesday, December 18, 2007
An Ideal Soviet Man Has the Trust of the President
By Francesca Mereu
STAFF WRITER
PRIOZERSK, Leningrad Region —
When duty called, a young Viktor
Zubkov donned his old pants and black
rubber boots to clean stables and check
heating pipes.
He developed a reputation for bark-
ing orders and expecting quick results.
Women fawned over him, but he only
had eyes for his wife.
This is the person — the ideal Soviet
man — whom President Vladimir Putin
has selected to lead the government in
the crucial months before next year’s
presidential election, according to peo-
ple who know him.
“Alexeich was a very energetic
young man, and he would help us every
time we needed it,” said Konstantin
Mikhailov, a former farmhand who
worked under Zubkov for a decade at
the Razdolye collective farm. “He
wasn’t even afraid of going into a stable
and walking in manure when needed.”
Mikhailov, 75, referred to Zubkov as
“Alexeich,” a short form of Zubkov’s
patronymic and a folksy way of showing
respect. Zubkov took over the farm in
Priozersk, a district in the Leningrad re-
gion, in 1970 at the age of 29.
“Alexeich was a really good man,”
Mikhailov said, nodding his head and
smiling with evident affection for his
former boss.
The old farmhand’s enthusiasm is
shared by others. “He was always sent
where there were problems to solve,”
said Raisa Kuzmenkova, who served as
his deputy director at Pervomaiskoye, an
association of seven collective farms in
the Priozersk district. Zubkov was made
general director of Pervomaiskoye in
1982, after 12 years at Razdolye.
“He sorted things out at Razdolye
and was sent to Pervomaiskoye, where
he had to begin from scratch again,”
Kuzmenkova said.
“Now he has to sort things out for
the whole country,” she said. “At first I
thought that becoming prime minister
was the wrong career move for him,
but after I saw how confident he was, I
became convinced that Vladimir
Vladimirovich [Putin] had made the
right decision.”
Putin named Zubkov as prime min-
ister in September, just as the country
entered a critical election season that
will end with Putin’s expected depar-
ture from the Kremlin in May. Putin’s
surprise decision came days before
news broke of a fierce power struggle
among the Kremlin’s siloviki clan. At
this crucial moment for Putin’s Kremlin,
the president turned to Zubkov, an old
ally and former subordinate from St.
Petersburg City Hall.
“Viktor Zubkov is a professional,
honest, judicious, responsible and wise
man. He is a man with character and
with great experience,” Putin said
shortly after the appointment.
Putin touted Zubkov’s experience at
Razdolye. “He was once thrown into
the worst collective farm, it was dying,
and he transformed it into the best en-
terprise in the Soviet Union,” he said,
adding that he had to speak out because
the prime minister was too modest to
mention his own accomplishments.
Zubkov’s office declined repeated re-
quests over six weeks for an interview.
Requests to accompany him on one of
his trips to the regions were also rejected.
Zubkov appears to be serving a
transitional role, and he might give up
his office in May to none other than
Putin himself. Dmitry Medvedev, the
first deputy prime minister named by
Putin as his preferred successor, said
this week that Putin would be his ideal
candidate for prime minister.
HUMBLE BEGINNINGS
Zubkov’s career started far away from
the seat of government in the White
House. He was born on Sept. 15, 1941,
in the village of Arbat in the Sverdlovsk
region, where his parents moved from
Monchegorsk, in the Murmansk region,
during World War II. Arbat — also
FRANCESCA MEREU/SPT
Raisa Kuzmenkova
FRANCESCA MEREU/SPT
Lyudmila Kedrova
FRANCESCA MEREU/SPT
Yevgeny Krasov
called Kaban, or Wild Boar, for the high
population of wild pigs in the area — no
longer exists.
After the war, Zubkov’s family re-
turned to Monchegorsk, and the young
Viktor attended school there. He
landed his first job at 17 at the local
Severonikel mining plant, where he
worked as an apprentice for two years.
In 1960, he left for Pushkino, in the
Leningrad region, where he graduated
with a degree in economics from the
Agriculture Institute.
After two years of military service, he
worked as a collective farm manager in
the Leningrad region from 1967 to 1985.
Friends said it was at the farms that
Zubkov learned how to bark orders.
“When I saw him on television rebuk-
ing the poor ministers, I felt like I was go-
ing back in time to one of his meetings,
and I thought that my turn to be rebuked
was next,” Kuzmenkova said.
Zubkov took ministers to task dur-
ing televised Cabinet meetings in Octo-
ber for not acting quickly enough. The
meetings have since been closed to out-
side eyes, apparently after several min-
isters complained about being dressed
down in public.
Zubkov, a member of the Communist
Party from 1967 to 1991, entered politics
in 1985, when he was appointed the head
of Priozersk, the commercial center of
the district where his farms were located.
The town of 20,000 people, located in the
Karelian Isthmus, where the Vuoksa
River runs into the scenic Ladozhskoye
Lake, is a tourist magnet in summer, but
the streets were empty on a recent cold
and gloomy winter afternoon.
“His style was brusque and tough,
but he was always fair with the people
who worked with him,” said Lyudmila
Kedrova, who worked as a secretary of
the Priozersk executive committee.
Zubkov was the committee’s head.
“He would rebuke people and pun-
ish them, but he would never raise his
voice or fire anyone,” she said.
Kedrova recalled that the tempera-
ture reached minus 40 degrees Celsius in
N E W S
Zubkov visiting a kindergarten during a September trip to the Penza region.
the winter of 1986, and the town faced the
threat of being left without heat as water
froze and heating pipes burst. Zubkov
put on his rubber boots, an old jacket and
a hat and visited the basements of Prioz-
ersk’s apartment buildings to make sure
the pipes were in order, she said.
“He went into apartments to tell
people to move their stoves close to the
radiators so the pipes wouldn’t burst,”
she said.
Zubkov dispatched municipal work-
ers to the heating stations to make sure
each was working properly and had
Kuzmenkova, left, Zubkov and Kedrova posing for a photograph circa 1985.
A view of the town administration building in Priozersk where Zubkov worked.
SERGEI SUBBOTIN/RIA-NOVOSTI/AP
enough coal to keep the boilers hot, said
Yevgeny Krasov, a member of the Prioz-
ersk executive committee at the time.
“He knew every single worker by
name and patronymic,” he said.
Krasov described Zubkov as a fair,
but “very challenging and overly metic-
ulous boss.”
“He demanded a lot from us, but he
also taught us a lot,” he said. “We would
bring documents to him, and he would
read them carefully and correct mis-
takes. After that we had to rewrite them,
and only then would he sign them.”
FOR SPT
FRANCESCA MEREU/SPT
The St. Petersburg Times
THE ROAD TO MOSCOW
Zubkov was promoted to the post of
first deputy head of the Leningrad re-
gion’s executive committee in 1989, but
he lost the job two years later with the
Soviet collapse. He served under Putin
in St. Petersburg’s foreign relations com-
mittee for 10 months, from 1992 to 1993.
Speaking with Zubkov, Putin used
the formal “vy” form of address, while
Zubkov used the more familiar “ty,”
said Stanislav Belkovsky, a former
Kremlin spin doctor.
During his stint in City Hall, Zubkov
is thought to have helped Putin, Federal
Drug Control Service head Viktor
Cherkesov, Federal Security Service
chief Nikolai Patrushev and other cur-
rent state officials get land for dachas in
his old Priozersk district.
Zubkov was later made deputy chief
and then chief of the St. Petersburg Tax
Service. In 1998, he unsuccessfully tried
to run for Leningrad governor, and
Boris Gryzlov, now the head of United
Russia, was his campaign manager.
During the presidential election in
2000, Zubkov headed a St. Petersburg
initiative group that supported Putin’s
bid, and the next year he was offered a
job in Moscow as the head of the Fed-
eral Financial Monitoring Service,
which fights money laundering.
Zubkov joined the agency as the
Kremlin began a campaign against the
wealthy businessmen who had made
fortunes through controversial privati-
zation deals in the 1990s. A highlight
of Zubkov’s career was Russia’s re-
moval from a blacklist drawn up by the
Financial Action Task Force, an inter-
national body that combats money
laundering.
Zubkov’s televised visits to the re-
gions as prime minister are reminiscent
of his outings as a farm director, Kuz-
menkova said.
“This is the old Zubkov,” she said. “I
saw him on television, and he hasn’t
changed. He loved to meet with people,
to rebuke some, to talk to others, to hug
people and listen to their problems.”
AN IDEAL SOVIET MAN
Friends and former colleagues de-
scribed Zubkov as the ideal Soviet
man. He would get up early in the
morning to go jogging. He loved skiing.
On weekends, he went fishing in one of
the numerous lakes in the Priozersk
district.
Zubkov enjoyed bathing in a hot
banya, but he refused to drink vodka
there, as many Russians traditionally
do, former colleagues said.
He also went shopping for his wife,
which was unusual for men at the time.
“We once were walking together
home after work and he told me that he
needed to go to the shop to buy some
window cleaner. His wife had asked
him,” Kedrova said.
“But the shopkeeper told him that
they had run out of window cleaner be-
cause alcoholics had bought it,” she said.
Kedrova said Zubkov was shocked
to learn that people would drink win-
dow cleaner and even perfume, and he
raised the issue at the next meeting of
the town’s executive committee.
She said Zubkov never used his status
to seek perks. “He would stand in line
like everybody else at the time,” she said.
The Zubkovs lived in an ordinary
three-room apartment decorated with
standard Soviet wallpaper and furni-
ture, Kuzmenkova said.
Krasov said the executive commit-
tee had only one car at its disposal and
that Zubkov would walk if anyone else
needed it.
Zubkov loved to dress well and was
quite dashing as a young man, Kuz-
menkova said.
When he was farm director, women
would think up all kind of problems just
to talk to him in his office, but Zubkov
paid no attention to their advances, she
said.
Zubkov and his wife have one
daughter, Yulia, who is married to De-
fense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov.

Business
Norilsk Nickel factories belch fumes into the air in the far northern city of Norilsk, where it is the main employer.
Norilsk Feud Delays Sale of Assets
By Catrina Stewart
STAFF WRITER
MOSCOW — Shareholders blocked
the spinoff of Norilsk Nickel’s energy
assets Friday in an anticipated move
that casts a pall over the miner’s devel-
opment plans.
Mikhail Prokhorov’s Onexim Group,
which is in the process of selling its 25
percent plus one share stake in the pal-
ladium and nickel miner, abstained from
voting at Friday’s extraordinary share-
holders meeting, said Alexei Rebinkin,
a spokesman for Onexim.
Rebinkin said the new shareholder
— expected to be either Vladimir
Potanin’s Interros Group or Oleg Deri-
paska’s United Company RusAl —
should make a decision about the fu-
ture of EnergoPolyus, the proposed
power company, not Onexim.
The decision was widely expected
given Prokhorov’s statements earlier in
the day and previously that he would
not approve the spinoff, which would
have created a $7 billion power com-
pany, including its 65.2 percent stake in
power generator OGK-3.
After the meeting, Norilsk chief ex-
ecutive Denis Morozov expressed his
Georgia Cuts Latvia Agrees To Pay Gazprom Up
Growth Rating To 50% More For Gas Supplies
REUTERS
TBILISI, Georgia — Georgian Finance
Minister Nika Gilauri halved his fore-
cast for 2008 economic growth on Fri-
day, saying political turmoil had scared
off foreign investors.
“We had been forecasting for 2008
10 percent to 12 percent GDP growth,
but now, after mass protests and politi-
cal disorder, we expect GDP to grow by
only 5 to 6 percent next year,” Gilauri
said in a telephone interview.
In November, President Mikheil
Saakashvili ordered police to force oppo-
sition protesters off the streets of the cap-
ital, Tbilisi. Saakashvili then imposed a
weeklong state of emergency and called
a snap presidential election for Jan. 5.
Both overseas investors and eco-
nomic institutions have said the political
uncertainty and street clashes have tar-
nished Georgia’s image.
“What we have managed in the last
two years is to win trust from many for-
eign investors, but now they are waiting.
They are in waiting mode,” Gilauri said.
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2007
disappointment but said the manage-
ment would review other options, in-
cluding a strategic sale of the power
unit. The spinoff could be reviewed
within one or two months, he said.
Prokhorov and Potanin are currently
embroiled in a protracted split of their
assets after 15 years of working together.
Prokhorov gave his former partner first
right of refusal on the stake but has set a
steep price of $15.7 billion, which
Potanin must raise within 45 days. He
has until Thursday to accept the offer.
Prokhorov has said he favors selling
his stake to RusAl in return for cash
and an 11 percent stake in the alu-
minum giant plus a seat on its board.
The RusAl deal will go ahead if Potanin
does not accept the offer first.
Morozov said the disagreements be-
tween Potanin and Prokhorov were
starting to affect the company. “This is
not positive,” he said. “No one has
given us any plans for development.”
Plans to spin off Norilsk’s noncore
power assets were first announced in
March, and it was envisioned that
Prokhorov would focus on the energy
side of the business, while Potanin
would take control of the miner.
REUTERS
RIGA — Latvia’s gas company said
Friday that it had struck a gas sup-
ply deal with Gazprom for 2008
through 2010, which could lead to a
rise in prices of up to 50 percent,
depending on heavy fuel oil price
changes.
Latvijas Gaze, 47 percent owned
by E.On Ruhrgas and 34 percent by
Gazprom, did not give an exact fig-
ure for how much it would pay in a
statement released Friday.
Gazprom has been trying to
move all its former Soviet customers
to West European prices, which
were about $260 per 1,000 cubic me-
ters and which Gazprom has said
will be about $350 in 2008.
Latvia, like its Baltic neighbors, is
completely dependent on Russia for
gas, though the whole region ac-
counts for only a small part of
Gazprom’s exports at 4.9 billion cubic
meters in 2006, compared with a ma-
jor customer like Ukraine at 59 bcm.
VLADIMIR ZININ / ITAR-TASS
“Whilst it’s clearly disappointing, it’s
a stalling tactic and we expect it to
come back on the agenda once Onexim
has sold its stake to RusAl,” said Rob
Edwards, a Renaissance Capital ana-
lyst.
He said RusAl had its own portfolio
of power assets centered on its opera-
tions in Siberia and that EnergoPolyus’
portfolio would not provide a good fit.
“I am firmly of the belief that RusAl
will want to get rid of these as well,”
Edwards said.
Ahead of the meeting Friday,
Prokhorov said in a statement that he
would offer Potanin a formal deal to
split their assets in KM-Invest, which in-
cludes an 8 percent stake in Norilsk.
Prokhorov proposes either selling the
assets and splitting the proceeds, or
buying out Potanin’s share or vice versa.
If Potanin does not accept the offer,
Prokhorov said he would consider legal
proceedings to break up the holding.
Mandated lead arrangers ABN
Amro, BNP Paribas, Credit Suisse and
Merrill Lynch are leading a $4.5 billion
syndicated loan backing RusAl’s bid for
Prokhorov’s stake, banking sources said
Friday, Reuters reported.
Latvijas Gaze said the rise in
prices it expected to pay for gas was
because of the rise in the price of
fuel oil, up from about $240 per ton
in January to $506 now.
It said it expected supplies of gas
in its underground storage unit, which
were bought at lower prices earlier
this year, would last until April.
From April, the price rise would
depend on the average price of the
previous six months of fuel oil.
If this were from $400 to $500 per
ton, then the rise in the price of the
gas it buys would be between 20 and
50 percent from the December 2007
price.
If the average price of heavy fuel
oil falls to $350, then the price rise
would be about 7 percent, it added.
It said it would make a loss of be-
tween 5 million Latvian lats ($10.43
million) and 30 million Latvian lats
($62.60 million) in 2008, if oil prices
rise further and if tariffs for domes-
tic customers are not increased.
Ford Strikers Resume
Work, Talks Continue
By Irina Titova
STAFF WRITER
Ford Motor Company workers ended
a strike that had lasted for almost a
month in Vsevolozhsk, Leningrad
Oblast, at midnight on Sunday.
“We are very pleased with the deci-
sion taken by the trade union that will
allow all employees to get back to
work from Sunday midnight and start
earning their salaries again in this pe-
riod leading up to the winter holiday
season,” said Theo
Streit, the plant’s di-
rector, according to
Ford’s press service. So far the plant’s
Negotiations on administration has
the new 2008 labor
contract package were offered workers
due to begin Monday,
Streit said.
an 11 percent pay
The decision to increase.
stop the strike was
taken on Friday when
the plant’s trade union and the admin-
istration signed an agreement on a
schedule of further negotiations to last
until Feb. 2008.
Alexei Etmanov, head of the plant’s
trade union, said he didn’t consider the
ending of the strike to mean failure.
“It’s neither a failure nor a victory
for any side. It’s just a new stage in the
struggle for our interests,” Etmanov
said.
Etmanov said the workers have
high hopes for the further negotia-
tions. So far, the plant’s administration
Belarus Set To Pay 19 Percent
More for Russian Gas in 2008
COMBINED REPORTS
MINSK —Belarus will pay 19 percent
more for Russian gas beginning next
year, Gazprom said Saturday, a day af-
ter President Vladimir Putin an-
nounced $1.5 billion in loans to help its
economy adjust to rising prices.
The announcements came after
Putin paid a two-day visit to Minsk,
which yielded no signs that the two
countries were inching toward a full
merger.
Following a dispute over energy
prices at the beginning of the year,
Gazprom forced Belarus to accept a
doubling of gas prices this year —to
$100 per thousand cubic meters —and
an unspecified increase for 2008.
Sergei Kupriyanov, a spokesman for
Gazprom, said Saturday that Belarus
would pay $119 as of
next year.
Belarussian gov- Gazprom has
ernment officials re-
fused to comment on moved to end
the announcement,
but the increase was
energy subsidies.
apparently less than
what they had feared. Minsk govern-
ment sources had earlier said Moscow
was seeking an increase of up to 60
percent for 2008. Lawmakers on
Thursday passed a 2008 budget that
forecast a price of $125.
In announcing the $1.5 billion loan
during his visit to Minsk on Friday, Putin
promised that rates would not rise be-
yond gradual increases set out last year.
In recent years, Gazprom has
moved to end energy-supply subsidies
to former Soviet republics; several
countries, including Georgia, Ukraine
and Azerbaijan, have seen sharp hikes
in prices, and some critics accuse Russia
of using energy prices to punish West-
ern-leaning governments.
Putin’s visit to Belarus produced
calls for closer cooperation but yielded
The St. Petersburg Times ❖ 5
has offered the workers an 11 percent
raise beginning March 1 to compen-
sate for inflation. However, the work-
ers hope for a bigger raise.
750 workers continued the strike
right up until the last moment, Et-
manov said. They were the majority of
the 1320 assembly line workers who
are the ones to actually assemble and
paint the cars. However, they are paid
the lowest salary out of all other em-
ployees, he said.
Etmanov said
the strike had been
helpful for the inter-
ests of the workers.
“Besides, it was
probably the first
strike in Russia over
the last 10 years that
was held for such a
long period of time
and on a legal ba-
sis,” he said.
Etmanov said that by their calcula-
tions, as a result of the strike the plant
failed to produce about 5,000 cars.
The strike began on Nov. 20. The
workers’ main demand was to receive
a salary increase from 19,000 rubles to
28,000 rubles. As a result of the strike,
the plant’s administration had to stop
the assembly line and limit the access
of workers to the plant. On Nov. 28
the plant resumed one shift of its work,
and on Dec. 10 it began to work a sec-
ond shift. Normally the plant works in
three shifts.
no signs that the neighbors were mov-
ing toward the creation of a unified
state. The two countries signed an
agreement in 1996 that envisioned close
political, economic and military ties, but
efforts to achieve a full merger have
foundered.
Before Putin’s arrival in Minsk,
there had been intense speculation that
he could be seeking to use the union to
provide him with a power base after he
steps down as president next year. But
at the talks, President Alexander
Lukashenko dismissed this.
“I was surprised to see the visit trig-
gered such a fuss in the West,”
Lukashenko said. “There are no politi-
cal connotations here. We are friendly
and allied states, and I would be sur-
prised if there was no official visit. ...
There is nothing ex-
traordinary here.”
Lukashenko also
repeated an earlier
statement that Be-
larus would join
forces with Russia in
opposing U.S. plans
for a missile shield in Europe.
“Belarus is ready to play its role in
the issues of planned deployment in
Europe of U.S. missile defense sys-
tems,” he said.
He did not say what form his coun-
try’s assistance might take, but a Rus-
sian general last month suggested de-
ploying missiles in Belarus in retalia-
tion for the proposed U.S. missile
shield.
Arkady Dubnov, a political com-
mentator for Vremya Novostei, specu-
lated that Putin had sought
Lukashenko’s support for a deployment
of Russian forces in Belarus, which
hosts a Russian-operated early-warning
radar system and a limited number of
Russian military personnel.
AP, Reuters
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More than 120 people representing SPIBA
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Igor Dyukov, Stockholm School of Eco- and expressed her gratitude to the Committee’s mittee for Economic Development, Industrial gratulated Natalia Kudryavtseva on the 12th Beatles Style.
nomics in Russia, told the participants about members for their input to the improvement of Policy and Trade, Valentin Malyshev, the Head anniversary of SPIBA, and also expressed their SPIBA will continue its efforts to act as the
the operation of the SPIBA Marketing Com- the regional investment climate. of the Investment Policy Department of the best wishes on the occasion of Natalia’s jubilee voice of business, promoting members’ com-
mittee, which has become more active this The association received congratulations Economic Development Committee of the which fell on the same date. mon interests and cooperating closely with
year to meet the demands of SPIBA members. from the Government of St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast, and Dmitry Krasnyansky, After the official part of the Reception, local policy making institutions.

SPIBA Members Updated On Current State During 2007 SPIBA’s Committees suc-
cessfully worked to provide a platform
to exchange experience and ideas re-
and experience in the field of personnel re-
cruitment, retention and development.
In 2007 the Committee held 9 meetings and

And Perspectives Of City Transit Policy lated to key business issues and to de-
velop a dialogue with authorities to
achieve SPIBA goals and objectives.
2 round tables that covered a wide range of
key aspects related to human resources, which
were highlighted by a survey conducted
The transport infrastructure is one of the among SPIBA members.
major challenges in a megapolis. Can we ex-
SPIBA Committees’ Reports

The SPIBA Legislation & The discussion of topical issues related to

pect improvements? Lobbying Committee made good the Russian labor legislation and introduction
We received some answers on November progress in improving the invest- of innovations to the HR legal framework are
29, 2007, when SPIBA held its General Meet- ment climate in the region. always very substantive points of the Commit-
ing at the Neidgart Mansion. The guest In 2007 quite a number of meet- tee’s agenda.
speaker at the meeting was Nikolai Asaul, the ings, such as the Committee’s meet- Another burning issue is the lack of person-
Chairman of the recently established St. Pe- ings, round tables, briefings, and nel. The Committee’s members spent much
tersburg Committee for Transport-Transit Pol- seminars, were organized with the time exchanging ideas and experience to over-
participation of representatives of come this challenge. A number of meetings of
icy. He made a highly professional presenta-
the Government of St. Petersburg the Committee and round tables focused on
tion about the operations of the Committee,
and the Leningrad Region, and of ways to find employees: how to overcome
the current state and perspectives of the city tax and antimonopoly authorities to problems existing in the interaction between
transit policy and the key transport-infrastruc- deal with key business issues. companies and high schools, and how to at-
ture projects to be implemented in St. Peters- Amongst the issues touched upon tract workers from other regions of Russia and
burg. were special economic zones, tax ex- CIS countries. Committee members also dis-
Presentation of Nikolai Asaul is available at emptions for investors in St. Peters- cussed difficulties in the collaboration be-
the SPIBA office. Please contact us at burg and the Leningrad Oblast, com- tween employers and vocational schools to fill
pr@spiba.ru plex issues of tax legislation, issues “blue collar” vacancies.
To obtain more information about the of development of small power sup- The latest Committee meeting was devoted
St. Petersburg Committee for Transport-Transit ply systems, customs preferential to the results of two surveys: analysis of
Policy, please visit the official site of the regimes for the automotive industry, means of finding jobs and applicants’ job ex-
Nikolai Asaul, Chairman of the St. Petersburg Committee for Transport-Transit Policy.
St. Petersburg government at www.gov.spb.ru and customs payments for in-kind contribu- pectations.
We can expect improvements.
tions to charter capital. All these meetings and The Committee will continue its active work
events aim at establishing a constant dialogue to discuss and resolve burning HR issues.
between authorities and businesses.
SPIBA would like to express its gratitude WHAT HAS HAPPENED • ADVECS Real Estate The Committee plans to further develop its Chairpersons of the SPIBA HR Committee:
SPIBA Events Snapshots

to Leading Sponsors of SPIBA Events: SINCE OCTOBER 2007 activities focusing on the following key aims: Marina Grinevskaya, Lumene/Farmos;
• A+ Estate • To identify the most significant issues rele- Oksana Pochtivaya, AVANTA Personnel;
SPIBA welcomes its new members!

ARS-Patent 812 718-8220 vant to SPIBA members at the federal legisla- Elena Eibshits, FINTRA.
25.10.07 • Mr. Nikolai Zakharov tive level.
Consulate General of the Kingdom of the SPIBA Reception: • To initiate the preparation of amendments The SPIBA Marketing Committee has
Netherlands 12 Years of Being the Voice of A new business line — Commercial to the current legislation and organize ne- reinvented itself to provide a platform for
812 334-0200 Business Property — was formed within LSR gotiations with the Committee for Eco- marketing and PR specialists to exchange
Group at the beginning of 2007 with nomic Development, Industrial Policy and ideas and experience and obtain useful infor-
IFC and a new subsidiary company Trade of St. Petersburg Administration in mation on marketing-related issues and mar-
812 449-0867 14.11.07 A+ Estate was established. view to develop and improve local tax legis- ket trends.
SPIBA Seminar: lation and eliminate the drawbacks of the In 2007 the Committee organized 8 meet-
Johnson Branding The new business unit aims to create existing tax legislation (regional tax, invest- ings devoted to priorities set by SPIBA mem-
Controls 812 334-5438 Organized by the SPIBA Marketing and manage prime office complexes ment, real estate). bers, such as SPIBA marketing strategy, global
Committee that would remain modern and com- • To assist SPIBA members in holding round- trends in marketing, B2B marketing, internet
Park Inn petitive in the market after 15 to 20 table meetings with high-positioned repre- marketing, etc.
Pribaltiyskaya 812 329-2491 years due to unique architectural solu- sentatives of St. Petersburg and Leningrad The site visit to the Baltika Brewery in July
29.11.07 tions as well as cutting-edge tech- oblast authorities to discuss current business 2007 featured the Marketing Committee pro-
SPIBA Sponsor 2007 SPIBA General Meeting: nologies and equipment. Along with problems and further improvement of the in- gram. More than 50 representatives of SPIBA
Technopolis 812 325-4497 City Transit Policy: Current State LSR Group’s other companies, A+ Es- vestment climate in the North-West Region. member-companies took a chance to learn
and Perspectives tate is engaged in several prime prop- • To initiate and support an open dialogue about Baltika’s strategy in its highly competitive
SPIBA Information Sponsor Guest speaker: Nikolai A. Asaul, Chairman of erty projects not only in St. Petersburg with tax customs authorities in regard to tax market from Marcho Kuyumdzhiev, Vice-Pres-
Esmerk T./fax: 812 333-0889, the St. Petersburg Committee for Transport- but also in Moscow, where A+ Estate issues, and possible amendments to the tax ident for Marketing of Baltika Brewery, and to
Russia 333-0886, 333-0887. Transit Policy is planning to open its first business legislation. enjoy a tour of the production facilities.
center before 2011. • To provide SPIBA members with regular up- Another event that received highly positive
SPIBA Web-master
dates on recent tax and administrative court feedback was the seminar on Branding, which
Arcadia Tel.: 812 314-0354 08.12.07 Today the company manages three practice in the North-West Region. was arranged by the Committee in October.
fax: 812 712-4018 SPIBA Christmas Party at the Konstantin office buildings in St. Petersburg in- • To initiate and participate in the preparation During the meeting professionals from various
Palace cluding Gelios (47/49, Ulitsa Marata), of internal meetings of SPIBA members re- sectors shared their experience in the creation
Litera (10, Galernaya Ulitsa) and garding topical tax issues. and promotion of brands with their colleagues.
SPIBA EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
Apollo (8, Dobrolyubova Prospekt). The Committee has a very interesting
Ludmila Murgulets, Stockholm School of Economics, In the whole of 2007 SPIBA held 26 large-
Executive Committee Chairperson Over the last two years Elena Zaitseva, program which will continue next year.
Christian Courbois, Westpost
format events, including general meet- DLA Piper, and Dmitry Babiner, Ernst &
Sebastian FitzLyon, S.Zinovieff & Co., ings, seminars, round tables, breakfast Young, successfully served as Chairper- All the SPIBA’s Committees are open to
Honorary Consul of Australia in St. Petersburg briefings, site visits, social and network- sons of the SPIBA Legislation & Lobbying new members, suggestions, and ideas.
Irina Galieva, JT International ing events. SPIBA has launched a new section on its Committee. As their term expires on 20 For more details, please contact Natalia
Glenn Kolleeny, Salans website www.spiba.ru – Intra-SPIBA.
Sergey Spasennov, Pepeliaev, Goltsblat & Partners December 2007 the Committee will hold Kudryavtseva, SPIBA Executive Director, at
The section is an electronic directory with detailed
Ruslan Vasutin, DLA Piper elections of Co-Chairpersons. nak@spiba.ru, or Svetlana Solovieva, SPIBA
Elena Marchenko, BSH Bosch und Siemens Hausgeräte We are planning a very interesting pro- information about SPIBA member-companies.
PR Manager, at pr@spiba.ru, or by
GmbH (affiliated member) gram of events for 2008. Please, keep an Access to Intra-SPIBA is available to SPIBA mem-
The SPIBA HR Committee successfully telephone at +7-812-325-9091, 579-1815.
eye out for SPIBA announcements. bers only.
Natalia Kudryavtseva, Executive Director functioned as a forum for exchanging views

ST. PETERSBURG INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS ASSOCIATION FOR NORTH-WESTERN RUSSIA
36 Shpalernaya Ul., 3rd Floor, Office 323 • St. Petersburg 191123 • Russia • Tel.: +7 (812) 325-9091 • office@spiba.ru • www.spiba.ru
Wishing you a prosperous 2008 filled with happiness and lots of business opportunities!
SPIBA Christmas Party at the Konstantin Palace
As usual, SPIBA celebrated the forth-
coming New Year season early on Saturday
December 8, 2007. The SPIBA New Christ-
mas Party at the Konstantin Palace, which
functions as the coastal residence of the
President of the Russian Federation and a
congress center, brought together a large
group of SPIBA members and guests.
The festive program started with an ex-
clusive preview of the collection of Ros-
tropovich and Vishnevskaya and a Charity
Fair which was part of the city’s charitable
festival Dobry Piter (Kind St. Pete).
The participants of the party enjoyed the
beautiful interiors of the Konstantin Palace,
the delicious gala dinner, friendly home-
like atmosphere with Irina Smolina as the
master of ceremony, live music by the trio
Verona, dancing, amusing contests, and
the traditional SPIBA lottery.
The luckiest guests received lottery prizes
presented by Ambassador Hotel, the compa-
nies BusinessLink Personnel, Deloitte, DLA
Piper, Globus-Leasing, Grand Hotel Europe
and Novotel St. Petersburg Centre Hotel.
SPIBA is grateful to sponsors of the New Year Party:
Alba, Baltika Breweries, Baltic Travel Company, Norman DL Consulting, Salans and Veda.
The number of employees in the St.
SPIBA Companies News
Petersburg office of ANCOR increased
to 75 persons this autumn, which made
it possible to augment monthly sales in
comparison to the precedent quarter by
47%. Presently the regional network of
the company includes 30 offices on the
territory of Russia, 4 offices in Ukraine
and also offices in Belarus and Kaza-
khstan. The total number of employees
of the company is currently about 1000
people. In 2008, ANCOR recruitment is
planning further regional expansion on
the territory of Russia, as well as to
neighboring countries.
New General Managers have been
appointed in Rocco Forte’s Astoria and
Angleterre Hotels. Alexander Pichel
joined The Rocco Forte Collection in Oc-
tober 2007 after many years with Hyatt Interna-
tional and is in charge of the Astoria.
Mirco Zanini joined the company in 1998 as
Restaurant Manager of the Hotel Astoria, going
on to fulfill several roles before taking over as Di-
rector of operations for both hotels from where
he was promoted to his new role of General Man-
ager of the Angleterre Hotel.
A+ Estate, LSR Group, reports that it is about
to commence the first stage of commercial prop-
erty in Paradny Quarter located in the very heart
of the city, near the Tauride Gardens. Paradny
Quarter is unprecedented in the scale of its con-
struction project in the city center.
A+ Estate offers for lease not only separate
prime offices, but also entire buildings built using
the most advanced architectural and engineering
solutions. Tenants will also benefit from the
unique infrastructure of the quarter. It is planned
to commence three four-story office buildings of
5,000 sq. meters each in early 2008.
AVANTA Personnel released a Salary Survey
for the following regions of Russia: Vladivostok,
Yekaterinburg, Krasnodar, Novosibirsk, Perm,
Samara, and St. Petersburg. The first large scale
survey contains data from more than 220 compa-
nies regarding the main business spheres includ-
ing information about payment policy and salary
indexation; payment of bonuses and comissions,
benefits, and compensation. A detailed report is
drawn up for every city individually.
On November 15, 2007, an international jury of
the European Beer Star Awards-2007 at the BRAU
A SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION
The party in full swing – dancing...
Kappa St. Petersburg and PepsiCo Holdings
and the supporters:
Bievale Exhibition in Nuremberg announced the
results of a competition in which 575 varieties of
beer from 28 countries around the world took
part. Two Baltika Breweries brands simultane-
ously received top awards from this highly presti-
gious competition within the worldwide beer
brewing sector. Baltika Cooler won the bronze
award in the “Mild Beer” category, while Arsenal-
noye Zakalennoye received the bronze in the
“Herb and Spice Beer” category. The organizers of
the competition were the Association of Private
Breweries of Germany and the Association of In-
dependent Breweries of Europe.
In December the results of the annual National
nationwide business prize “Company of the year,
2007” were summed up.
In the award category “Industry: low alcohol
beverages and beer,” Baltika Breweries was the
prize winner.
Each year the national prize for “Company of the
Year” is a unique event for the Russian business
community. This is the main social event in the busi-
ness life of the country, and represents a public act
summing up the business results of the year.
BDO Unicon North-West won the 2007 Re-
gion Developing Business contest in the Culture
and Art Development category.
This contest is one of the most significant events
in the business life of the North-West region.
BDO Unicon North-West has previously won
this contest in the Business to Business (2003) and
Activity in Innovative Industry (2005) categories.
The new Culture and Art Development award is
the highest recognition of Company’s efforts to
preserve Russian traditions and promote the re-
gion’s social and economic development.
In October 2007 BusinessLink Personnel
completed a research project called “How Do You
Look For A Job?” that was begun in July. Over a
period of 11 weeks, 324 people, who came to the
agency to be interviewed, filled in research ques-
tionnaires. The goal of the research was to indi-
cate the sources used by candidates while search-
ing for a new job, and to establish the depen-
dency of the source choice on different factors
(age, income, position). The research results can
be found at the Press-Center on the BusinessLink
Personnel website (www.blp.ru).
On December 6, 2007, DLA Piper held a Gala
Opening Reception for its clients and friends in
the Singer Building celebrating its move to the his-
torical building on Nevsky 28. The Singer Building,
the first business center in St. Petersburg, a mira-
cle of art nouveau, opened its doors to the public
for the first time after renovation works which re-
stored the initial beauty to the building’s interiors.
Fireworks on the square in front of the Kazan
Cathedral marked the culmination of the event.
On November 28, 2007, DHL opened a new
Service Point at 2, Lev Tolstoy Ulitsa on the Petro-
grad Side of St. Petersburg.
DHL, the global leader in Express and Logistics,
has increased the number of Service Points in St.
Petersburg to 6, increasing its accessibility for cus-
tomers in North-West Russia. The conveniently-
located Service Point is situated five minutes from
Petrogradskaya metro, and close to the commer-
cial and residential center of the Petrograd side of
the city. The opening hours of the Service Point
are 0800 until 2100, five days a week.
The Service Point is fully equipped with the lat-
est state-of-the-art packaging and shipment pro-
cessing materials for customers, whilst the unique
DHL software ensures that customers are able to
gain access to the status of their shipment at ev-
ery step of its transportation.
The Finnish IT service provider Enfo is expand-
ing its business and launching information tech-
nology services for clients based in and around St.
Petersburg and Moscow.
The company signed its first agreement for the
Russian market on October 2, 2007 with the lead-
ing Finnish department store chain, Stockmann.
Based on this agreement, Stockmann, which is
growing rapidly on the Russian market, will use
Enfo’s software management and hardware
sourcing services in Russia.
Enfo had an opening ceremony of its new of-
fice in St.Petersburg on November 22, 2007.
The European University in St. Petersburg
welcomes applications for a 1-year exclusive educa-
tional program for top-managers – Executive Mas-
ter of Philosophy. It is specially designed for those
who wish to get international knowledge taught by
the best Russian professors who have long experi-
ence in teaching both in this country and abroad.
The program is built on the concept of an Executive
MBA; however, unlike EMBA it consists of only so-
cial sciences: History, History of Arts, Cultural Stud-
ies, Philosophy, Sociology, and Anthropology.
Contact: asamoletova@eu.spb.ru (Alla Samo-
letova).
Four new world level professionals began to
work for the Graduate School of Manage-
Rustam Dominov, STEP Construction, won skies provided by DLA Piper.
Receiving the lottery prize from Deloitte (Marina Karaseva), Vladimir Kazakevich,
PepsiCo Holdings, wishes SPIBA members a Happy New Year.
ment, St. Petersburg State University (Mas-
ter’s degree programs). According to the general
conception of GSOM development, by 2015 the
faculty will reach 120 members — 80 full time and
at least 30% foreign professors.
In the 2007-2008 academic year, four notable
researchers and advisers with long-term practical
activity of teaching within leading business
schools — Oliver Bertrand, Mikhail Klimenko,
Christos Pitelis and Simon Commander – are to
share their experience and knowledge with Mas-
ter’s degree program students.
The management of the Grand Hotel Europe
and BMW Russland Trading have signed an
agreement to update the hotel’s fleet of auto-
mobiles. The hotel now has 6 new 740 Li and one
730 Li series limousines at its disposal. Now the
Grand Hotel Europe fleet, the biggest in Europe,
boasts 14 BMW limousines, in addition to 2 Clas-
sic Volga Cars and several excursion buses and a
luxury Mercedes Viano mini bus to provide its
clients with safe and comfortable transportation.
ITM Group (ZAO INTECH) and DURR com-
pany have signed a contract according to which
the division ITM Technostal will manufacture and
supply metal structures for the car assembly en-
terprises currently under construction — Volk-
swagen in Kaluga and General Motors in St. Pe-
tersburg.
ITM Group carries out design and installation
works on engineering systems at the unique
wood-processing factory in the city of Torzhok.
Taleon Club is the project investor.
Experts of ITM Group company have begun
work on the reconstruction of the Pervomaiskaya
thermal power station-14, which is included in
the list of priority projects of TGK-1’s investment
program for 2006-2015.
Cres Neva factory, a member of JT Interna-
tional Group of companies, became one of the
winners of the competition organized by the
Leningrad Oblast Government: “Enterprise of
high social responsibility” and was awarded the
2nd place in the nomination: Employee remuner-
ation and motivation. The award ceremony took
place on November 29, 2007.
The Cres Neva factory, located in Gorelovo in
the Leningrad Oblast, is the largest Russian pro-
ducer and exporter of the expanded tobacco
stems CRES and the expanded tobacco leaf DIET,
used in the production of cigarettes.
In October 2007 Maris Properties LLC con-
SPIBA is a non-profit, independent
organization that provides a net-
working platform for the exchange
of views and ideas on business
matters in North-Western Russia.
It also acts as a voice for the pro-
motion of its members’ common
interests and cooperates closely
with local policy making institu-
tions. Established in 1995, SPIBA
has become a respected partner for
the international business commu-
nity in North-Western Russia.
cluded a co-exclusive agreement with Autohouse
LLC to lease a new Class A business-center. The In-
ternational business center RESO is due to become
part of a high-level office complex just outside the
center of the city. The building is located in the Pri-
morsky district close to the metro station Staraya
Derevna. The international business center RESO be-
comes the first high-rise office building on the real-
estate market of St. Petersburg – the height ofthe
21-floor building exceeds 75 m. This multi-purpose
complex has a total area of 55-315 sq. meters and
consists of both office and retail-exhibition areas.
This project is due to reach completion in the second
quarter of 2008.
However, a milestone for Maris Properties was
reached in 2007 with the opening up of two new
departments and the addition of new staff. “With
the team formed in 2007, we are able to put into
use the very considerable increase in turnover and
extend our presence into different branches of
the real-estate market in 2008”, – said Boris
Moshensky, the General Director of the company.
Work in the 2 new departments – Property Man-
agement and “Industrial & Warehouse, Property
Lands” – has now begun and they are looking for-
ward to the challenges ahead.
The law firm Maslennikov & Partners (Mi-
Part) facilitated a closing on the Sidewalk of Eu-
rope contract, which was carried out according to
the Government Resolution # 1209R (as of August
30, 2006) on November 26, 2007. Under this con-
tract a private developer is investing his own
money into new location transfer and moderniza-
tion of courtyard simultaneously of the Federal
State Unitary Enterprise “Russian Scientific Center
“Applied Chemistry” (RSC “Applied Chemistry”).
This could be a good start to reestablish the private
and Government partnership with the industry in
St. Petersburg and other regions of Russia.
We are pleased to inform you that Rosexper-
tiza Ltd has become a full member of Praxity
AISBL, a new international audit alliance, which
was established by the joint initiative of Mazars
company and key members of MRI, which unites
more than 23,000 specialists from 135 companies
of 69 countries. Praxity’s main purpose is to pro-
vide a high level of cooperation between its mem-
bers. Closer relations within the Alliance are the
main distinction from the previous one and it is re-
spondent to all international needs. The new Al-
liance uses increased membership criteria requir-
ing members to meet the highest international
quality control standards.
8 ❖ Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Medvedev Would Tip Scales in Favor of Gazprom
By Anatoly Medetsky
STAFF WRITER
MOSCOW — If elected president,
Dmitry Medvedev will most likely tip
the scales in favor of Gazprom in any
new acquisitions and help the state-con-
trolled gas giant with domestic prices
and taxes.
In a senior role after he leaves office,
outgoing President Vladimir Putin
could balance the business interests of
Medvedev, currently Gazprom board
chairman, said Konstantin Simonov, di-
rector of the Fund for National Energy
Security.
Simonov speculated that Gazprom
could also resume efforts to take over
Rosneft, the state-controlled oil com-
pany chaired by Kremlin deputy chief
of staff Igor Sechin. A merger between
the firms fell apart in 2005 after Rosneft
acquired Yukos’ main production unit.
Konstantin Reznikov, an analyst at
Dresdner Kleinwort, said a merger
looked unlikely but the two firms could
avoid impinging on each other’s sectors.
“The bigger the company, the more
complicated its management, strategy
and planning,” he said. “There’s no com-
petition between the two companies. It
doesn’t hurt them to work separately.”
Gazprom will, regardless, likely enjoy
an edge over Rosneft in any acquisitions
in the oil and gas sector, Simonov said. “I
think that ... Medvedev will by all means
encourage such deals,” he said.
Rosneft spokesman Nikolai Man-
velov declined to comment.
Gazprom has an appetite for electric-
ity assets, having gobbled up control or
large stakes in the generating companies
that supply Moscow and St. Petersburg
and two more that cover several regions
of Siberia and southern Russia. These
four companies were spun off from state
utility Unified Energy System.
UES chief Anatoly Chubais last
month vowed to resist any further ex-
B U
Putin shaking hands with Medvedev at a Security Council meeting at his Novo-Ogaryovo residence on Saturday.
pansion into electricity by Gazprom,
saying it would create a new monopolist.
UES spokeswoman Marita Nagoga
said, however, that the state utility
would not see a Medvedev presidency
as a threat to competition.
“I don’t think Medvedev wants to kill
a 10-year reform by destroying competi-
tion in the sector. I would never believe
this,” Nagoga said. “As Gazprom chair-
man, he was very reasonable about this.”
Gazprom’s current energy holdings —
Mosenergo, TGK-1, OGK-2 and OGK-
S I N E S S
6 — are placed in different “price
zones” and therefore do not encroach
on competition, Nagoga said.
Gazprom spokesman Sergei
Kupriyanov said the company had no
concrete plans for electricity acquisi-
tions, but would not rule them out ei-
ther. He declined to comment on how a
Medvedev presidency would affect the
company.
Gazprom has expressed interest in
TGK-7 and a joint venture with coal
miner SUEK that would control TGK-
DMITRY ASTAKHOV / AP
13 and Kuzbassenergo, said Dmitry
Terekhov, an analyst at Antanta Capi-
tal. That would severely undermine
competition on the market, he said.
Medvedev would probably think
longer than Putin before giving
Gazprom a monopoly position in elec-
tricity, Terekhov said. “Medvedev is
more liberal,” he said. “He hasn’t
served in the security agencies, at least.”
Medvedev could also face a looming
conflict between Gazprom and indus-
trial gas consumers when domestic
The St. Petersburg Times
prices are scheduled to reach netback
parity with those in Europe in 2011.
“There’s a risk that a bunch of lobby-
ists come to Medvedev and say, ‘If you
raise gas prices, it will be a catastro-
phe,’“ Simonov said. “I think Medvedev
will continue to implement this idea, but
it’s hard to predict how it will turn out.”
Oleg Zhilin, vice president of indus-
try lobby group the Russian Gas Soci-
ety, was confident that Medvedev
would safeguard the efforts to raise
Gazprom’s domestic margins.
The government this month backed
a 25 percent hike on domestic gas
prices.
Medvedev could resist dramatically
raising taxes on the gas industry, analysts
said. Gazprom shares took a dive at the
start of the year on the back of a gov-
ernment proposal to sharply raise the
gas extraction tax. As first deputy prime
minister, Medvedev managed to put off
the measure, which was backed by the
Finance Ministry and the Economic De-
velopment and Trade Ministry.
A government working group is de-
veloping a system that would increase
the tax if gas prices go up, but would
give tax holidays for greenfield projects
in east Siberia with its nonexistent
roads and pipelines, Zhilin said.
Andrei Illarionov, a former eco-
nomic adviser to Putin who is now a
harsh critic of government policy, said
Medvedev had been so colorless during
his days as Kremlin chief of staff and
first deputy prime minister that it was
tough to guess what he would do as
president.
“He has not been known for any-
thing that could be considered his per-
sonal [view] on any idea, any project,
any movement, any action,” Illarionov
said. “That is why it is very hard to fore-
see in which particular area, or in any
area at all, he will be able to demon-
strate his interests.”
Tuesday, December 18, 2007 B U S I N E S S The St. Petersburg Times ❖ 9

Elite Apartment Sold
■ ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — St. Pe-
tersburg Property Fund auctioned off an
elite apartment on Krestovsky island af-
ter the owner failed to pay mortgage fees
to Sberbank, Interfax reported Friday.
The starting price for the 174-square
meter apartment in the Fifth Element
residential complex was $1.08 million.
The apartment was sold for $1.15 mil-
lion.
Container Firms Agree
■ ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Na-
tional Container Company and Euro-
gate, one of the largest container oper-
ators in Europe, signed an agreement
on strategic partnership, Interfax re-
ported Friday.
According to the agreement, Euro-
gate acquires a 20 percent stake in the
Baltic Container Terminal in Ust-Luga
port, in the Leningrad Oblast. National
Container Company gets an option to
acquire an 18.2 percent stake in
JadeWeserPort in Wilgelmshafen be-
fore September 30, 2009.
Systema-Gals Inks Deal
■ ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Sys-
tema-Gals signed an agreement with
Hebei Construction Group, one of the
largest Chinese development compa-
I N B R I E F
much as 30 million lati ($62 million)
next year when Gazprom starts charg-
won’t begin until next year, the com-
pany said.
of the assets, Dusseldorf-based E.ON
said Monday in an e-mailed statement.
“The rising pace of inflation is sound-
ing alarm bells,’’ Economy Minister
ing more for gas supplies. The assets to be swapped include Elvira Nabiullina said in a speech pub-
Latvijas Gaze shares fell 5 percent to
7.6 lati today, valuing the company at 303
UralSib Takes Out Loan power plants in “various western and
eastern European countries” and un-
lished on Dec. 13. Consumer prices will
probably increase an annual 12 percent
million lati. Latvijas Gaze said Dec. 14 it ■ MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — UralSib derground storage facilities, E.ON this year, compared with last year’s 9 per-
signed a contract with Russia’s Gazprom Bank, Russia’s second-biggest privately said. cent rate, the Economy Ministry said.
for next year which may increase gas owned bank by assets, said it borrowed
prices by as much as 50 percent.
Gaze may lose between 5 million lati
$137 million from a group of 12 banks
to fund its clients’ trading contracts.
Technology Sales Soar Swedes Against Pipeline
and 30 million lati in 2008 should the The one-year loan, organized by ■ MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russian ■ MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — A ma-
utilities regulator prevent it from raising Dresdner Kleinwort and ING Groep technology companies will probably jority of Swedish members of parlia-
consumer gas prices, the Latvian com- NV, is the fourth syndicated loan have a record 1.8 trillion rubles ($73 bil- ment oppose a plan by Russia and Ger-
pany said. raised by Moscow-based UralSib in
2007, the lender said in an e-mailed
lion) in sales next year as the national
economy expands, Communications
many to build a gas pipeline across the
Baltic Sea and through Swedish waters,
Coca-Cola May Step In statement.
The loan will pay interest of 1 per-
Minister Leonid Reiman said.
Sales of information technology and
demanding the government rejects the
plan, a survey showed.
■ MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia centage point more than the London in- communication products and services Some 72 percent of politicians sur-
asked Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Co. terbank offered rate, or Libor. by Russian companies will probably veyed oppose the pipeline because of en-
to consider taking over a pulp plant pol- rise 20 percent from 1.5 trillion rubles vironmental and national security con-
luting Lake Baikal, the world’s deepest
lake.
Investment for Ukraine this year, Reiman told reporters in
Moscow on Monday. Russian compa-
cerns, Swedish radio SR said on its web
site Monday. Only 11 percent support
The Baikalsk Paper and Pulp Mill is ■ MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Marble- nies invested 206 billion rubles in com- the pipeline, while 17 percent had no
pumping an “unacceptable” amount of ton Property, Griffin Investment Partners munications this year, 21 percent more opinion. More than 60 percent of the 349
pollution into the lake, Oleg Mitvol, and Alfa bank’s Ukrainian unit set up a than a year earlier. members of parliament took part in the
deputy head of the Natural Resource joint venture to invest 100 million eu- Information technology sales in the poll, SR said. The pipeline, built by Rus-
Ministry’s environmental watchdog, ros ($146.5 million) in Ukrainian real es- country rose 25 percent to 450 billion sian-German joint venture Nord Stream
said in an e-mailed statement. tate, Kommersant newspaper reported. rubles this year. Next year, there will al- AG, will stretch 1,200 kilometer (745
Mitvol discussed the proposal in The venture, Metropolitan Proper- most 40 million personal computers in miles) from Vyborg in Russia to Greif-
Moscow on Monday with Coca-Cola ties, will buy property in all Ukrainian Russia, up from the 31 million expected swald in Germany and is scheduled to
HBC’s Russian director Keith Sanders,
according to the statement.
cities with a population of more than
100,000, Kommersant reported, citing
this year, Reiman said. The number of
Internet users will rise to 46 million, up
begin carrying natural gas in 2010. Crit-
ics, including the Swedish opposition
venture officials. from 35 million this year. parties, argue that the installation threat-
Gazprom Neft Explores Metropolitan Properties will start to ens the environment and want the link
■ MOSCOW (Bloomberg) —
acquire property in the first quarter of
next year and then lease it to banks and
Inflation Hits 11.5% to be built overland instead.

nies, the company said last week in a

statement.
According to the agreement, Hebei
Construction Group will provide con-
struction works to Systema-Gals at
fixed prices. The two companies will
create a joint enterprise in Russia.
Latvian Gas Shares Fall
■ MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — AS
Latvijas Gaze, Latvia’s natural-gas dis-
tributor, fell by the most since Novem-
ber 2006 after saying it may lose as
Gazprom Neft, the oil arm of natural-gas
producer Gazprom, set up a company to
companies that have branches in the re-
gion, Kommersant said.
■ MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russian
inflation probably accelerated to an an-
Pernod Pursues Vodka
manage new fields in eastern Siberia. nual 11.5 percent in November, the cen- ■ NEW YORK (Bloomberg) —
Gazpromneft Angara was registered
in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, the company
E.ON in Negotiations tral bank said.
The rate quickened from 10.8 per-
Pernod Ricard SA is close to buying
the Stolichnaya vodka brand from Rus-
said in an e-mailed statement Monday. ■ MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — E.ON cent in October, the Moscow-based sia’s SPI Group for 1 billion pounds ($2
The new unit, created from the as- AG, Germany’s largest utility, said it bank said on its web site Monday. billion), the Financial Mail reported,
sets of Kholmogorneftegaz, holds the li- has made “major progress” in negotia- Russia, the world’s biggest energy without citing anyone.
censes for a number of fields in eastern
Siberia, which the Russian government
tions with Gazprom over a stake in
Yuzhno-Russkoye, a western Siberian
exporter, has struggled to lower infla-
tion levels as revenue from oil and gas
Pernod, which already distributes
Stolichnaya outside Russia, hopes to
plans to develop for a new pipeline to natural-gas field. sales enters the country and global food complete the purchase by May, the
the Pacific coast. The two companies have deter- costs rise. The government failed to newspaper said. The company is being
All of Gazpromneft Angara’s fields mined what assets E.ON will swap for meet its goal of lowering inflation to the advised by JPMorgan Chase & Co, the
are at the exploration stage and drilling the stake and are determining the value 8 percent level this year. Financial Mail reported.

R U S S I A N M A R K E T S Source data from Troika Dialog

CENTRAL BANK RATE BENCHMARK STOCKS RTS INDEX AND VOLUMES

CLOSE, $ W-o-W, % VOLUME, $ EV/EBITDA MCAP, $ MLN 52WK HI 52WK LO
Index RTS 2269.53 -0.71 433,229,923 192.38 2,360.15 1,701.80
23, Malaya Morskaya Street, St.Petersburg
www.troika.ru
Oil & Gas
Gazprom 13.874 -2.36 71,662,325 8.84 314,192.2 14.640 8.982 Phone (812) 380 6850 Fax 380 6851
Gazprom Neft 5.999 4.22 799,998 5.01 28,444.0 6.300 3.700
LUKoil 86.940 -1.59 46,731,700 5.09 71,426.5 95.800 71.000
Rosneft 9.279 -1.25 4,784,255 9.71 89,061.2 9.700 7.600
Surgutneftegaz 1.232 -0.39 9,190,954 6.29 49,071.3 1.530 1.040 Thought of the Week
Tatneft 5.847 -4.81 8,220,894 4.92 12,203.1 6.300 3.850
TNK-BP Holding 2.140 -1.02 467,084 4.22 34,783.4 2.600 1.650 “Find a job you like and you add five days to
DOLLAR RATE IN SELT Dec 17
Transneft 2002.522 3.43 7,649,800 3.76 14,194.1 2,505.000 1,400.000 every week.”
WA* LAST Electricity RTS Index Volume, $ mln (r.h.scale): RTS MICEX H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
TOD 24.7316 24.7650 UES 1.306 2.66 71,274,283 6.44 55,994.4 1.369 0.915
OGK-3 0.153 4.63 276,448 29.51 7,241.9 0.175 0.106 Dec 10 Dec 11 Dec 12 Dec 13 Dec 14
TOM 24.7349 24.7250 OGK-5 0.175 0.00 687,693 35.00 6,198.9 0.176 0.115 RTS change 1.95% 0.52% 0.73% -1.80% -2.06% OIL PRICE
Mosenergo 0.248 0.22 124,750 40.42 9,850.6 0.280 0.201 Closing level 2,330.45 2,342.64 2,359.85 2,317.28 2,269.53
* WA – weighted average RTS + Gazprom 112.41 89.55 79.63 81.59 70.05 Urals, $/pbl 91.33 5.10 0.76% 72.73 49.73
Irkutskenergo 1.108 4.70 1,488,500 27.78 5,281.4 1.170 0.750
MICEX 4,008.02 3,663.67 3,353.50 3,207.90 2,790.85
Bashkirenergo 2.085 0.94 72,015 14.56 2,235.3 2.150 1.435
CENTRAL BANK RATES Dec 18 Telecommunications
Rostelecom 11.275 -1.21 2,042,992 >100 8,952.0 12.200 6.770
TROIKA DIALOG EXTERNAL DEBT INDEX (TEDI)
FOR RUR USD
Central Telecom 0.911 1.62 518,898 13.19 1,761.7 1.000 0.705
Australia 1 21.24 0.86 Far Eastern Telecom 5.375 0.37 243,620 17.01 652.3 5.700 3.600
Belarus 1,000 11.45 0.46 MGTS 34.050 0.89 33,100 14.47 3,187.2 34.050 23.900
North Western Telecom 1.770 1.14 615,332 21.11 1,873.1 1.950 1.425
Denmark 10 47.76 1.93 Siberian Telecom 0.120 -1.24 465,954 13.61 1,759.6 0.133 0.092
USA 1 24.71 1.00 Southern Telecom 0.205 -1.45 261,801 14.37 747.1 0.225 0.149
Ural SI 0.065 -2.05 465,400 24.24 2,405.0 0.073 0.056
Euro 1 35.60 1.44
Volga Telecom 5.675 -1.73 676,366 14.05 1,727.1 6.600 4.570
Iceland 100 39.25 1.59 Metals
Norilsk Nickel 255.683 -8.15 77,267,211 5.39 46,363.2 313.600 135.500 OFZ Zero-Coupon Yields Curve
Kazakhstan 100 20.45 0.83
Polyus Gold 43.043 -0.87 1,511,750 20.43 7,467.2 55.750 38.020
Canada 1 24.28 0.98 Severstal 22.600 -2.16 7,876,225 7.74 22,774.1 24.500 10.800
China 10 33.48 1.36 Manufacturing
AvtoVAZ 1.800 -6.49 190,277 9.82 4,898.3 2.050 0.672
New Turkish Lira 1 20.75 0.84
GAZ 152.500 3.18 1,245,105 6.85 2,429.3 152.500 92.400
Norway 10 44.61 1.81 Irkut 0.958 -1.34 99,965 7.17 936.6 1.070 0.880
SDR 1 38.85 1.57 KamAZ 4.700 20.51 45,500 14.70 3,693.0 4.700 1.880
OMZ 7.475 1.36 32,785 6.60 264.2 10.630 7.250
Singapore 1 17.00 0.69 Severstal-Auto 53.250 5.81 493,073 11.80 1,824.9 53.250 27.900
Ukraine 10 48.68 1.97 Consumer MUNICIPAL AND CORPORATE EUROBONDS
ADRS
Kalina 41.500 -1.78 209,250 12.77 404.7 51.500 34.100 SHARES PER ADR CLOSE, $ W-o-W, % VOLUME*, $ 52WK HI 52WK LO COUPON MATURITY BID W-o-W YTM SPREAD W-o-W
UK 1 49.87 2.02
Lebedyansky 89.500 6.71 87,000 13.74 1,826.8 110.000 73.500 Comstar-UTS 5 11.70 5.36 26,547,017 14.00 7.50 Gazprom 13 O 9.63% 02/03/17 113.38 -0.108 6.47% 295.9 -21.3
Sweden 10 37.82 1.53 Seventh Continent 26.350 -0.36 106,817 21.01 1,976.3 29.350 24.100 Evraz Group 0.33 79.50 9.44 111,031,211 89.50 22.50 MTS 10 8.38% 15/10/14 103.00 -0.112 6.98% 370.0 -33.1
Swiss 1 21.43 0.87 Veropharm 53.000 6.16 52,520 19.35 530.0 53.000 29.000 Gazprom 4 56.20 7.59 3,723,051,115 58.70 33.54 Gazprom neft 09 10.75% 16/01/13 104.63 -0.195 6.08% 284.8 -13.2
Transport Gazprom Neft 10 30.10 7.32 29,473,552 31.50 17.01 Norilsk Nickel 7.13% 01/10/13 102.03 0.130 5.82% 257.0 -30.2
Japan 100 21.86 0.88 Aeroflot 3.535 -0.42 - 13.59 3,926.0 3.600 2.190 Golden Telecom** 103.06 4.42 73,023,319 114.85 43.28
KazakhGold 23.80 -7.41 15,820,006 29.09 18.05 Severstal 14 9.25% 20/04/18 106.38 -0.375 7.86% 424.0 -21.3
Banking P/BV 2007F
Non-deliverable forwards Sberbank 4.231 -1.23 61,406,088 3.63 94,249.5 4.480 2.960
LUKoil 4 87.60 2.80 1,065,953,278 95.90 70.50
Mechel 3 92.92 9.79 179,565,928 103.80 23.16
DAYS BID CHNG IMPLIED YIELD MTS** 20 95.22 6.10 260,140,730 100.81 45.53
SOVEREIGN EUROBONDS
*Non RTS traded
1MO 24.660 0.180 5.79% Norilsk Nickel 1 263.00 1.37 455,259,258 335.00 141.00 COUPON MATURITY BID W-o-W YTM SPREAD W-o-W
PREFERRED SHARES NOVATEK 72.70 9.74 237,602,646 77.90 45.30 Russia 10 8.25% 01/04/14 103.76 -0.230 5.06% 182.3 -10.6
3MO 24.670 0.170 5.71% Rostelecom** 6 67.65 5.79 33,921,835 72.75 42.00
CLOSE, $ W-o-W, % VOLUME, $ DISCOUNT 52WK HI 52WK LO Russia 18 11.00% 25/07/22 142.75 -0.375 5.58% 158.2 -12.8
6MO 24.720 0.170 5.39% Rostelecom pref 3.03 10.20 410,500 -73% 3.62 2.38
Sistema 0.02 38.30 2.00 95,668,392 42.10 25.37
SurgutNG 50 62.00 6.25 251,757,359 79.50 52.00 Russia 28 12.75% 25/06/32 181.50 -0.625 5.86% 154.1 -12.5
9MO 24.810 0.160 5.50% Sberbank pref 2.93 -2.67 74,500 -31% 3.20 2.38 Tatneft** 20 119.00 1.23 51,527,392 128.25 75.00 Russia 30 5.00% 01/04/34 113.62 -0.505 5.54% 132.7 -10.2
12MO 24.950 0.170 5.68% Surgutneftegaz pref 0.66 -1.71 1,556,845 -47% 1.12 0.60 UES 100 131.50 1.83 124,025,413 138.69 90.75
18MO 25.240 0.170 5.86% Tatneft pref 3.27 1.40 - -44% 3.30 2.55 VimpelCom** 0.75 38.63 15.80 254,791,455 41.65 14.60
TNK-BP Holding pref 1.94 0.57 97,080 -10% 2.30 0.09 Wimm-Bill-Dann** 1 118.53 3.55 31,704,026 134.76 53.50
24MO 25.620 0.160 6.16% X5 Retail Group 4 31.93 7.14 34,815,421 38.00 24.00
UES pref 1.15 1.06 182,542 -12% 1.33 0.89
10 ❖ Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Red Tape
Criticized
THE ST. PETERSBURG TIMES
MOSCOW — German Economics
Minister Michael Glos on Friday urged
the Russian government to step up its
battle against bureaucracy and to im-
prove the legal environment for in-
vestors.
“We must reduce bureaucracy, we
know that from our own experience,”
Glos told a conference in Moscow,
adding that red tape was “a Hydra
growing more heads as you chop them
off.” He also said that while Russia had
modern laws, their application in the re-
gions needed improvement.
Glos also criticized the spat between
Lufthansa and the government about
overflight rights. “It is sad when such
things are allowed to tarnish the public
image,” he said.
The German carrier’s cargo division
was hit by a ban from Russian airspace
last month, which was only lifted after it
agreed to negotiate to move its hub from
Kazakhstan to Siberia, triggering com-
plaints from the German government.
Glos spoke at the opening of the
German-Russian Chamber of Com-
merce Abroad, which he called an en-
gine in bilateral economic relations.
Bilateral trade has been booming re-
cently, reaching almost $43 billion in
2006 and making Germany the coun-
try’s biggest trade partner.
This year’s trade figure is expected
to reach $50 billion.
Glos also expressed hope that Russia
would soon become a member of the
World Trade Organization.
While Economic Development and
Trade Minister Elvira Nabiullina and
Chamber of Commerce and Industry
head Yevgeny Primakov only sent
deputies to the conference, Nabiullina’s
predecessor, German Gref — now head
of Sberbank — made an appearance.
Gref praised the German-Russian
chamber’s founding as a “logical step
for Germany and a pragmatic one for
Russia.”
Construction workers completing the first section of the Nord Stream pipeline that will run under the Baltic Sea.
Nord Stream Will Revise Pipeline Costs
REUTERS
MOSCOW — Nord Stream, the firm
building a subsea gas pipeline from
Russia to Western Europe, said
Thursday that early next year it would
revise upward the project’s costs,
which analysts say may soar by at least
60 percent.
Nord Stream, majority owned by
Gazprom, has said it would take at
least 5 billion euros ($7.3 billion) to
build the 1,200-kilometer pipeline
under the Baltic Sea from Russia to
Germany.
“We are most likely to increase
the estimated costs of the project in
early 2008, after we complete evalua-
tion of four main expense categories,
such as pipes, pipe-laying, logistics
B U
A railway conductor processing an e-ticket at Leningradsky Station on Friday.
E-Tickets in Trial Run
THE ST. PETERSBURG TIMES
MOSCOW — Russian Railways
showed off a trial e-ticketing system
Friday that will cut out some of the has-
sle of traveling on the country’s notori-
ously cumbersome rail network.
The system allows customers who
buy their tickets online to bypass the
lines at railway stations and go straight
to the train with just their passport and
a printout confirming their purchase.
Conductors on the platform will
scan the printout with handheld com-
puter devices. The passport details of
the passenger will then flash up on the
and environment,” spokeswoman
Irina Vasilyeva said.
She said the main reason for the re-
view was a steep increase in steel prices
since costs were first estimated in 2005.
A Nord Stream spokeswoman in
Switzerland, where the group is
based, confirmed that it would only
be possible to make a new cost esti-
mate in February or March.
Nord Stream could not say how
much costs might rise, but media
Wednesday quoted Germany’s former
chancellor Gerhard Schröder, as say-
ing in New York that they might bal-
loon to 8 billion euros ($11.8 billion).
Schröder chairs the supervisory
board of the Nord Stream consortium,
which apart form Gazprom, which
S I N E
VITALY BELOUSOV / ITAR-TASS
device, allowing the conductor to
check their documents and let them on
the train.
So far, the experiment is only being
tried on one carriage on the Yunost
train service between Moscow and St.
Petersburg. The trial runs until Jan. 31.
The new system is part of a broader
push by the state-run railway giant to
popularize e-tickets, after the company
started offering customers the chance to
buy tickets online in May.
In the first month of use, over 8,200
tickets were bought over the Internet,
the company said.
GRIGORY SYSOTEV / ITAR-TASS
owns 51 percent, involves German
firms BASF and E.On, with 20 percent
each, and Dutch Gasunie with 9 per-
cent. E.On Ruhrgas CEO Burckhard
Bergmann told reporters Wednesday
that the Nord Stream costs were likely
to turn out to be more expensive than
many energy projects across Europe,
but declined to specify a new figure.
A spokesman for BASF said the
company had already said in presen-
tation over a year ago that the figure
might rise to 9 billion euros ($13.2 bil-
lion).
Analysts said an increase to at
least $12 billion was very likely, as
Nord Stream faces rising global prices
for materials and services and other
environmental challenges.
S S
Hyundai To Build
Local Plant by 2010
By Kyunghee Park
BLOOMBERG
MOSCOW — Hyundai Motor Co.,
South Korea’s largest automaker, will
invest $400 million to build its first fac-
tory in Russia to meet surging demand
in the country.
The carmaker will produce 100,000
vehicles annually at the plant in St. Pe-
tersburg, the Seoul-based company said
in an e-mailed statement Monday. Con-
struction will start in the first half of
next year and completion is slated for
2010, it said.
Hyundai Motor joins Toyota Mo-
tor Corp. and General Motors Corp.
in setting up factories in Russia, where
a nine-year economic boom has in-
creased car sales. The country pro-
vides an opportunity for growth for
automakers as customers spent a
record $16 billion on new foreign cars
in the first half, fueled by rising in-
comes, according to Pricewaterhouse-
Coopers LLP.
“The economic growth in Russia is
encouraging people to spend more on
cars, and that means setting up a plant
will provide further opportunities for
Hyundai Motor to increase sales,” said
Song Sang Hoon, an analyst at
Hungkuk Securities Co. in Seoul with a
Gas Exports May Be Delayed
By Lucian Kim and Greg Walters
BLOOMBERG
MOSCOW — Russia, the world’s
largest energy producer, may miss a tar-
get to start exporting liquefied natural
gas by the end of next year, causing pos-
sible delays to customers in Asia and
the U.S.
Gazprom’s Sakhalin-2 LNG plant in
the Pacific Ocean will start exports once
construction is completed next year,
Ivan Chernyakhovsky, a spokesman for
project operator Sakhalin Energy, said
in a telephone interview in Moscow on
Monday.
“We plan to complete the main
construction and commence start-up
of the plant before the end of 2008,”
Chernyakhovsky said. “Export is ex-
pected to start shortly thereafter.”
Sakhalin Energy previously said ex-
ports of LNG, gas chilled to a liquid
for transport by tanker, would start in
Severstal Borrows to Go Green
BLOOMBERG
MOSCOW — Severstal, the steel-
maker owned by Russian billionaire
Alexei Mordashov, borrowed 300 mil-
lion euros ($432 million) from the Eu-
ropean Bank of Reconstruction and
Development to fund a program to cut
greenhouse gas emissions.
The loan is the largest for a Russian
company to reduce emissions, Severstal
and the EBRD said in a joint statement
today. The two-part deal for the Chere-
povets-based steelmaker matures in
Kudrin Meets Storchak at Lefortovo,
Storchak Could Face 10 Years in Jail
COMBINED REPORTS
MOSCOW — Finance Minister Alexei
Kudrin has met with his deputy Sergei
Storchak, charged with attempting to em-
bezzle $43 million, for the first time since
Storchak’s arrest, his ministry said Friday.
Kudrin met with Storchak for two
hours at the Lefortovo pretrial deten-
tion facility and “discussed issues re-
lated to the competence of the Finance
Ministry,” Itar-Tass reported.
The Storchak case has been politi-
cally damaging for Kudrin, the deputy
The St. Petersburg Times
“buy” recommendation on Hyundai
Motor’s shares.
The South Korean carmaker didn’t
disclose which models it will produce at
the Russian plant, which was first an-
nounced Nov. 12. Russia is the sixth
overseas country in which Hyundai Mo-
tor will have a factory.
In the first 11 months, Hyundai
Motor sold 130,166 of its Accent, Getz
and other models in Russia, more than
the 100,685 it sold during all of 2006.
Sales in November reached 17,992 ve-
hicles, its biggest monthly total in the
country.
A total of 1.47 million foreign cars
were sold in the first 11 months of this
year in Russia, 63 percent more than a
year earlier, according to the Moscow-
based Association of European Busi-
ness in the Russian Federation.
Toyota plans to open a plant in De-
cember to make Camry sedans in St. Pe-
tersburg. Volkswagen last month started
production at its plant in Kaluga, 160
kilometers southwest of Moscow.
Hyundai Motor operates overseas
factories in China, India, Turkey and
the U.S. and is building one in the
Czech Republic to meet local demand
and counter the impact of currency fluc-
tuations.
the third quarter of 2008. The com-
pany has signed contracts with clients
including Tokyo Gas Co. and Tokyo
Electric Power Co.
Chernyakhovsky declined to say
whether Sakhalin Energy planned to
buy cargoes of LNG to ship to its cus-
tomers, or if the company could face
penalties for missing delivery dead-
lines. Japan and South Korea are two
of the world’s biggest buyers of LNG
as pipelines don’t reach their terri-
tory.
“Our customers are constantly being
kept informed on the project’s progress,”
Chernyakhovsky said.
Sakhalin Energy Chief Executive
Officer Ian Craig said in September
2006 that a one-year delay would cost
the company shareholders $10 billion.
The government was then threatening
to pull a key permit over alleged envi-
ronmental violations.
seven years and 10 years, the e-mailed
statement said.
Russia, the world’s third-largest pol-
luter, expects its greenhouse-gas emis-
sions to increase by about 15 percent
through 2015, according to the Econ-
omy Ministry, as the economy expands
for the ninth straight year.
Severstal, the country’s biggest
steelmaker, plans to spend 700 million
euros to reduce energy consumption by
5 percent to 10 percent, the statement
said.
prime minister in overall charge of the
economy, as Kremlin factions vie for in-
fluence ahead of an election in March
for the successor to President Vladimir
Putin.
Storchak, the country’s foreign
debt negotiator who also oversaw the
$144 billion stabilization fund, has
been charged in relation to a failed at-
tempt to recover a debt owed by Alge-
ria. He faces up to 10 years in jail if
convicted.
Reuters, SPT
Tuesday, December 18, 2007 P H O T O P A G E The St. Petersburg Times ❖ 11

ALEXANDER BELENKY/SPT

The Swedish soliders taking part in the exercises included men and women.

ALEXANDER BELENKY/SPT ALEXANDER BELENKY/SPT

A Swedish soldier gives a signal from one of the trenches during the exercises. Swedish soldiers taking part in the Snowflake 2007 military exercises in Kamenka, just outside St. Petersburg last week.

Russian-Swedish War Games

ALEXANDER BELENKY/SPT ALEXANDER BELENKY/SPT

Senior Swedish officers discuss their goals and tactics during the Snowflake 2007 joint exercises in Kamenka. Soldiers discussing target ranges for shooting at the Kamenka trenches.

ALEXANDER BELENKY/SPT ALEXANDER BELENKY/SPT

Swedish soldiers load into Russian armored personnel carriers. Russian armored vehicles drive across a field carrying Russian and Swedish soldiers during the joint exercises.
12 ❖ Tuesday, December 18, 2007

ST. PETERSBURG

59 45

26 29
65

30
84 21

33
13 32
25
31 23 18 39
22a,b 40
9 12 41 37
20 14
80
GAVAN 28 17
16
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19 43

36
34

42
35

6 24
15
11
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10 nta
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Nab

2 3
8

4
7 5 27

ADMIRALTEYSKY DISTRICT / ÄÑåàêÄãíÖâëäàâ êÄâéç 16 Nevsky 100 100 Nevsky Pr. 32 Turgenev House 38 Nab. Reki Fontanki
ç‚ÒÍËÈ Ô., 100 20-300 sq.m. 燷. ÂÍË îÓÌÚ‡ÌÍË, 38 708 sq.m.
1 Admiralty House 3 Konnogvardeysky Blvd.
äÓÌÌÓ„‚‡‰ÂÈÒÍËÈ ·ÛÎ., 3 2000 sq.m. 17 Renaissance House 2-aya Sovetskaya Ul. 17 33 Sweden House 1 Malaya Konyushennaya Ul.
2-fl ëÓ‚ÂÒÚ͇fl ÛÎ. 17 5 372 sq. m. å‡Î‡fl äÓÌ˛¯ÂÌ̇fl ÛÎ., 1 3100 sq.m.
2 10 Serpukhovskaya 10 Serpukhovskaya Ul.
ëÂÔÛıÓ‚Ò͇fl ÛÎ., 10 2800 sq.m. 18 5 Italyanskaya 5 Italyanskaya Ul. 34 Razezzhaya 5 5 Razezzhaya Ul.
àڇθflÌÒ͇fl ÛÎ., 5 2200 sq.m. ê‡Á˙ÂÁʇfl ÛÎ., 5 2500 sq.m.
3 Neptun 93a Nab. Obvodnogo Kanala
燷. é·‚Ó‰ÌÓ„Ó Í‡Ì‡Î‡, 93‡ 5500 sq.m. 19 57 B. Morskaya 57 Bolshaya Morskaya Ul. 35 Helios 47-49 Ul. Marata
ÅÓθ¯‡fl åÓÒ͇fl ÛÎ., 57 2000 sq.m. ÛÎ. å‡‡Ú‡, 47-49 4000 sq.m.
4 Grand 79a Moskovsky Pr.
åÓÒÍÓ‚ÒÍËÈ Ô., 79‡ 4000 sq.m. 20 Admiralteysky 35 Bolshaya Morskaya Ul. 36 Business Club
ÅÓθ¯‡fl åÓÒ͇fl ÛÎ., 35 6318 sq.m. Bering 176 Nevsky Pr.
5 Admiral 118 Nab. Obvodnogo Kanala ç‚ÒÍËÈ Ô., 176 3500 sq.m.
燷. é·‚Ó‰ÌÓ„Ó Í‡Ì‡Î‡, 118 6600 sq. m. 21 Europa House 1 Artilleriyskaya Ul.
ÄÚËÎÎÂËÈÒ͇fl ÛÎ., 1 10000 sq.m. 37 Suvorovsky 44 5-aya Sovetskaya Ul.
6 Fontanka 113 Nab. Reki Fontanki 5-fl ëÓ‚ÂÚÒ͇fl ÛÎ., 44 5000 sq.m.
燷. ÂÍË îÓÌÚ‡ÌÍË, 113 2500 sq.m. 22a Nevsky 32/34 32/34 Nevsky Pr.
ç‚ÒÍËÈ Ô., 32/34 1500 sq.m. 38 J.Plaza-3 140 Nevsky Pr.
7 J.Plaza-1 48 Lermontovsky Pr. ç‚ÒÍËÈ Ô., 140 800 sq.m.
ãÂÏÓÌÚÓ‚ÒÍËÈ Ô., 48 1000 sq.m. 22b 32 Nevsky 32 Nevsky Pr.
ç‚ÒÍËÈ Ô., 32 1456 sq.m. 39 Business center 24 6-ya Sovetskaya Ul.
8 J.Plaza-2 21 Ruzovskaya Ul. 6-ya Sovetskaya 6-fl ëÓ‚ÂÚÒ͇fl ÛÎ., 24 2000 sq.m.
êÛÁÓ‚Ò͇fl ÛÎ., 21 1500 sq.m. 23 30 Nevsky 30 Nevsky Pr.
ç‚ÒÍËÈ Ô., 30 2200 sq.m. 40 Business center 29 Ligovsky Pr.
9 Litera 10 Ul.Galernaya ãË„Ó‚ÒÍËÈ Ô., 29 2500 sq.m.
ÛÎ. ɇÎÂ̇fl, 10 2500 sq.m. 24 Griffin House 21 Razezzhaya Ul.
ê‡Á˙ÂÁʇfl ÛÎ., 21 3300 sq.m. 41 Nevsky 38 38 Nevsky Pr.
10 Daraut 133 Nab. Kanala Griboyedova ç‚ÒÍËÈ Ô., 38 2500 sq.m. – retail space
燷. ͇̇· ÉË·Ó‰ӂ‡, 133 20000 sq.m. 25 IGB 3 63 Ul. Zhukovskogo
ìÎ. ÜÛÍÓ‚ÒÍÓ„Ó, 63 4800 sq.m. 42 Business center
11 J.Plaza-4 3 Rabochy Per. na Sadovoi 53 Sadovaya Ul.
ꇷӘËÈ ÔÂÂÛÎÓÍ, 3 1500 sq.m. 26 Goldex 1 Pr. Chernyshevskogo 뇉ӂ‡fl ÛÎ., 53 900 sq.m.
è. óÂÌ˚¯Â‚ÒÍÓ„Ó, 1 7400 sq.m.
CENTRAL DISTRICT / ñÖçíêÄãúçõâ êÄâéç 27 Inform-Future 12 Tambovskya Ul. 43 Liter B 43/45 B, Ligobsky Pr.
í‡Ï·Ó‚Ò͇fl ÛÎ., 12 2700 sq.m. ãË„Ó‚ÒÍËÈ Ô., 43/45 Å 1870 sq.m.
12 White Nights House 23 M. Morskaya Ul. 28 Mariinsky 58 Nab. Reki Moiki 80 Alia Tempora 104 Nevsky Pr.
å‡Î‡fl åÓÒ͇fl ÛÎ., 23 6200 sq.m. 燷. ÂÍË åÓÈÍË, 58 6300 sq.m. ç‚ÒÍËÈ Ô., 104 7 200 sq.m.
13 Northen Capital House 36 Nab. Reki Moiki 29 Tavrichesky 51 Shpalernaya Ul. KALININSKY DISTRICT / äÄãàçàçëäàâ êÄâéç
燷. ÂÍË åÓÈÍË, 36 10000 sq.m. òÔ‡ÎÂ̇fl ÛÎ., 51 12810 sq.m.
14 The Atrium at Nevsky 25 25 Nevsky Pr. 30 Mikhailovsky 5 Marsovo Polye 44 Renaissance Ul. Shatelena 26
ç‚ÒÍËÈ Ô., 25 5300 sq.m. å‡ÒÓ‚Ó ÔÓÎÂ, 5 2267 sq.m. Center ÛÎ. ò‡ÚÂÎÂ̇ 26 10 105 sq. m.
15 Renaissance 69-71 Ul. Marata 31 Helsinki Center 1 Nevsky Pr. 45 Petrovsky Fort 4 Finlyandsky Pr.
Plaza ÛÎ. å‡‡Ú‡ 69-71 28 935 sq. m. ç‚ÒÍËÈ Ô., 1 650 sq.m. îËÌÎfl̉ÒÍËÈ Ô., 4 16241 sq.m.
 The St. Petersburg Times ❖ 13

BUSINESS CENTERS 46 PRIN

KIROVSKY DISTRICT / äàêéÇëäàâ êÄâéç
4 Ul. Vozrozhdeniya
ìÎ. ÇÓÁÓʉÂÌËfl, 4 8500 sq.m.
47 Sheremetev 47 Pr. Stachek
è. ëÚ‡˜ÂÍ, 47 8500 sq. m.
48 Portal 18 Bumazhnaya Ul.
ÅÛχÊ̇fl ÛÎ., 18 17000 sq. m.
KRASNOGVARDEISKY DISTRICT / äêÄëçéÉÇÄêÑÖâëäàâ êÄâéç
49 Burevestnik 68 Malookhtinsky Pr.
å‡ÎÓÓıÚËÌÒÍËÈ Ô., 68 8370 sq.m.
50 UGRA 6 Tallinskaya Ul.
í‡ÎÎËÌÒ͇fl ÛÎ., 6 3000 sq.m.
51 Pallada 2 Krasnogvardeuskaya Pl.
ä‡ÒÌÓ„‚‡‰ÂÈÒ͇fl ÔÎ., 2 5400 sq.m.
52 Askold 2 Krasnogvardeuskaya Pl.
ä‡ÒÌÓ„‚‡‰ÂÈÒ͇fl ÔÎ., 2 5000 sq.m.
MOSKOVSKY DISRICT / åéëäéÇëäàâ êÄâéç
53 Moskovsky 212 Moskovsky Pr.
åÓÒÍÓ‚ÒÍËÈ Ô., 212 6000 sq.m.
54 Mayak 89 Moskovsky Pr.
44 åÓÒÍÓ‚ÒÍËÈ Ô., 89 10000 sq.m.
76
55 Mir 161/2 Leninsky Pr.
ãÂÌËÌÒÍËÈ Ô., 161/2 1000 sq.m.
56 Konstanta 153 Leninsky Pr.
ãÂÌËÌÒÍËÈ Ô., 153 15816 sq.m.
NEVSKY DISTRICT / çÖÇëäàâ êÄâéç
68 67 78 57 24 Obvodny 24a Nab. Obvodnogo Kanala
82 燷. é·‚Ó‰ÌÓ„Ó Í‡Ì‡Î‡, 24‡ 10000 sq.m.
77 58 Business Park 14 Sofiyskaya Ul.
66 61 74 ëÓÙËÈÒ͇fl ÛÎ., 14 9000 sq.m.
81
60 79 83 1837 70/2 Pr. Obukhovskoi Oboroni
63 è. é·ÛıÓ‚ÒÍÓÈ é·ÓÓÌ˚ 70/2 12 216 sq.m.
75
65
64 59 45 PETROGRADSKY DISTRICT / èÖíêéÉêÄÑëäàâ êÄâéç
59 Veda-House 18 Petrogradskaya Nab., liter R
èÂÚÓ„‡‰Ò͇fl ̇·., 18, ÎËÚÂ ê 10000 sq.m.
62
70 65 60 LDM 47 Ul. Professora Popova
ìÎ. èÓÙ. èÓÔÓ‚‡, 47 6910 sq.m.
69 51,52
61 TV-Polis 6 Ul. Chapygina
ìÎ. ó‡Ô˚„Ë̇, 6 8000 sq.m.
71 62 Dobrolubov 11 Pr. Dobrolyubova
72 49 è. ÑÓ·Óβ·Ó‚‡, 11 2750 sq.m.
73 63 Lva Tolstogo 7 7 Ul. Lva Tolstogo
50 ÛÎ. 㸂‡ íÓÎÒÚÓ„Ó, 7 4438 sq.m.
64 Na Monetnoy 16/5 B. MonetnayaUl.
ÅÓθ¯‡fl åÓÌÂÚ̇fl ÛÎ., 16/5 1460 sq.m.
57 65 APOLLO 8 Pr. Dobrolyubova
Ô. ÑÓ·Óβ·Ó‚‡, 8 9000 sq.m.
66 Vorontsov 10/1 Barochnaya Ul.
48 ŇӘ̇fl ÛÎ., 10/1 11220 sq.m.
83 79 Tolstoy Skver 9 Ul. Lva Tolstogo
24 ÛÎ. 㸂‡ íÓÎÒÚÓ„Ó 9 23 600 sq.m.
47 PRIMORSKY DISTRICT / èêàåéêëäàâ êÄâéç
Ç˚·Ó„Ò͇fl ̇·., 61 15562 sq.m.
46 68 President 5 Ushakovskaya Nab.
쯇ÍÓ‚Ò͇fl ̇·., 5 3700 sq.m.
58
VASILEOSTROVSKY DISTRICT / ÇÄëàãÖéëíêéÇëäàâ êÄâéç
69 Abacus 13 4-aya Liniya V.O.
4-fl ÎËÌËfl Ç. é., 13 3500 sq.m.
70 Granat 54 Maly Pr., k. 2, liter A
å‡Î˚È Ô., 54, Í. 2, Î. Ä 3000 sq.m.
71 Elizavetinsky 14 13-aya Liniya V.O.
13-fl ÎËÌËfl Ç. é., 14 6000 sq.m.
72 Centrako 103 Bolshoy Pr. V. O.
55 ÅÓθ¯ÓÈ Ô. Ç. é., 103 800 sq.m.
56 53 73 Respect 5 Detskaya Ul., lit. A.
ÑÂÚÒ͇fl ÛÎ., 5, ÎËÚ. Ä 5100 sq.m.
INNOVATION CENTER
Pulkovskoye shosse 30/4.
Tel.: 448-32-61, +7 (921) 9-335-335. www.technopolis.fi 84 By the Rostral V.O. 6 Birzhevoi Per.
Colomns Ç.é. ÅËÊ‚ÓÈ ÔÂ. 6 2 000 sq.m.

VYBORGSKY DISTRICT / ÇõÅéêÉëäàâ êÄâéç

74 Becar 61 B.Sampsonievsky Pr.
ÅÓθ¯ÓÈ ë‡ÏÔÒÓÌË‚ÒÍËÈ Ô., 614000 sq.m.
75 Nobel 21 Pirogovskaya Nab.
èËÓ„Ó‚Ò͇fl ̇·., 21 5500 sq.m.
76 Rosglavmaterialy 2 Svetlanovsky Pr.
ë‚ÂÚ·ÌÓ‚ÒÍËÈ Ô., 2 7000 sq.m.
77 Sampsonievsky 32 32 Sampsonievsky Pr.
ë‡ÏÔÒÓÌË‚ÒÍËÈ Ô., 32 7000 sq.m.
78 Kantemirovskaya 12 12 Kantemirovskaya Ul.
ä‡ÌÚÂÏËÓ‚Ò͇fl ÛÎ., 12 5000 sq.m.
81 Maxima 6 Tobolskaya Ul.
íÓ·ÓθÒ͇fl ÛÎ., 6 8 000 sq.m.
82 Vyborgskaya Zastava 68 B. Sampsonievsky Pr.
ë‡ÏÔÒÓÌË‚ÒÍËÈ Ô., 68 15 700 sq.m.
14 ❖ Tuesday, December 18, 2007
By Vladimir Ryzhkov
A Bad Blend of Brezhnev and Abramovich
A
new political model has emerged after the
State Duma elections — Putin’s model.
Putin began constructing this model in
1999, but it only reached its most advanced stage
this fall.
Putin’s regime is the Russian version of the typ-
ical authoritarian model. One could describe its
foundation in terms of a bureaucratic monopoly.
Russia shares the following fundamental charac-
teristics with countries such as China, Pakistan,
Egypt, Belarus, Iran and Venezuela: heavy policy
control, censorship in the main media channels
and the systemic hounding and persecution of
nongovernmental organizations, human rights
groups and opposition parties. The absence of the
rule of law is also a standard for all autocracies.
Another characteristic that Moscow shares with
other authoritarian governments is the enormous
role that the security services, including the Fed-
eral Security Service and Prosecutor General’s Of-
fice, play in society. But in contrast to other auto-
cratic governments, the main source of Russia’s
authority is the so-called vertical power structure,
composed of 1.6 million federal bureaucrats — a
figure that has grown 1.5 times since Putin has
come to power. In China and Cuba, for example,
the source of power is a monopoly political party;
in Chile during Pinochet’s reign, it was the army; in
Iran, it is the religious leaders; and in Saudi Ara-
bia, it is the ruling dynasty.
In contrast, there was some division of power
under President Boris Yeltsin. The main centers of
power in the 1990s were:
• the president and his administration
• the ministers in the Cabinet, who had a fair
amount of autonomy, particularly under Prime
Ministers Viktor Chernomyrdin and Yevgeny Pri-
makov
• governors who were popularly elected
• large business
• mass media
• political parties in the Duma
During the Yeltsin era, political consensus de-
pended on striking compromises among the
Duma, Federation Council, Cabinet and even
within the Kremlin.
Not a trace of these elements of pluralism has
remained under Putin’s presidency. For the last
seven years, all of the above-mentioned centers of
influence have been stripped of their independent
authority. Having just become president in 2000,
Putin began constructing his vertical power model
by taking control of the three largest nationwide
television stations. Then, he weakened governors
as an independent power base by reforming the
Federation Council and by canceling direct guber-
natorial elections. Then the Kremlin moved on to
destroying the political power of business by tar-
geting Boris Berezovsky, Vladimir Gusinsky and
F R O M
Living With Cheap Oil
By Alexei Bayer
T
he deflation of the real estate bubble be-
gan with a weak link — the subprime seg-
ment of the U.S. mortgage market among
poor homeowners who were unable to service
their loans. It is now spreading into other mar-
ket segments in the United States and abroad,
for example, into the overbought residential
property market in Britain.
But the real estate bubble is only one of
several bubbles that have appeared in the
world economy since the start of this decade.
Others include the stock market bubble, which
has so inflated wealth that all 400 richest
Americans on the Forbes list are now billion-
aires. This year, the “poorest” member of this
club was worth $1.3 billion — one-third more
than in 2006.
The stock-price bubble has been even worse
in emerging markets. A rally on the Mexico City
bourse has turned Carlos Slim, the owner of
Telmex, the telecoms monopoly, into the world’s
richest man.
Economists have been at pains to explain the
price run-up in each of these markets. Real es-
tate prices have been rising because the baby-
boom generation is maturing and a new class of
homeowners has been created thanks to cheap
mortgages. Fine art prices have been bid up be-
cause new museums are being built all over
China and the Middle East. Stock prices have
O P I N
Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Putin severely weakened
the autonomy of the Cabinet by appointing weak
and compliant technocrats such as Mikhail Frad-
kov as prime ministers. Finally, Putin used all
available administrative resources to make sure
that liberal opposition deputies would not get seats
in the Duma. He also weakened the Communists,
who had been a strong opposition force in the
1990s, and filled the parliament with enough
servile United Russia deputies to gain a constitu-
tional majority.
All power is now concentrated in the hands of
bureaucrats. Putin’s loyal cronies — above all, his
buddies and former colleagues from the KGB and
the St. Petersburg Mayor’s Office — sit at the very
top of this bureaucratic power base. Then there
are the governors, whose fate now completely
rests on the presidential administration. The may-
ors of leading cities are one step lower on the bu-
reaucratic hierarchy; they have been herded into
United Russia on “voluntary-mandatory” condi-
tions. In addition, there are bureaucrats who work
in various government jobs who understand all too
A S A F E D I S T A N C E
also risen because profits
growth has been so strong.
But when so many asset
classes are hitting the
stratosphere all at once, an-
other factor is likely to be
at work, namely the loss of
value of money. Instead of
a series of unrelated bub-
bles, the world economy is Alexei Bayer
experiencing one general
bubble — the surfeit of liquidity.
Commodity markets have also been in a
bubble stage, their prices rocketing due to
cheap and plentiful liquidity. Oil being a bell-
wether of other commodities, the oil market has
been the one where the bubble is easiest to
identify.
Undoubtedly, since the end of the 2001-02
economic slump there has been a strong rise in
global demand for oil. Most nations, industrial
and emerging ones alike, use more oil. The main
culprit is China, where demand for oil jumped
from 4.8 million barrels per day in 2000 to 7.3
million barrels per day in 2006.
But oil output also rose strongly over the
same time period, with Russia alone now pro-
ducing 3 million barrels per day more. Even if
oil supplies have tightened since the end of the
1990s, when its price bottomed out at around
$10 per barrel, it certainly doesn’t justify a ten-
fold jump in oil prices.
I O N The St. Petersburg Times
well that the only way to keep their jobs is to con-
stantly prove their loyalty to the Kremlin. The re-
ward for this loyalty is to reap the benefits of a
massive system of corruption, where bureaucrats
are allowed to abuse their positions to advance the
interests of their personal businesses. Corruption
has become an acceptable norm and principal mo-
tivation for Putin’s army of bureaucrats. It runs
rampant at all levels of government — from exec-
utives at government television stations to judges,
from FSB generals to police officers. One could
say the government has been strengthened and re-
born, but it has assumed a grotesque and malig-
nant form where corruption and lawlessness have
become more important than civil duty among bu-
reaucrats.
The crown jewels of the country’s national
wealth have ended up in the hands of Putin’s inner
circle. These close friends of the president now
control the most profitable sectors of the economy
in oil and gas export and weapons trade, and they
include deputy chief of staff Igor Sechin, First
Deputy Prime Ministers Dmitry Medvedev and
Today, the bulk of the world’s oil is sold
through the futures markets, where players are
not users or producers of oil but speculators.
They should be looking not so much at today’s
supply-demand relationship but at future trends
in the market. The longer term outlook for oil
prices appears to be grim. Oil reserves have
been boosted by recent offshore finds as well as
the inclusion of Canada’s tar sands into its
proven reserves. Oil recovery rates from new
and existing reservoirs have increased due to
new technologies. Moreover, at $100 per barrel,
new sources of supply constantly emerge, and
development of new technologies for energy
conservation and alternative energy sources be-
comes more attractive. Currently, tens of billions
of dollars are being invested into new oil explo-
ration and production.
The real estate crisis is only the beginning.
Once the U.S. Federal Reserve and other cen-
tral banks tightened their monetary policies, the
pricking of the liquidity bubble was set in mo-
tion. Stock prices have been volatile, and volatil-
ity has spread into the oil market since the start
of November. Late last month, oil dropped by 15
percent in a few trading sessions. Even though it
has bounced back, oil producers — and certainly
Russia — should get ready to live with substan-
tially lower oil prices.
Alexei Bayer, a native Muscovite, is a New York-
based economist.
Sergei Ivanov, Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller, Rus-
sian Technologies head Viktor Chemezov, Finance
Minister Alexei Kudrin, Russian Railways head
Vladimir Yakunin, IT and Communications Min-
ister Leonid Reiman and Gennady Timchenko,
co-founder of the influential oil-trading company
Gunvor.
Putin has accomplished what would seem to be
the impossible. In forming his vertical-power
model, he has taken some of the worst elements of
Soviet rule and combined them with some of the
worst Yeltsin attributes. In such a way, Putin has
created a Soviet-oligarchic model: a synthesis of
Soviet monopoly on political power combined
with the nepotism and corruption from the 1990s.
This grotesque amalgamation of Brezhnev with
Abramovich constitutes the foundation of Putin’s
power structure. The Russian elite energetically
rallied around this simple idea of seizing and di-
viding up enormous natural resource wealth
among themselves — and, what’s worse, this was
accomplished under the bombastic cries of the “re-
birth of Russia’s greatness.”
But you have to give Putin credit. He has been
able to gain the support of the majority of Rus-
sians even though they generally lose as a result
of this political model. For example, Russia is de-
veloping a lot slower than it should. The gaps be-
tween the rich and poor and the largest cities and
the regions are growing. The country is also
falling behind the West in the technological
sphere, and it is losing its ability to compete on
global markets.
Despite all of this, however, Putin’s popular-
ity remains extremely high. There are other fac-
tors working to Putin’s favor besides outright
vote-rigging and forcing people to vote for pro-
Putin parties. To be sure, some small pieces of
the huge oil wealth have ended up in the people’s
hands, and this has led to a consumer-spending
boom. Moreover, the Kremlin mobilized the
people against fictitious “external enemies” such
as the United States, NATO, Georgia, Estonia
and Poland, as well as “internal enemies” such as
liberals, terrorists, extremists and oligarchs.
Taken together, this has all increased Putin’s
popularity.
But I am afraid that the time of “stability” is
coming to an end. Despite the powerful Kremlin
public relations machine and its use of enormous
administrative resources, signs of an economic and
political crisis are looming. Not only are the peo-
ple growing more dissatisfied, but there is increas-
ing dissent among the elite as well. The presiden-
tial “election” in March will be the next difficult
durability test for Putin’s political model — one
that is based on a very shaky foundation of bu-
reaucratic monopoly.
Vladimir Ryzhkov was a State Duma deputy from
1993 to 2007.
ë‡ÌÍÚ-èÂÚÂ·Û„ í‡ÈÏÒ
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Tuesday, December 18, 2007 O P I N I O N The St. Petersburg Times ❖ 15

S O U T H O F T H E B O R D E R
Stemming Climate Change
The Perils of Putinism By Brook Horowitz energy, focuses project finance on devel-
oping renewable sources such as last
and developing worlds, challenged by
how to make clean energy cost-effective

Found in Its Instability A

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
clique in spite of a booming econ-
t the United Nations Confer-
ence on Climate Change that
has just concluded in Bali, the
world’s governments agreed to begin
two years of negotiations to replace for
year’s investment into Gidro OGK’s re-
construction of hydroelectric plants.
Attitudes are changing too. A recent
survey of Russian companies by the
World Wildlife Fund showed consider-
and how to reduce emissions without
adversely slowing economic growth.
Companies are in fact ready to take
action on environmental issues even if
the law and public opinion do not nec-

P
lans for a transition of power
were unveiled last week in
Russia. The news is that there
won’t be one.
This choreographed switcheroo
is Putinism to a tee. The president
and his men trample on civic free-
doms and concentrate power in the
name of “order” and “stability.”
With the economy growing on the
back of oil approaching $100 per
barrel, up from $15 per barrel when
Putin took office in 2000, complaints
are muted — sometimes by force.
But of all peoples, Russians ought to
have learned from history that per-
sonalizing and centralizing so much
authority brings trouble down the
road.
An old friend of Putin’s from his
KGB days told us last week that the
president wanted to step down to es-
tablish a precedent for future lead-
ers. But in the same breath, he said it
was too dangerous for Putin to step
aside — for Russia, and for Putin
himself. This is largely true, and is
another feature of Putinism.
This transition could have helped
democracy to mature. The country
lost an opportunity in this decade of
good economic times to build a
proper and predictable political sys-
tem around institutions rather than
men. The blame falls squarely on
Putin.
A turning point was Ukraine’s
Orange Revolution in 2004. There,
an Orthodox Slavic nation rose
against a corrupt and authoritarian
ON e
omy; this came too close to home for
the Kremlin. In its wake, Putin has
turned Russia’s government into the
most anti-Western outside of Iran,
Cuba, North Korea and Venezuela.
The absence of democracy is
dangerous for Russia and the
world. Putinism hangs on a single
man. It denies the people a proper
outlet to discuss their problems.
Others will be found. Fast-rising in-
flation has brought impromptu
demonstrations.
The Kremlin has opened a Pan-
dora’s box by embracing neo-fascist
youth groups and ideas that will be
hard to control. After the thaw un-
der Soviet leader Mikhail Gor-
bachev and President Boris Yeltsin,
the people are once again nothing
compared with the power of the
state, and they may one day redis-
cover a taste for liberty. All of this
makes the country unpredictable. In
the meantime, power struggles will
continue among various factions in-
side the Kremlin, beyond view and
unchecked by laws. Contrary to its
own advertising, Putinism has sown
the seeds of instability.
The tapping of First Deputy
Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev
and the prominent role carved for
Putin in no way ends the great un-
certainty about Russia’s near- and
long-term future. It merely accentu-
ates it.
This comment appeared as an edito-
rial in The Wall Street Journal.
the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas
emissions. But the tensions between the
United States and China over who
takes on obligations for emissions will
make a solution hard to come by be-
tween now and 2009. In the absence of
global leadership by the two largest pro-
ducers of greenhouse gases, could there
be a role for Russia, the third-largest
producer?
Environmental issues have not tradi-
tionally been high on the agenda in
Russia. Moscow ratified the Kyoto Pro-
tocol, but there is little incentive for
Russia to reduce emissions, which were
based on the country’s 1990 industrial
production levels — very high com-
pared with the ensuing years of post-So-
viet decline. Some cities have been
rated amongst the world’s most pol-
luted. Furthermore, with low domestic
energy prices, consumers lack motiva-
tion to save energy.
But change is afoot. Russian compa-
nies, faced by the challenge of rapidly
increasing demand, are investing in
more efficient, environmentally friendly
technologies. For example, TNK-BP is
planning to invest more than $1.5 bil-
lion over the next five years to develop
associated gas production. RusAl, the
world’s largest aluminum producer, is
investing in energy-saving technologies
in its new plant in Taishet near Irkutsk.
International banks funding large
projects in Russia are influencing corpo-
rate behavior by being ready to refuse
finance to companies that present an en-
vironmental risk. The European Bank
for Reconstruction and Development,
with its strategy to promote sustainable
able commitment to the introduction of
environmental management systems
and standards such as ISO 14001. Con-
sultations with local communities and
nongovernmental organizations on en-
vironmental concerns by companies
such as Unified Energy System are be-
coming more commonplace. Environ-
mental lobbying can sometimes work,
Companies, faced by
the challenge of
rapidly rising demand,
are investing in more
efficient technologies.
as was shown in 2006 by the rerouting
of Transneft’s pipeline away from Lake
Baikal. Recently President Vladimir
Putin even reminded the head of the
Sochi Olympic corporation to make
sure that environmental issues were
properly dealt with during the 2014
Games.
For Russia, climate change presents
a host of untapped opportunities. The
country has scientists capable of partici-
pating in the development of clean tech-
nologies. For example, there is ground-
breaking work in producing nuclear en-
ergy more safely than with traditional
methods, and Russian scientists are
working on hydrogen technology and
nanotechnology, both important in re-
newable energy. This research could be
in fierce demand in both the developed
essarily force them to. As elsewhere,
they can exert far more influence by
taking a position rather than by waiting
for an environmental disaster to happen
or for governments to decide for them.
If business and governments, both in
Russia and abroad, could encourage
these new trends and make the most of
the competitive advantages of industry
and science, there could be real benefits
for Russia and the world. Inside the
country, such an approach would resur-
rect research and development that has
been underfunded over the past 15
years, and encourage diversification of
the economy into high-tech industries.
Over the next two years of negotia-
tions following the Bali conference, Rus-
sia, as the only member of the Group of
Eight that is also a rapidly industrializing
nation, could make a positive impact by
leading the commitment to radically cut
emissions post-2012. A Russia actively
contributing to solving climate change
would help diffuse many of the current
tensions in the international energy dia-
logue and accelerate the long-term di-
versification of global energy sources
and the introduction of energy-saving
technologies — two critical components
of global energy security.
Russia would thereby position itself
as a country not only safeguarding its
national interests, but it could also
make a significant contribution to the
sustainable development of the world
for decades to come.
Brook Horowitz is executive director of
the International Business Leaders Fo-
rum in Russia.

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World
British Forces Hand Basra Back to Iraqis Climate
REUTERS
BASRA, Iraq — British troops handed
over security to Iraqi forces on Sunday
in the last of four provinces it once pa-
trolled, effectively marking the end of
nearly five years of control of southern
Iraq.
Thousands of Iraqi police and
troops marked the handover with a pa-
rade along the palm-fringed embank-
ment in Basra, the country’s second-
biggest city, in a show of Iraqi military
force on a scale unseen since the days of
Saddam Hussein.
They drove past in heavy tanks, ar-
moured vehicles, pick-up trucks with
mounted machine guns and police pa-
trol cars with flashing lights. Iraqi heli-
copters buzzed overhead and gunboats
sailed up the Shatt al-Arab waterway,
which leads to the Gulf.
“Today we stand at a historic junc-
ture and a special day, one of the great-
est days in the modern history of
Basra,” provincial governor Mo-
hammed Mosbah al-Waeli said at a cer-
emony held in the departure lounge at
Basra airport, where a scaled-down
British force now has its last remaining
base.
Control of Basra province will be
the biggest test yet of the Iraqi govern-
ment’s ability to keep the peace without
relying on troops from either the
United States or its main ally.
The province, site of Iraq’s second-
largest city, its only major port and
nearly all its oil exports, is far wealthier
and more populous than any of the
other eight of Iraq’s 18 provinces previ-
ously placed under formal Iraqi control.
The British commander, Major-
General Graham Binns, said Iraqi secu-
rity forces had “proved that they are ca-
pable”.
“I came to rid Basra of its enemies
but I now formally hand Basra back to
its friends,” said Binns, who also led the
force that captured the city from Sad-
dam’s troops in 2003.
Washington has publicly backed its
ally’s withdrawal, even while 30,000 extra
U.S. troops were sent to Iraq this year.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
said the British were doing what Wash-
Lebanese Elections Delayed for a Ninth Time Saudi Arabia’s
By Nayla Razzouk
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
BEIRUT — Lebanon’s presidential
election was postponed for a ninth time
Monday, to December 22, despite in-
tense international efforts to convince
rival parties to srike a deal and end a
dangerous political vacuum.
“The parliament session that was
scheduled today has been postponed to
Saturday December 22 at 12:30 p.m.,”
Mohamed Ballout, spokesman for par-
liament speaker Nabih Berri, told re-
porters.
The delay, the ninth since Septem-
ber, comes amid intense efforts by the
United States and other countries to
convince Lebanon’s pro- and anti-Syr-
ian factions to proceed to a vote and
avoid plunging the country into further
chaos.
Lebanon has been without a presi-
dent since November 23, when Emile
Lahoud stepped down at the end of his
term with no elected successor.
Washington on the weekend dis-
patched one of its top envoys to the
country to meet with the rival leaders
and press them to end their standoff,
which marks the country’s worst politi-
cal crisis since the end of the 1975-1990
civil war.
“The United States believes that it is
time now to elect a new president,” said
David Welch, the US assistant secretary
of state for Near East affairs. “There is
no reason for any further delay.”
France, Lebanon’s former colonial
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2007
A resident throws sweets towards Iraqi soldiers on a tank during a handover ceremony in Basra on Sunday.
ington hoped could be possible through-
out Iraq.
But, during a visit to Paris, she
added: “We obviously recognize, and
the British recognize, that there is still a
lot of work to do in terms of building a
stable foundation in the south and there
continue to be problems there.”
RESIDENTS OPTIMISTIC
Basra is a lively place, with restaurants
open late and little of the barricaded
siege mentality of the capital, Baghdad.
The mainly Shi’ite south escaped the
sectarian warfare that killed tens of
thousands in central and northern Iraq.
But Basra has seen plenty of blood-
shed in the form of turf wars between
rival Shi’ite factions, criminals and
smugglers. Police accuse militants of
imposing strict Islamic codes and killing
women for so-called “honor crimes”.
A triple car bomb attack that killed
about 40 people in neighbouring Maysan
power which has been at the forefront
of international efforts to mediate the
crisis, also warned that time was run-
ning out for a solution and that Mon-
day’s session was crucial.
“Monday is really the last chance,
and France calls on all parties, inside
and outside, to ensure that Lebanon
can have a president,” President Nico-
las Sarkozy said.
“Those (who) would take the risk of
killing off that chance would cut them-
selves off from a number of countries,
first among them France,” said Sarkozy,
who is due to meet US Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice on Monday.
The delay comes
amid intense efforts
by the U.S. and other
countries to bring
about a vote.
Although the Western-backed rul-
ing majority and the Hezbollah-led op-
position have agreed in principle to
elect army cheif Michel Sleiman to re-
place Lahoud, they remain at odds on
how to amend the constitution to allow
a senior public servant to be elected.
They are also bickering on the make-up
of the new government and on who
would be appointed to top security
posts.
province last week was a reminder of the
potential for violence in areas vacated by
the British.
The Iraqi government says Basra’s
main factions agreed to a truce this
month, killings in the city are down and
30,000 troops and police in the area can
keep the peace.
Britain now has 4,500 troops in Iraq,
less than a 10th of the force that Tony
Blair dispatched to help topple Saddam
in 2003. Blair’s successor as prime min-
ister, Gordon Brown, has said the force
will shrink to 2,500 by mid-2008, includ-
ing a small training mission and a rapid
response team on standby.
The British were welcomed into
Basra in 2003, but residents soured
to them over the years. A BBC poll
showed the overwhelming majority
of people are glad to see the British
go.
“You can see this happiness on the
faces of everyone. It feels like a heavy
Simon Abi Ramia, an adviser to
Christian opposition leader General
Michel Aoun, told AFP earlier that
Monday’s session would not go ahead
as no agreement had yet been reached
on a mechanism to amend the constitu-
tion.
Mustafa Alloush, a deputy with the
majority, told AFP that political negoti-
ations had reached a dead end.
“We’re back to square one,” he said.
The crisis between the two camps
worsened last week after the car bomb
assassination of Brigadier General
Michel El-Hajj, who had been tipped to
become army chief once Sleiman is
elected.
Hajj joined a list of politicians and
journalists who have been killed or
wounded in the last three years in at-
tacks widely blamed on Syria, which has
denied any involvement.
Syria in 2005 was forced to withdraw
its troops from Lebanon after a 29-year
presence amid an international outcry
over the assassination of former prime
minister Rafiq Hariri.
The current standoff began after
the Shiite militant group Hezbollah,
empowered by its 34-day war with Is-
rael last year, pulled its five ministers
from the cabinet in November 2006 to
gain more representation in govern-
ment.
The crisis is widely seen as an exten-
sion of the regional confrontation pit-
ting the United States against Iran and
Syria.
ATEF HASSAN/REUTERS
burden has been lifted off our chests,”
said teacher Adel Jassem.
Still, some worry that Iraqi forces
may not be up to the job: “The han-
dover is a good step, but we hope that
Iraqi forces are ready. I don’t think they
are fully ready and the handover should
have been delayed,” said merchant
Faisal Sharhan, 28.
Others, too, have criticized the man-
ner of the British withdrawal. The influ-
ential U.S.-based defence expert An-
thony Cordesman has called it a “de-
feat”.
Al Qaeda’s second-in-command,
Ayman al-Zawahri, said the handover
showed that insurgents were gaining
the upper hand.
“Reports from Iraq point to the in-
creasing power of the mujahideen and
the deteriorating condition of the
Americans,” Zawahri said in a video
posted on the Internet. “And the deci-
sion of the British to flee is sufficient .”
King Pardons
Rape Victim
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Saudi Ara-
bia’s King Abdullah has pardoned a fe-
male rape victim who had been sen-
tenced to 200 lashes for being alone
with a man at the time of the attack
who was not related to her, a Saudi
newspaper reported Monday
The case had sparked international
outcry. In a rare criticism of its Mideast
ally, the White House had expressed its
“astonishment” over the woman’s sen-
tence. Canada called it barbaric.
Saudi Justice Minister Abdullah bin
Mohammed al-Sheik told al-Jazirah
newspaper that the pardon does not
mean the king doubted the country’s
judges, but instead acted in the “inter-
ests of the people.”
“The king always looks into allevi-
ating the suffering of the citizens when
he becomes sure that these verdicts
will leave psychological effects on the
convicted people, though he is con-
vinced and sure that the verdicts were
fair,” al-Jazirah quoted al-Sheik as say-
ing.
The victim in the case, known only
as the “Girl of Qatif” after her home-
town in eastern Saudi Arabia, was in a
car with a high school friend in 2006
when they were attacked and raped by
seven men.
The St. Petersburg Times ❖ 16
Deal Cut
In Bali
By David Fogarty
REUTERS
NUSA DUA, Indonesia —
Nearly 200 nations agreed at UN-
led talks in Bali on Saturday to
launch negotiations on a new
pact to fight global warming after
a last-minute reversal by the
United States allowed a break-
through. Washington said the
agreement marked a new chapter
in climate diplomacy after six
years of disputes with major allies
since President George W. Bush
pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol,
the main existing plan for com-
bating warming.
But despite its dramatic
turnaround in the meeting, which
approved a “roadmap” for two
years of negotiations to adopt a
new treaty to succeed Kyoto be-
yond 2012, the White House said
it still had “serious concerns”
about the way forward.
“This is the defining moment
for me and my mandate as secre-
tary-general,” UN Secretary-Gen-
eral Ban Ki-moon said after mak-
ing a return trip to Bali to implore
delegates to overcome deadlock
during the talks.
Ban had been on a visit to
East Timor. “I am deeply grateful
to many member states for their
spirit of flexibility and compro-
mise,” Ban told Reuters.
The roadmap widens Kyoto to
the United States and developing
nations such as China and India.
Under the deal, a successor pact
will be agreed at a meeting in
Copenhagen in late 2009.
The deal after two weeks of
talks came when the United
States dramatically dropped op-
position to a proposal by the
main developing-nation bloc, the
G77, for rich nations to do more
to help the developing world fight
rising greenhouse emissions.
But the White House voiced
reservations about future talks.
Negotiators “must give sufficient
emphasis to the important and
appropriate role that the larger
emitting developing countries
should play,” White House
spokeswoman Dana Perino said.
The United States is the lead-
ing greenhouse gas emitter,
ahead of China, Russia and India.
Indonesian Environment Min-
ister Rachmat Witoelar, the host
of the talks, banged down the
gavel on the deal to rapturous ap-
plause from weary delegates.
“All three things I wanted
have come out of these talks —
launch, agenda, end date,” Yvo de
Boer, head of the UN Climate
Change Secretariat, told reporters.
The accord marks a step to-
ward slowing global warming that
the UN climate panel says is
caused by human activities led by
burning fossil fuels that produce
carbon dioxide, the main green-
house gas.
Scientists say rising tempera-
tures could cause seas to rise
sharply, glaciers to melt, storms
and droughts to become more in-
tense and mass migration of cli-
mate refugees.
The European Union, which
dropped earlier objections to the
draft text, was pleased with the
deal.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy (c) escorts UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon after their meeting in Paris on Monday.
EU Promises $650M for Palestinians
By Karin Laub
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
PARIS — Donors began committing
funds from around the world Monday
for the moribund Palestinian economy
amid a renewed international push for a
Palestinian state, with the European
Union promising $650 million in 2008.
Palestinian Prime Minister Salam
Fayyad is asking for $5.6 billion over
three years. UN Secretary General Ban
Ki-moon urged the international com-
munity to fulfill the Palestinian needs
and more.
“What we must do now is work to-
gether before the end of 2008 for the
creation of an independent, democratic,
viable Palestinian state,” French Presi-
dent Nicolas Sarkozy, the meeting’s
host, said in a speech to representatives
from nearly 90 donor countries and in-
ternational organizations.
Meanwhile, Palestinian President
Mahmoud Abbas said Monday that he
has ruled out dialogue with rival Islamic
militant Hamas, and that without inter-
national support Gaza is “heading into
disaster.”
Gaza has been virtually cut off from
the world since Hamas seized control of
the territory by force in June. Israel and
Egypt sharply restricted border access
in response, and the blockade has fur-
ther deepened poverty there.
Abbas, speaking at the conference in
Paris, said Gaza is already “close to
catastrophe,” and would head into disas-
ter without continued international aid.
McCain Asks for Backing from Lieberman
By Jennifer Loven
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
HILLSBOROUGH, N.H. — Senator
John McCain, trying to keep momen-
tum in this state’s critical Republican
primary race, brought in something un-
usual on Monday — an endorsement
from the other party.
Senator Joseph Lieberman, the
Democrats’ 2000 vice presidential nom-
inee, said he was intending to wait until
after the primaries to make a choice for
the 2008 presidential race. But McCain
asked for his support and no Democrat
did.
Lieberman, an independent who
caucuses with the Democrats, said he
chose his longtime Senate colleague
because he has the best shot of break-
ing partisan gridlock in Washington.
Both men also support the war in
Iraq.
“On all the issues, you’re never go-
ing to do anything about them unless
you have a leader who can break
through the partisan gridlock,” Lieber-
The European Union launched the
day of pledges of aid by promising $650
million in 2008, EU External Relations
Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner
told The Associated Press.
In 2007, the European Union ini-
tially pledged $245 million, but ended
up contributing $798 million for that
year because of deepening poverty in
the Palestinian territories.
In all, the EU and its member states
gave about $1.45 billion to the Pales-
tinians in 2007. The figure includes not
just aid to the Palestinian government,
but also contributions to international
agencies that assist the Palestinians.
Ferrero-Waldner said she couldn’t
say yet how much the EU would con-
tribute in 2009 and 2010, since she
didn’t know what the available EU
budget would be, but suggested the aid
would roughly hold steady. That would
make the overall EU contribution a
substantial chunk of the total pledged
Monday.
Ferrero-Waldner and Fayyad urged
Arab states to do more. Since 2002,
Arab League members have been
promising the Palestinians $55 million a
month, put have not always paid in full.
The U.S. has announced it is pledg-
ing about $555 million for 2008. How-
ever, the money includes about $400
million that the White House already
has announced, but that has not been
approved by Congress.
Fayyad is trying to assure donor
countries — which gave more than $10
man said. “The status quo in Washing-
ton is not working.”
Independents can vote in New
Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary
on Jan. 8 and they are the people Mc-
Cain is targeting, much as he did in win-
ning the state’s Republican primary in
2000 over George W. Bush.
Traveling with Lieberman Monday
morning to Hillsborough’s American
Legion hall, McCain said the Connecti-
cut senator is his answer to the people
he hears in every town hall meeting
who ask, “Why can’t you all work to-
gether?”
Lieberman said McCain’s approach
to Iraq and his credentials on national
security are the main reasons he is
throwing his support to a Republican
for president.
But both men said that the election
seems increasingly about the economy
and domestic issues, instead of Iraq. On
those issues, Lieberman acknowledged
he does not always see eye-to-eye with
his 2008 pick. But, said Lieberman, Mc-
W O R L D The St. Petersburg Times
JOHN SCHULTS/REUTERS
billion to the Palestinians over the past
decade — that they are not expected to
prop up the Palestinian government in-
definitely.
He has presented a three-year re-
form plan, with promises to cut gov-
ernment spending by trimming a
bloated public payroll and reducing
hundreds of millions of dollars in util-
ity bills.
Still, he wants 70 percent of the aid
initially to go toward reducing his huge
budget deficit, with the emphasis shift-
ing only gradually to development pro-
jects.
Economists say it’s not enough for
the donors to pledge aid and for the
Palestinians to carry out reforms. The
Palestinian economy will only recover,
according to the World Bank, if Israel
eases sweeping physical and adminis-
trative restrictions on movement in the
West Bank and Gaza.
Israel has been reluctant to do so,
putting security first. The Israeli mili-
tary considers roadblocks key to pre-
venting attacks on Israelis by Pales-
tinian militants.
The tensions on the ground played a
role in the donors conference.
Abbas called on Israel Monday to
freeze Jewish settlements “without ex-
cuses.” Under the U.S.-backed “road
map” peace plan, Israel is required to
freeze the construction of Israeli set-
tlements, while the Palestinians must
disarm militants and restore order in
the Palestinian territories.
Cain is always straightforward about
where he stands.
For McCain, behind in the polls here
but gaining, the endorsement carries
the risk of alienating conservatives who
have been critical of his support for im-
migration and campaign finance re-
forms.
“If I get some criticism for aligning
myself with a good friend I have
worked with for many years, I will be
more than happy to accept that criti-
cism,” McCain said.
For Lieberman, it marks another
turn away from his party.
“Political party is important, but it’s
not more important than what’s good
for the country and it’s not more im-
portant than friendship,” Lieberman
said.
Lieberman won re-election to the
Senate in 2006 as an independent, after
losing the Democratic primary largely
because of his support for the war.
High-profile Democrats abandoned
him after the primary defeat.
Iraq Complains As
Turkey Attack Kurds
By Bradley Brooks
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
BAGHDAD — Iraqi leaders com-
plained Monday that Turkey had not
coordinated with Baghdad before send-
ing dozens of warplanes to bomb Kur-
dish rebel targets in northern Iraq —
the largest aerial attack in years against
the outlawed separatist group.
In Turkey, a U.S. Embassy official in
Ankara said Washington was informed
about the operation.
“It was a Turkish operation, it was a
Turkish decision. We were informed,”
the official told The Associated Press
on condition of anonymity, as the offi-
cial was not authorized to speak to the
media.
Iraq’s Foreign Minister Hoshyar Ze-
bari said the Iraqi government thought
Turkey would coordinate with it before
striking the rebels from the Kurdistan
Workers’ Party, or PKK, inside Iraq on
Sunday. He also indicated that the fact
Iraqi civilians were killed showed
Turkey had not hit the right target.
“What hap-
pened yesterday
was based maybe As many as 50 fighter
on misinforma-
tion,” Zebari said. planes were involved
An Iraqi offi-
cial said the planes
in the airstrikes
attacked several carried out by the
villages, killing one
woman. The Turkish air force.
rebels said two
civilians and five rebels were killed.
Turkey insisted the strikes were aimed at
rebel targets and not at the civilian pop-
ulation.
As many as 50 fighter jets were in-
volved in the airstrikes, Turkish media re-
ported. Turkey has recently attacked the
area with ground-based artillery and he-
licopters and there have been some un-
confirmed reports of airstrikes.
The attack came a month after the
U.S. promised to share intelligence with
Turkey to help combat the Kurdistan
Workers’ Party, or PKK and Turkey’s
military chief, Gen. Yasar Buyukanit,
said U.S. intelligence was used Sunday.
“America gave intelligence,” Kanal
D television quoted Buyukanit as say-
ing. “But more importantly, America
Militant Nigerian Group Calls
For Attacks on Oil Industry
By Edward Harris
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
LAGOS, Nigeria — Nigeria’s main mil-
itant group on Monday urged all armed
factions in the restive southern oil
heartland to join together and cripple
Africa’s biggest petroleum industry.
The Movement for the Emancipation
of the Niger Delta, which has spurned a
government peace initiative and ended a
cease-fire, praised moves by another mil-
itant faction to quit the talks and called
for all groups to band together.
“We call on all genuine militant
groups to unite and cripple the oil in-
dustry in Nigeria once and for all and
stand strong to face a common enemy,”
the group said in a statement. “The
time has come for all breakaway fac-
tions to come together and wage war of
a different kind in 2008.”
Bombings and attacks since early
2006 by MEND have already trimmed
about one quarter of Nigeria’s estimated
daily crude production of 2.5 million
barrels. Government officials weren’t
immediately available for comment.
The group announced a unilateral
cease-fire shortly after the May 29 inau-
guration of President Umaru
Yar’Adua, but later called it off.
Yar’Adua’s government has made some
efforts to reach out to militants, but a
❖ 17
last night opened (the Iraqi) airspace to
us. By opening the airspace, America
gave its approval to this operation.”
In Washington, a Pentagon official
said that the U.S. military has been shar-
ing intelligence with the Turks, but that
he did not know exactly what informa-
tion was given to aid with the airstrikes
or when it might have been given.
Another defense official said the U.S.
had made sure Turkey would have clear
use of the skies to enable the strikes.
They both spoke on condition of
anonymity because they were not au-
thorized to speak on the record.
Jamal Abdullah, a spokesman for
the regional Kurdistan government,
said the air raids were “a violation of
Iraq’s sovereignty.”
He said the bombers did not distin-
guish between militant and civilian tar-
gets, even though Turkey’s government
has said “they are not an enemy of the
Kurdish government or its people.”
Masoud Barzani, leader of the au-
tonomous Kurdish region, condemned
the attacks, which
he said were “con-
ducted with indi-
rect U.S. approval,
as defending the
sovereignty of Iraq
and the Kurdish
region is within
the Americans’ re-
sponsibilities.”
Turkey’s mili-
tary on Monday was assessing the dam-
age caused to the PKK. Private NTV
television said at least one rebel com-
mand center in Qandil was destroyed.
The mountain is a base for the PKK’s
leadership council and a network of
camps, although some reports have sug-
gested the rebels may have abandoned
their bases in anticipation of attacks.
Turkey has massed tens of thousands
of troops along its border with Iraq. In
October, parliament voted in favor of au-
thorizing the government to order a
cross-border operation against the group.
Turkish forces have periodically
shelled across the Iraqi border, and
have sometimes carried out “hot pur-
suits” — limited raids on the Iraqi side
that sometimes last only a few hours.
widescale conference focused on peace
and development for the Niger Delta
has yet to materialize.
MEND said it wasn’t part of the on-
going peace efforts, which took a hit over
the weekend when representatives of
ethnic Ijaw fighters said they were quit-
ting the initiative after several military
operation in the Niger Delta. Violence is
rising again in the region after MEND
ended its truce, although nowhere near
the levels seen before April’s elections,
when gunbattles or attacks on oil work-
ers were nearly daily occurences.
MEND, which claims to represent
all of the region’s ethnic groups, lauded
the weekend withdrawal of the ethnic
Ijaw group. Militancy in the Niger
Delta is characterized by shifting al-
liances and criminality. Much of the mil-
itants’ activities is believed to be funded
by the black-market sale of stolen crude
oil, or gunrunning.
The militants are trying to force the
federal government to send more of the
oil funds it controls to the Niger Delta
region, which is deeply impoverished de-
spite the great petroleum riches. Large
amounts of that money has been stolen
by the region’s leaders, many of whom
are believed to have links to the mili-
tants. The militants are also suspected of
helping politicians rig elections.
Real Estate TUESDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2007
www.sptimes.ru/realest
find it here.

To advertise, call Olga Kim at 325-6080. E-mail: kim@sptimes.ru Every Tuesday and Friday (Advertising section)

Apartments
FOR 62 Nevsky Prospekt
RENT
in the center Rental of office premises
967-2283 in the historic center
LUXURY of St. Petersburg
APARTMENTS from 22000 rubles
for rent and sale
per square meter per year
Tel.: 714-18-96
Mobile: +7-921-645-27-23
www.new-holland.ru
natalia.saikina@new-holland.ru
St. Petersburg Real Estate Agency
Tel: (812) 363 2530; fax: (812) 363 2531; info@pan.spb.ru
small ads =

big
opportunities
ST. PETERSBURG REAL ESTATE AGENCIES
Beautiful apartments for rent
in the center of St. Petersburg for any period.
Tel.: 927-1527; 592-9747
E-mail: muchina-arenda@mail.ru
• Apartments for rent and sale • Business premises
Nevsky • Cottages and ground areas • Consulting
Prostor 325-3838
922-11-39 Victoria /Penny Lane
APARTMENT Realty. E-mail: victoria@realtor.ru,
photos at www.realtor.ru
FOR RENT
Downtown, 1,500 rubles daily, 2-ROOM
16,000
Tel.
rubles monthly.
+7-921-303-35-42. APARTMENT
E-mail: imb@rol.ru, http://
www.introbyirina.com/ Fontanka River. Brand new. Modern
style. Internet. Satellite. Summer
garden. NIGHT SKY REALTY Tel.:
COTTAGE +7-812-920-03-35. E-mail:
info@nightskyrealty.ru
FOR RENT
Corner of Karavannaya and
Repino-Leninskoe. Four bedroom Italyanskaya Ul. Near Grand Hotel
dacha with great views, country- Europe. Total area: 85 sq. m.
side. Recently completed, fully Kitchen/bar: 30 sq. m. View of
furnished, 2 WCs, centrally heat-
ed, fireplace, terrace, extensive
Manezhnaya Ploshchad. Western
standard. Satellite TV. Secured
grounds, dishwasher, all modern parking. Any terms. 30,000 rubles
conveniences, hour’s drive from per month, from 1,500 rubles per
the city, 15 minutes from day. Tel.: +7-812-927-15-27,
beach/restaurants in Repino. +7-812-592-97-47.
Ideal for young family. 45,000
rubles per month. Tobin. Tel.: +7- 2 Tchaikovskogo Ul. Stylish. Large
901-305-78-05. wardrobe. High-Speed Internet.
Hotbird. Summer Gardens. Neva.
mail: victoria@realtor.ru, photos
at www.realtor.ru
MOIKA RIVER. Close to Nevsky.
Modern. Furnished. Secure park-
ing in the courtyard. K-KESKUS
Tel.:
Konstantin.
+7-812-967-22-83
Karavannaya Ul. Cozy and modern
apar tment in the center of
St.Petersburg, just near Nevsky
Prospekt. Nice design of bedroom
and kitchen-living room. Ideal
place to stay for one person or a
couple. View of cour tyard in
Italian-style. 50,000 rubles per
month. Tel.: +7-812-324-99-22,
+7-901-304-87-04, Elena. E-mail:
rent@allestate.ru
19 Nab. Reki Karpovki. Elite build-
ing near M. Petrogradskaya. 3rd
floor (lift). Freshly renovated. New
furniture. Bedroom (17 sq.m.), sit-
ting room (21 sq.m.), kitchen
(9 sq.m.). Concierge. 45,000
rubles per month. Tel.: +7-812-
957-07-63, +7-812-325-38-38,
Warm floors. 100,000 rubles per
month. Tel.: +7-812-324-99-22,
+7-901-304-87-04, Elena. E-mail:
rent@allestate.ru
4 Nab. Robespiera. New elite living-
complex. Security, underground
parking, concierge. 120 sq.m. 2
bedrooms, kitchen - living room, 2
WCs. Hydro-massage bath, show-
er cabin. Architect design, good
renovation, new furniture. Tel.:
943-70-10, Elena Isaenko. Becar
Agency. E-mail: isaenko@
becar.ru, photos at:
www.arenda.becar.ru
Pushkin. Close to Yekaterininsky
Palace. Stylish apar tment in a
new elite house. 154 sq.m. Gym,
garage, security. Water and air
cleaning system, air-conditioning,
fireplace. New furniture and equip-
ment. 215,000 rubles / 6,000
euros per month. Tel.: 943-70-10,
Elena Isaenko. Becar Agency. E-
mail: isaenko@becar.ru, photos
at: www.arenda.becar.ru

Ltd. www.spb-estate.com 1-ROOM

NIGHT SKY REALTY. Tel. +7-812-
920-03-35. Email: info@
NEVSKY PROSTOR AGENCY,
E-mail: rent@spb-estate.com,
Nevsky Pr. Three room apar tment
with the total area of 140 sq.m.
nightskyrealty.ru www.spb-estate.com Close to Dvortsovaya Sq. 2 spa-
APARTMENT cious bedrooms, living room, 2
Karavannaya Ul. Smar t apar tment bathrooms, guest WC, closets.
• ELITE APARTMENTS FOR RENT Budapeshtskaya Ul. Clean and cozy. just a few steps from Nevsky 3-ROOM Secure entrance from the street.
• COTTAGES FOR RENT 12,000 rub/month. Evgenia. Tel.: prospekt. Exclusive classical Furniture by request, equipped
+7-921-389-18-89 design, historical building, total APARTMENT kitchen. New Holland. Tel.: +7-
Tel.: +7 (812) 324-31-51, +7 (812) 943-70-10 area 92 sq.m. Bedroom, study, 812-714-18-96, +7-921-645-27-
www.becar.ru, www.arenda.becar.ru 4 Kapitanskaya Ul. Newly renovated heated floor, air conditioner, 3-room apar tment for rent. 23. E-mail: natalia.saikina@
E-mail: isaenko@becar.ru apar tment at “Morskoy Facade” jacuzzi, satellite TV, secure stair- Exclusive. First rent. Security. Tel.: new-holland.ru
new building at Vasilievsky Island. case. 108,000 rubles per month. +7-921-931-00-10.
Total area: 40 sq.m. New furniture Tel.: +7-911-922-11-39 Victoria Angliyskaya Nab. Luxur y apar tment
and equipment. Parking. Located /Penny Lane Realty. E-mail: Nevsky Pr. Exclusive hi-tech design. on the Neva River embankment .
in 5 min walk from Primorskaya victoria@realtor.ru, photos at Fully furnished and equipped. 2 Total area - 150 sq.m. Two sepa-
City center. From 1,100 rub. metro. 30,000 rubles per month. www.realtor.ru bedrooms. NIGHT SKY REALTY. rate bedrooms, cozy large living
PROPERTY www.ltour.ru/rental_apar tments_
st_petersburg_en.php?
Tel.: +7-812-324-99-22, +7-901-
304-87-04, Elena. E-mail: Malaya Posadskaya Ul. Stylish and
Tel.: +7-812-920-03-35. E-mail:
info@nightskyrealty.ru
room with a working fire-place,
fully equipped kitchen, three bath-
MANAGEMENT economical=052 Tel.: +7-812- rent@allestate.ru bright studio 2 steps from the rooms, sauna. Apartment is fully
970-33-34 Peter & Paul Fortress. Exclusive St. Isaac’s Sq./B. Morskaya Ul. furnished and equipped. Beautiful
HAMLET PROPERTY MANAGE- 1 Ul. Mayakovskogo. Stylish cozy modern style renovation and furni- View of St. Isaac’s Sq. Rooms: 30 view to the Neva River. Internet.
MENT ALL YOUR PROPERTY INEXPENSIVE VACATION APART- comfor table apar tment, center of ture. New building, concierge ser- + 25 + 25 sq. m. Kitchen/dining: Parking in the closed courtyard
NEEDS Professional international MENTS in center, daily to long the city, close to Nevsky Pr. vice, parking area. Total area 140 25 sq. m. Two bedrooms, jacuzzi. Satellite TV. 100,000 rubles per
team of proper ty managers in the term rentals, visa support. CITY Wardrobe-room, closed loggia. sq.m. 150,000 rubles per month. Chimney, heated floor, satellite month. Tel.: +7-812- 324-99-22,
market for 11 years. REALTY. Tel.:+7-812-570-63-42. Good furniture, fully equipped. Tel.: +7-911-922-11-39 Victoria TV. Furniture suite, good repair. +7-901-304-87-04, Elena. E-mail:
Currently managing over www.cityrealtyrussia.com Shower cabin, boiler. Tel.: 943-70- /Penny Lane Realty. E-mail: Closed yard, parking. Concierge. rent@allestate.ru
40 apar tments in the ver y 10, Elena Isaenko. Becar Agency. victoria@realtor.ru, photos at Any terms of rent. Tel.:
hear t of St Petersburg. American owned and managed E-mail: isaenko@becar.ru, photos www.realtor.ru +7-812-927-15-27, +7-812-592- Vasilievsky Island. Brand new reno-
www.hamletmanagement.spb.ru elite apar tments. We are at: www.arenda.becar.ru 97-47. vation. Fully furnished and
not agents, but owners of several Nevsky Prospekt. Stylish western equipped. Internet. Satellite.
of the best apar tments in Nevsky Prospekt. Nice fully fur- standard renovation. Historical 14 Griboyedova Canal Emb. Nicely Intercom system. Parking. Green
ACCOMMODATION the center. ELITE REALTY SER- nished studio apar tment. Total building, secure yard. Expensive renovated, western apar tment area. NIGHT SKY REALTY.
VICES. Tel. +7-905-211-48-26, area 60 sq.m. Western standard renovation and furniture, quiet with water view that is located Tel. +7-812-920-03-35 Email:
Rent apar tments in the center and +7-812-917-47-74. E-mail: renovation. Satellite TV. Per fect location. Total area 133 sq.m. near Nevsky Pr. Total area 160 info@nightskyrealty.ru
transpor t for ver y good prices. rentals@eliterealtyservices.ru, infrastructure. Ideal for a couple Satellite TV. 100,000 rubles per sq.m. Two bedrooms, kitchen-liv-
Tel.: +7-901-302-16-33 Svetlana, info@eliterealtyservices.ru or single accommodation. 60,000 month. Tel.: +7-911-922-11-39 ing/dining room. Furnished in Nevsky Prospekt. Stylish, modernly
e-mail: sv-balueva@yandex.ru rubles per month. Tel.: +7-911- Victoria /Penny Lane Realty. E- classic style. Two bathrooms. designed apar tment in historical
Real Estate
To advertise, call Olga Kim at 325-6080.
center. Total area 100 sq.m. Two
bedrooms, spacious kitchen - liv-
ingroom. Exclusive furniture. Two
bathrooms. Warm floors. Satellite
TV with 300+ channels. Internet
256 kBit. Dishwasher. Water fil-
ters. Renovated entrance. Lift.
Tel.: +7-812-324-99-22, +7-901-
304-87-04, Elena. E-mail:
rent@allestate.ru
27 Bolshaya Morskaya Ul. Just
near St. Isaac’s square. Quiet and
comfor table. 87 sq.m. Two bed-
rooms, sitting room, kitchen,
bathroom. Fully equipped.
Windows overlook greener y.
28,000 rubles per month, 3,500
rubles per day. Tel. +7-812-992-
15-22, +7-812-325-38-38,
NEVSKY PROSTOR AGENCY, E-
mail: rent@spb-estate.com,
www.spb-estate.com
12 Ispolkomskaya Ul. New elite
house, city center, close to
Nevsky Pr. European renovation
(2007), comfor table planning. 2
WCs, hydro-massage bath, warm
floors. Air-conditioning, security
system, parking lot in undergroud
garage. Tel.: 943-70-10, Elena
Isaenko. Becar Agency. E-mail:
isaenko@becar.ru, photos at:
www.arenda.becar.ru
MALAYA KONUSHENNAYA UL. Just
after renovation. Two bathrooms,
fully furnished and equipped.
Excellent entrance from the
street. K-KESKUS Tel.: +7-812-
967-22-83 Konstantin.
42 Shpalernaya Ul. New elite build-
ing with security and underground
parking that located near
Tavrichesky Gardens. Total area:
85 sq.m. Bedroom, guest bed-
room, fully equipped kitchen-living
room. Two bathrooms. 75,000
rubles per month. Tel.:
+7-812-324-99-22, +7-901-304-
87-04, Elena. E-mail: rent@
allestate.ru
Deluxe apartment with an out-
standing view to Kanal
Griboedova in the historic part of
the city. Stylish and expensive
furniture, classical design, fire-
place. Total area 130 sq.m.
Spacious living room with kitchen,
cabinet, bedroom, hall, 2 cloak-
rooms. Expensive renovation.
Historical building, secure
entrance, parking area. 100,000
rubles per month. Tel.: +7-911-
922-11-39 Victoria / Penny Lane
Realty E-mail: victoria@realtor.ru,
photos at www.realtor.ru
E-mail: kim@sptimes.ru
15 Bolshaya Konyushennaya Ul.
Total area 90,6 sq.m.: bedroom,
sitting room with a fireplace,
kitchen-dining room, two bath-
rooms. 4th floor. Entrance from
the street. Renovated in 2007.
Furniture upon request. 80,000
rubles per month. Tel.:
+7-812-957-07-63, +7-812-992-
15-22, +7-812-325-38-38,
NEVSKY PROSTOR AGENCY, E-
mail: rent@spb-estate.com,
www.spb-estate.com.
4 th Sovetskaya Ul. Nice modern
apar tment within 10 minutes walk
to Nevsky Prospekt. Architect
design, living room and kitchen,
bedroom, cabinet, jacuzzi, sauna,
secure entrance. Total area 104
sq.m. 60,000 rubles per month
Tel.: +7-911-922-11-39 Victoria
/Penny Lane Realty. E-mail:
victoria@realtor.ru, photos at
www.realtor.ru
4-ROOM
APARTMENT
MILLIONNAYA UL. Spacious 3
bedroom apar tment, big living
room, fire place, 2WCs, storages.
Quiet convenient place, foreign
neighbors. Secured parking
in the cour tyard. K-KESKUS
Tel.:+7-812-967-22-83 Konstan-
tin.
17 B. Morskaya Ul. Four room
apar tment with the total area of
120 sq.m. 3 bedrooms, living
room + kitchen, balcony. Stylish
design, fully furnished and
equipped. Entrance from the
street, parking available.
New Holland, Tel.: +7-812-714-
18-96, +7-921-645-27-23. E-
mail: natalia.saikina@
new-holland.ru
3 Furshtadskaya Ul. Four room
apar tment with the total area of
150 sq.m. Just after renovation,
high quality materials. Spacious
living room with fire place,
kitchen, 2 bedrooms, study.
Furniture by request, fully
equipped kitchen. Ver y nice stair-
case, entrance from the
street, parking available. New
Holland, Tel.: +7-812-714-18-96,
+7-921-645-27-23. E-mail:
natalia.saikina@new-holland.ru
Bolshaya Morskaya Ul. 5-minute
walk to Nevsky Pr. Elegant and
spacious. 120 sq.m. 3rd floor.
Three bedrooms, kitchen-dining
Looking for an office?
Then visit our special new section at
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commercial real estate.
Best locations, best offers on office premises
from the leading St. Petersburg brokers
For more information contact Olga Kim:
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TUESDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2007
room (34 sq.m.), two bathrooms,
sauna. Fully equipped. Entrance
from the street. Parking. 80,000
rubles per month. Tel.: +7-812-
992-15-22, +7-812-325-38-38,
NEVSKY PROSTOR AGENCY, E-
mail: rent@spb-estate.com,
www.spb-estate.com.
Nab. Reki Fontanki. Close to
Nevsky Pr. Exclusive apartments.
160 sq. m. Architect design, high-
quality renovation, excellent fur-
niture. Granite floors, marble win-
dow-sills, climate control system,
fully equipped. Concierge, video
monitoring system, satellite TV.
Tel.: 943-70-10, Elena Isaenko.
Becar Agency. E-mail:
isaenko@becar.ru, photos at:
www.arenda.becar.ru
Pushkinskaya Ul. Comfor table
apar tment in the building after
reconstruction. Located near
Nevsky Pr. Total area: 145 sq.m.
Three bedrooms, living-room and
kitchen-diningroom. Fully fur-
nished and equipped. Two bath-
rooms. Internet. Video-monitoring
system. Secured entrance.
Parking in the courtyard. 100,000
rubles per month. Tel.: +7-812-
324-99-22, +7-901-304-87-04,
Elena. E-mail: rent@allestate.ru
5-ROOM
APARTMENT
12 Admiralteiskaya Nab. Total
area: 345 sq.m. 4/5. Secure, lift.
Main entrance. Warm windows
overlooking the embankment.
Excellent view. Living-room: 80
sq.m., kitchen: 25 sq.m., dining-
room: 45 sq.m. 4 bedrooms.
Ceilings: 3.50 to 5.0 m. Satellite
TV, air-conditioning. Secured park-
ing lot. Tel.: 943-70-10, Elena
Isaenko. Becar Agency. E-mail:
isaenko@becar.ru, photos at:
www.arenda.becar.ru
MILLIONNAYA UL. 300 sq.m, top
floor with attic, stunning view,
western standard renovated,
air condition, luxurious secured
entrance and parking.
K-KESKUS Tel.: +7-812-967-22-
83 Konstantin.
6 Tverskaya Ul. Elite apar tment in
a new house close to Tavrichesky
Gardens. Security, underground
parking, architect design. 250
sq.m. Kitchen - dining-room, living-
room with a fireplace. 4 WCs,
sauna, jacuzzi. Satellite TV, air-
www.sptimes.ru/realest
find it here.
Every Tuesday and Friday (Advertising section)
conditioning. Tel.: 943-70-10,
Elena Isaenko. Becar Agency. E- ELITE SERVICED APARTMENTS
mail: isaenko@becar.ru, photos
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Maria
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Only Russian.
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Classifieds
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MiniGuide
For additional information, call Svetlana Panina
at (812) 325-6080. E-mail: panina@sptimes.ru

To advertise, call Svetlana Panina at 325-6080. E-mail: panina@sptimes.ru Every Tuesday (Advertising section)

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Job Opportunities FAST www.sptimes.ru/jobs
personnel solutions

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TUESDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2007

To advertise, call Nadya Davydova at 325-6080. E-mail: ndavydova@sptimes.ru Every Tuesday and Friday (Advertising section)

Наш клиент, финская компания, специализирующаяся на производстве

A leading international auditing Major international строительных материалов, приглашает принять участие в конкурсе
на следующие вакансии:
and consulting company Law Firm
is looking for an seeking Специалист по продажам
сухих строительных смесей
Обязанности: активные личные продажи сухих строительных смесей
AUDIT SECRETARY ASSOCIATE:
подрядным строительным организациям Санкт-Петербурга
(строительство домов, устройство и ремонт полов и фасадов).
GENERAL REQUIREMENTS: Основные требования: опыт оптовых продаж строительных материалов
строительным организациям, собственная клиентская база.
• Higher education
• University or higher degree Знание английского или финского языка является преимуществом.
• Fluent written and spoken Russian and English Заработная плата 2000 евро + бонус.
• 2-3 years of secretarial experience in Law Менеджер по логистике,
• High organizational, communication skills and attention to details
• Ability to handle multiple tasks
• Excellent written and подразделение сухих строительных смесей
• Energetic, responsible, outgoing personality spoken English Основные обязанности: организация доставки и таможенное
оформление ввозимой на территорию РФ продукции, управление
• PC literacy • Min 2 years experience in логистикой и складскими запасами, прием заказов, организация
• Previous experience in a Western environment is a plus
Real Estate and/or M&A доставки продукции клиентам, обслуживание клиентов по телефону.
Основные требования: опыт работы на аналогичной должности,
• Expert PC user владение ПК. Знание английского или финского языка является
ACCOUNTANT значительным преимуществом.
Заработная плата 600-800 евро + бонус.
GENERAL REQUIREMENTS: Salary negotiable depending Мы предлагаем
• Higher education (accounting/economic) on qualification and experience ■ Интересную работу в Санкт-Петербургском представительстве
• Working experience in accounting of + years стабильной финской компании.
• Experience in areas of Accounts Payable, Banking transactions ■ Официальное оформление по ТК РФ, стабильную «белую» з/п,
• Knowledge of 1C Version 8 is an advantage Attractive compensation бонусы по результатам работы.
• Good command of English is an advantage package
• Attentiveness, accuracy, diligence
To apply, please send your СV to KPMG St. Petersburg,
Human Resources Department: Please forward your CV
Ваши резюме направляйте по адресу:
Phone: 325 83 48, Fax: 325 83 47 with cover letter to: olga.makeeva@hoffrenconsultancy.fi до 31.01.2008.
E-mail: hrstp@kpmg.ru
www.kpmg.ru recruiting@ny.com

A leading international auditing

and consulting company
is looking for a Get
TAX SENIOR CONSULTANT That
GENERAL REQUIREMENTS:
• A university degree in economics, preferably with
Job!
a major in accounting, audit or taxation
• 2-4 years of work experience as a tax consultant, Job Opportunities
accountant or auditor
• Good knowledge of Russian accounting, audit and
taxation
• Excellent working knowledge of English and good PC
skills

LEGAL SUPERVISOR
REQUIREMENTS: Kempinski Hotel Moika 22 – a new deluxe
hotel – facing the Hermitage Museum from
• Solid educational background the Moika Embankment with 197 rooms,
2 restaurants, 2 bars, conference facilities
• 3+ years of legal experience (preferably is looking for

in an international firm) • INCOME AUDITOR

• Proven capability to provide value-added advice • ACCOUNTS
and legal solutions to clients RECEIVABLE
• Strong planning, analytical and report-writing skills Preferred Qualifications / Requirements:
• University Degree in Accounting/ Finance
with creative aptitude • Good English
• Good Analytical Skills
• Leadership potential, experienced in staff management • Ability to Process Big Volumes of
Information
(as a plus) • Ability to Work Under Pressure
• Excellent organisational and exceptional inter-personal • Good PC User
• Similar Experience is a Plus
communication and coaching skills
• Hard working, goal oriented and trustworthy,
• ROOM SERVICE
eager to learn and grow professionally WAITERS
• Advanced level of English, including legal terminology Preferred Qualifications / Requirements:
• Good English

To apply, please send your СV to KPMG St. Petersburg, We offer:

• Competitive salary
Human Resources Department: • Development opportunities in an international
Phone: 325 83 48, Fax: 325 83 47 company

E-mail: hrstp@kpmg.ru Please send your resumes by fax:

812 3359184, or e-mail:
www.kpmg.ru irina.popova@kempinski.com

We are offering www.sptimes.ru/jobs To advertise,

new advertising options Check it out now! call 325-6080
22 ❖ Tuesday, December 18, 2007 P R O F I L E The St. Petersburg Times

Armenian in Moscow Mixes Chemicals and Culture

By Marina Kamenev
STAFF WRITER
MOSCOW — David Sarkisyan, the di-
rector of the Shchusev Architecture
Museum, often lets it drop that he has
lived four lives.
“I am exceptionally lucky as a per-
son, because despite having four pro-
fessions I have never ‘worked,’ my
wage was always small, but I only did
things that I liked, I am one of the hap-
piest people in the world,” he said.
Born in Yerevan, Sarkisyan came to
Moscow to study when he was a
teenager. He has dabbled in professions
ranging from science to film. This year
he turned 60 and has been enjoying his
fourth life as director of the Shchusev
Architecture Museum for five years.
Sarkisyan was always attracted to
science.
“I have nothing against religion, but
I am 100 percent — no, a 200 percent
atheist,” he said.
“I respect many religious people but
I do not believe in a God, I do believe
in the reality of this life and I think the
only way to find out more about it is
through science.”
He studied physiology at Moscow
State University.
“After I finished, I had the best
three years of my life, I did absolutely
nothing but read ... under a system
known to us as a postgraduate pro-
gram,” he laughed.
“You do an exam on philosophy,
which was essentially Marxist at the
time, you do a test on another language,
and I already knew English fluently, and
you get to do some kind of experimental
investigation, which no one supervises
or reads, so it was a three-year rest.”
After Sarkisyan finished his post-
graduate degree, he went on to do a
Sarkisyan took an indirect path, including a career in film production, to become director of the Shchusev Architecture Museum.
doctorate in pharmaceuticals, but never
completed it and started working as a
pharmacist. For 15 years he studied the
nervous system through many experi-
ments. “In those 15 years, hundreds of
white rats died in my hands,” he said
with a tinge of regret.
Sarkisyan said he discovered a
nerve stimulant that was thought ini-
tially to be harmful, and invented a
medicine called ipidacrine, which is
used in Japan to help treat diseases
such as Alzheimer’s.
Perestroika signalled the end of
many things in Sarkisyan’s life. He
stopped working in pharmaceuticals, di-
vorced his wife and walked into a com-
pletely different field almost by accident.
Sarkisyan had an acquaintance, Rus-
tam Khamdamov, who was trying to get
out of Russia. Sarkisyan had many con-
nections at that time and, as he became
friends with Khamdamov, found out
that he was a filmmaker and the reason
he wanted to get out of Russia was to
make more movies. “I convinced him
VLADIMIR FILONOV/SPT
that he did not need to leave Russia to
make films, and that is how we started
working on something together,” Sark-
isyan said.
Sarkisyan was the first assistant di-
rector of the movie “Anna Karama-
zoff,” written and directed by Kham-
damov. Starring French actor Jeanne
Moreau, it went to Cannes, but was
never released due to problems with
the French producer.
“At 44 ... I walked on the red carpet
next to Jeanne Moreau,” Sarkisyan
said. “It was a glamorous end to my ca-
reer in film,” he said.
“While all my friends were becoming
oligarchs and politicians, two things I
could have easily done myself, I chose to
do television documentaries. At this time
it was free — I had access to all the
archives and I could make films about ev-
erything that I was interested in,” he said.
Sarkisyan admitted that most of his
films were not professional, “but they
were all ideologically fresh, they always
had something new,” he said.
The film of Sarkisyan’s still shown
today is “Comrade Kollontai and her
Lovers,” a documentary about the rev-
olutionary Alexandra Kollontai. “I was
always great with titles,” Sarkisyan said.
In 2001, a friend told Sarkisyan about
the Shchusev State Architecture Mu-
seum, and the chance of running it.
“I was not interested so much in ar-
chitecture but in the museum,” he said.
“Most people are idiots, and they
produce cultural porridge that they
have managed to transfer into the rest
of civilization, idiotic things like astrol-
ogy. The museum is an island in this sea
of rubbish and is the only way to pre-
serve real culture,” he said.
Bolshoi Gorod magazine’s art critic,
Yekaterina Degot, praised Sarkisyan’s
work at the museum.
“I think Sarkisyan has created an
amazing space for contemporary cul-
ture and exhibitions,” she said. “I am al-
ways interested in what is going on
there, and it’s somewhere I frequent
with my friends.”
Sarkisyan is not modest when giving
advice on being a museum director.
“Running a museum is like being a pres-
ident, it’s not something you can train
for,” he laughed. “If you need to ask how
to do it, you’re not right for the job.”
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
New England Coach Pledges To Get Results
By Angus MacKinnon
AGENCE FRANCE PRESS
LONDON — Fabio Capello embarked
on the task of restoring England’s foot-
ball fortunes on Monday with a pledge
to drag the best out of the country’s un-
der-performing stars.
The Italian, who has a reputation as
a strict disciplinarian, also issued a
SOCCER
warning that no one could take a place
in his team for granted.
“Places in the national team have to
be earned through behaviour, play and
attitude,” he said, while declining to of-
fer any real clues as to his thinking on
issues such as whether John Terry con-
tinues as captain or whether David
Beckham gets to complete a century of
caps.
Capello, who vowed that he would
be able to communicate with Wayne
Rooney and co. in English by the time
he formally takes up the post next
month, is confident he can revive a
squad still smarting from their failure to
qualify for Euro 2008.
“I believe English footballers have
born into them this great will to win
and love of their country,” he told his
first press conference since being
named as the successor to Steve Mc-
Claren, who was sacked last month af-
ter a defeat by Croatia confirmed that
England would not be going to next
year’s finals.
“It is just a question of getting it out
of them and I greatly hope to be the
man to do that.
“I want to try to understand what
has happened (in the past) by talking to
the players. Wearing the national shirt
should be a matter of pride and I want
to see them performing as they do for
their clubs.”
Asked why he felt he could succeed
where his predecessors failed, Capello
Chelsea Goalkeeper Accepts Blame
For Defeat Against Rival Arsenal
AGENCE FRANCE PRESS
LONDON — Chelsea goalkeeper Petr
Cech said there was no-one to blame
but himself for the mistake that pre-
sented Premier League leaders Arsenal
with a 1-0 victory over their London ti-
tle rivals.
Arsenal’s win kept them a point
clear of Manchester United at the top
SOCCER
of the table and six ahead of third-
placed Chelsea.
But their decisive goal at the Emi-
rates Stadium came about when former
Chelsea defender William Gallas
headed in after Cech completely mis-
judged the flight of a Cesc Fabregas cor-
ner the Czech Republic keeper should
have caught.
“It is difficult and for me I am disap-
pointed because, in the end, the game
was decided by my mistake,” Cech said.
“It was a mistake from me. There is no
explanation or excuse. It was a simple
as that.
“This is the part of the game. You
play in these big games with this pas-
Terry Out With Broken Foot
REUTERS
LONDON — Chelsea center back
John Terry will be out of action for up
to six weeks after a scan on Monday
showed he had broken three bones in
his right foot.
The Chelsea and England captain
sustained the injury after being caught
SOCCER
by Emmanuel Eboue in the first half of
Sunday’s 1-0 defeat by Arsenal at the
Emirates Stadium.
Italian coach Fabio Capello, 61, has a reputation as a strict disciplinarian. He has previously coached Real Madrid and Milan.
replied: “I hope it will be different. If I
accepted the task it is because I believe
I can do well.”
The former Milan, Real Madrid,
Roma and Juventus coach will not face
a competitive international match until
the autumn of next year, when England
begin their bid to reach the 2010 World
Cup from a group that again includes
Croatia.
By then, Capello plans to have es-
tablished the nucleus of his side, and he
made it clear that he will not shirk from
making changes if he believes they will
produce a more effective outfit.
sion. These are the best games to play
in and you always want to do your best.
I love this type of game, but will not re-
member this one as one of the best
ones.
“You have to analyze yourself and
see why you made a mistake, what was
the moment you could have done better.
Of course you have to watch it, but in the
end you have to turn the page and go
on.”
Cech added: “When you see the
game overall, in the first half, they had
no chances. They had nothing, only a bit
of possession but that was it. We con-
trolled every movement they tried to do.
“They had only one corner, I made a
mistake and they were 1-0 up.”
But he insisted the result would not
have a decisive bearing on the destiny
of the title. “There is still a long way to
go. We play them (Arsenal) at home
and have plenty of games left so we can
do it again.
“There are still big games between
the big four (Arsenal, Manchester
United, Chelsea and Liverpool) so they
can slip there.”
“Terry has fractured three bones, in-
cluding his third metatarsal,” a club
statement said. “He will start his reha-
bilitation immediately.”
The defender has only recently re-
covered from a knee injury that kept
him out for seven games and also
forced him to miss the end of England’s
unsuccessful Euro 2008 qualifying cam-
paign.
Chelsea striker Salomon Kalou said
Eboue, an Ivorian compatriot, had
apologized to Terry for the challenge.
S P O R T S
“The four matches we will play from
now to June will allow me to under-
stand many things,” the 61-year-old
said. “I will be able to try a few things
and more importantly to form a group.”
Capello’s comments about the im-
portance of behaviour could be bad
news for Terry, whose regular clashes
with match officials and tendency to
find himself in embarrassing positions
in nightclubs have led some to question
his suitability for the post.
Beckham knows at least that
Capello, who famously dropped then
recalled him at Real Madrid, is a fan.
Rodriguez Positive on Move to Michigan
By Larry Lage
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Michigan’s
coaching search may have lasted
longer than it wanted and the school
might not have landed its top choice,
yet college football’s winningest pro-
gram is thrilled to have West Vir-
ginia’s Rich Rodriguez.
And the feeling is mutual.
Rodriguez, who flirted with the
Alabama job a year ago, said it took a
FOOTBALL
job of Michigan’s stature for him to
leave his home state and alma mater.
“It was a very difficult decision
to leave a place where I grew up,”
Rodriguez said during his introduc-
tory news conference Monday
morning. “It was going to take a
very special opportunity and a very
special place and I think that’s what
this is.”
The 44-year-old Rodriguez repre-
sents the first head coach to come
outside the “Michigan family” as ath-
letic director Bill Martin put it, since
Bo Schembechler in 1969.
“Do you have to be a Michigan
man to be a Michigan coach? Gosh, I
hope not. They hired me,” he said.
Before hiring Rodriguez, the
Wolverines apparently went 0-for-2 in
their first coaching search since hiring
Schembechler away from Miami of
Ohio, with LSU’s Les Miles and Rut-
gers’ Greg Schiano turning down re-
ported opportunities to replace the re-
tiring Lloyd Carr. Rodriguez, though,
seems to be much more than a conso-
lation prize.
He built West Virginia into a Big
East power, winning the conference
championship this year for the fourth
time in five seasons and going 60-26
overall.
REUTERS
“Beckham is the kind of person who
when he sets himself something he
achieves it, so you never know,” he said
of the 32-year-old’s ambition to play on
for his country until the 2010 World
Cup.
“With Beckham the only thing you
would wish for is that he would be
younger.”
FA Chief Executive Brian Barwick
voiced confidence that Capello’s strong
personality would ensure he succeeds.
“He is tactically astute with a prove
pedigree, a winner with a capital W,”
Barwick added. “We know we owe the
Rodriguez said he’s aware of the
heightened expectations in Ann Arbor.
“I don’t want our team to expect
to win,” he said. “I want our team to
deserve to win.”
Rodriguez’s hiring marks the sec-
ond time in eight months that Michi-
gan has lured a coach out of Morgan-
town. John Beilein, who successfully
built up the Mountaineers’ basketball
program, now leads the Wolverines.
Rodriguez said he was excited to
be back with Beilein, whom he de-
scribed as a good friend and a former
neighbor.
He said goodbye to the Moun-
taineers during an emotional meeting
Sunday in Morgantown.
“You’ve got to do what you’ve got
to do sometimes,” West Virginia full-
back Owen Schmitt said. “He did all
he could for us. As far as I know he
did a lot of great things for this uni-
versity.”
Rodriguez said he doesn’t expect
to coach West Virginia when it plays
Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl. He
said it typically is the university’s job
to make the decision on who would
coach in the bowl game.
“My focus is going to be on the
University of Michigan, and I don’t
think it best serves West Virginia if
I’m thinking about the Big House,”
he said.
Don Nehlen, a former West Vir-
ginia coach and Michigan assistant,
on Sunday said he expected Ro-
driguez to skip the Fiesta Bowl to fo-
cus on his new job.
“He’s got a lot of work right away
at Michigan, where he has to assem-
ble a staff and catch up on recruiting,”
Nehlen told The Associated Press.
Carr has said he will coach Michi-
gan in its Jan. 1 matchup with Florida
in the Capital One Bowl.
The St. Petersburg Times ❖ 23
fans and we believe that Fabio Capello
is the man to restore our pride.”
Although Capello clearly under-
stood most of the questions fired at him
by an audience of nearly 200 reporters,
he was able to make only a short state-
ment in hesitant English before switch-
ing to his native tongue.
“I’m very proud and honoured to be
the England manager,” he said. “I have
wanted this job for a long time. At this
moment by English is not so well (sic),
so I prefer to answer in Italian.”
He added: “It is a job everyone
wants and as everyone knows that there
are great expectations, and I am going
to work to achieve them.”
Capello revealed that he had spent
Sunday watching the Arsenal v Chelsea
and Liverpool v Manchester United
matches on television.
Asked if the frantic nature of those
encounters had made him aware of the
difficulty of getting players schooled in
that style to adapt to the international
game, Capello responded with a smile.
“Good question,” he said. “This is
something I am going to have to work
on.”
In an assured performance, Capello
deftly sidestepped questions over the
size of his salary — widely reported to
be in the region of 6.5 million pounds
(13.1 million dollars) per year — and
the fact that no Englishman had been
deemed suitable for the task.
Barwick however insisted that
noone would quibble about the cost of
Capello and his four Italian back-up
staff if he delivers.
“The gross income of the FA in the
next four and a half years may well be
in excess of one billion pounds,” Bar-
wick said. “Whatever figure is put on
what Fabio is earning, it is a very small
percentage of that overall figure and if
he turns English football around it will
be money well spent for the fans.”
Rodriguez said he doesn’t want to
be a distraction to Carr and the cur-
rent team as it prepares, but he does
acknowledge the desire to get started
right away.
As Nehlen predicted, some in
West Virginia are not happy with the
means by which Michigan got Ro-
driguez or the end result.
“I would hope and pray ... they’ll
look at what we’ve done over the last
seven years there. ... That we’ve left it
in a pretty good situation,” Rodriguez
said.
Martin and university president
Mary Sue Coleman talked with Ro-
driguez, his wife and agent Friday in
Toledo, Ohio. West Virginia athletic
director Ed Pastilong met with Ro-
driguez on Saturday, saying they
talked about general issues within the
program.
Pastilong had said he was unaware
Rodriguez went to Toledo and de-
clined to disclose whether he had
given Michigan permission to talk to
the coach.
West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin
blamed the involvement of what he
termed “high-priced agents” in col-
lege sports.
“I have known Rich for most of
his life, from a boy whose only wish
was to play football at WVU to a
young man whose only wish was to
coach at WVU,” Manchin said in a
statement. “Something is wrong with
the profession of college coaching to-
day when a leader’s word is no longer
his bond.”
Alabama’s interest in Rodriguez
last year wore on the Mountaineers
for several days before he agreed to a
one-year contract extension through
2013. The deal included a $4 million
buyout clause if he leaves before next
September.
Sports
Tiger Woods Wins Target World Challenge Trophy
By Doug Ferguson
ASSOCIATED PRESS
THOUSAND OAKS, California —
First came a kiss for his daughter. Then
came a pose with the trophy.
For Tiger Woods, life has never
been better.
“This year on the golf course, it’s
been a great year,” he said Sunday after
closing out the season with a seven-shot
GOLF
victory in the Target World Challenge.
“Off the golf course, it’s been the great-
est year I’ve ever had.”
He could not have picked a better
way to end 2007.
Woods hosted an elite, 16-man field
at Sherwood Country Club to play 72
holes in gorgeous weather for $5.75 mil-
lion in prize money, with last place get-
ting $170,000 without even having to
show up on Sunday.
But the relaxed setting gave way to a
frightening future.
Woods had been out of competition
for 10 weeks, dating to his singles loss to
Mike Weir in the Presidents Cup on
Sept. 30. He began hitting balls about
10 days ago to get ready for the Target
World Challenge, then played as if he
never left the couch.
He set the course record with a 62 in
the second round. He tied the tourna-
ment record at 22-under 266, first set by
Davis Love III in 2000 the first year the
tournament came to Sherwood. And
his 68 in the final round Sunday gave
him a seven-shot victory, the largest in
tournament history and his third win
this year by at least that many.
So much for rust.
“Doesn’t help us, does it?” Colin
Montgomerie said. “If he took a bloody
year off, it would help.”
Paul Casey was coming off a four-
week break and expected to hit a few
loose shots. He did not think he would
wind up 21 shots behind a guy who took
off 2 1/2 months.
“We have a saying in England that
he was Rolls-Roycing it,” he said. “You
fire up the car and it purrs perfectly.”
The scary part is that Woods said he
was struggling with his swing over the
past two days. Jim Furyk noticed a few
loose shots and forged ahead Sunday,
closing a six-shot gap to two shots when
they made the turn in the final group.
Furyk hit a wedge with no spin that
stopped 4 feet behind the hole, leaving
him a downhill putt. Woods’ wedge
Federer Named 2007 ITF World Iranian President Backs Down in FIFA Face-Off
Champion for a Fourth Time
REUTERS
LONDON — World number ones
Roger Federer and Justine Henin were
named 2007 ITF World Champions, the
governing body announced on Monday.
Federer, who won eight titles dur-
ing the season, became only the sec-
TENNIS
ond player after Pete Sampras to re-
ceive the accolade for the fourth suc-
cessive year.
The 26-year-old reached all four ma-
jor finals for the second successive year,
winning the Australian Open, Wimble-
don and U.S. Open. He also became
the first player to earn over $10 million
in annual prize money.
“Each year brings new challenges,
and I am proud that I have been able to
raise the level of my game when
needed. It gives me great satisfaction to
have won another three grand slam ti-
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TUESDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2007
U.S. golfer Tiger Woods tips his cap during the second round of the Target World Challenge in California on Friday.
tles and maintained the number one
ranking,” said Federer.
The 25-year-old Henin, who tri-
umphed at Roland Garros and the U.S.
Open, captured a career-best 10 titles in
2007. With an impressive 63-4 win-loss
record, she became the first woman to
earn more than $5 million in a single year.
“This has definitely been the best
season of my career so far and I am de-
lighted to be named ITF world cham-
pion once again,” said the Belgian, who
missed the Australian Open in January
following the breakdown of her mar-
riage.
“It has been a very challenging year
overall, but I have stayed positive and
proved that nothing is impossible if you
work hard. I still think my best tennis is
yet to come.”
American brothers Bob and Mike
Bryan, and Cara Black and Liezel Huber
were named doubles world champions.
AGENCE FRANCE PRESS
TEHRAN — President Mahmoud Ah-
madinejad has withdrawn his candidate
to head the national football federation,
in a bid to end a row with FIFA that
threatened Iran’s future in world foot-
ball.
Ahmadinejad said he had told Mo-
hammad Ali-Abadi, an Iranian Vice
SOCCER
President and head of the state-run
Physical Education Organisation (PEO)
not to stand in elections to head the Ira-
nian Football Federation.
The candidacy of Ali-Abadi has in-
furiated FIFA, whose regulations take a
strong stance against any government
interference in football. Iran risked
again being banned from world football
if they did not comply.
In the interest of football, I tell Ali-
Abadi to step aside and let the elections
take place and allow the election of an
appropriate person,” Ahmadinejad told
REUTERS
state television in an interview late on
Sunday.
Ahmadinejad said he had promoted
the politically conservative Al-Abadi as
a “strong” candidate.
But his nomination was seen as a di-
rect challenge to the acting head of the
federation, Mohsen Safayee Farahani, a
reformist who is allied to the president’s
political opponents.
“A political team tried to exploit the
situation without taking into account
national interests,” Ahmadinejad, who
touts himself as a big football fan, said
in the interview.
The dispute over Ali-Abadi’s eligi-
bility has for the last weeks held up the
election for the presidency of the feder-
ation.
“There are certain rules on who can
and who cannot run for federation pres-
idency,” Safayee-Farahani told the Fars
news agency last week.
“The country’s sports chief and
main policy maker in sports affairs is
PAG E 2 4
spun back to 12 feet below the hole.
And that’s where the tournament effec-
tively ended.
Woods calmly made his putt for
birdie, and Furyk three-putted for bo-
gey to fall four shots behind.
“You don’t start six down to Tiger
very often and cut it to two, so I had a re-
ally good opportunity,” Furyk said. “And
I wasn’t able to take advantage of it.”
The consolation prize went to Mas-
ters champion Zach Johnson, whose
birdie on the final hole secured a 68 and
second place, which was worth $840,000.
Furyk bogeyed the last hole for a 71 to
finish third and earn $570,000.
Another consolation prize might be
the fact that Woods is taking another
vacation, not returning to start his 2008
campaign until he defends his title at
the Buick Invitational at Torrey Pines.
But the world’s No. 1 player still
feels like he can improve.
“I’m going to shut it down a little bit,
go back home and think about it and
talk to Henry about some of the swings
I’ve made this week,” he said, referring
to swing coach Hank Haney. “Obvi-
ously, I’ve got a lot of room for im-
provement, which is a great sign.”
Improvement?
He won seven times on the PGA
Tour this year, including the PGA
Championship for his 13th career ma-
jor. He swept all the major awards, won
the inaugural FedEx Cup, and came out
of hibernation to win his Target World
Challenge for the fourth time, the first
player to win in consecutive years.
As usual, he donated the $1.35 mil-
lion to his Tiger Woods Learning Center.
“I hit a lot of good shots this week,
but I also hit some loose ones,” Woods
said. “The great thing is my bad ones
aren’t as bad as they used to be. Either
I just miss fairways or just miss greens,
but obviously not off the planet like
they used to be.
“Just imagine if I could hit the ball
the way I wanted.”
Even more fulfilling was having 6-
month-old Sam Alexis making her first
greenside appearance, held by her
grandmother, Kultida Woods.
Woods is a new father, but he was
amazed at the British Open when he
watched Padraig Harrington make dou-
ble bogey on the 18th hole at
Carnoustie, then melt into smiles when
3-year-old Patrick rushed into his arms.
“That’s how powerful family is,”
Woods said.
one of those who definitely cannot,”
he noted.
The vacuum at the top has also im-
peded the underperforming Iranian na-
tional team’s search for a new coach.
Officials have said an appointment can
only be made after the federation elec-
tions.
Names including Germany’s Win-
fried Schaefer and Frenchman Philippe
Troussier have been mooted as possible
candidates to revive the fortunes of the
national side after their dismal 2006
World Cup first round exit.
Iran have been handed a relatively
straightforward draw for the 2010
World Cup in South Africa in a group
including Kuwait, the United Arab
Emirates, and Syria.
The country was briefly banned from
world football last year for political in-
terference when the government sacked
the then federation’s president, Mo-
hammed Dadkan after the team’s fail-
ure at the 2006 Germany World Cup.