Johnson's Russia List
#6567
23 November 2002
davidjohnson@erols.com
A CDI Project
www.cdi.org

[Contents:
  1. The Globe and Mail (Canada): Mark MacKinnon, Budweiser, the drink of
czars.
Vodka may once have been a tonic for tortured Russian souls, but a younger,
more casual generation is turning to beer big-time.
  2. Washington Times: Bill Sammon, Putin pouts over NATO 'problem.'
  3. BBC: Russian press welcomes Nato expansion.
  4. Reuters: Bush fetes NATO expansion, says backs Baltic states.
  5. Voice of America: Ivanov: Forcing Iraq to Disarm Will Not Solve Global
Terrorism.
  6. Reuters: Chechen militant warns of attacks on Russia-paper.
  7. UPI: No peace in Chechnya, say analysts.
  8. BBC Monitoring: PUTIN SECURES "GUARANTEES" OVER RUSSIA'S ECONOMIC
INTERESTS
IN IRAQ - PAPER.
  9. Reuters: Russia's Putin assures China on forthcoming trip.
  10. Interfax: Russian scientists seeking to lengthen human life.
  11. NationalReview Online: Donna Hughes, Prostitution in Russia.
Does the U.S. State Department back the legalization of prostitution?
  12. Fernando Orlandi: Conference: Samizdat and Dissent in the Soviet Union.
An Assessment.
  13. RFE/RL: Jeffrey Donovan, Central Asia: Verdict Still Out On U.S.
Engagement
Policy.
  14. New York Times: Steven Lee Myers, St. Petersburg: Name's Back, Soon Its
Luster.
  15. Interfax: Russian environmentalists face secrets probe over radiation
data.
  16. The Irish Times: Doctoring Zhivago. Boris Pasternak's novel, 'Doctor
Zhivago',
may be the greatest love story of all time, writes Enda O'Doherty, but it
is also
much more - not that you can tell from David Lean's epic 1965 film, or from
Andrew
Davies's new television version.]

********

#1
The Globe and Mail (Canada)
November 23, 2002
Budweiser, the drink of czars
Vodka may once have been a tonic for tortured Russian souls, but a younger,
more casual generation is turning to beer big-time. MARK MacKINNON heads
for the pub
By MARK MACKINNON

MOSCOW -- Vodka. It is one of the first words that comes to an outsider's
mind when they think of Russia -- ranking up there with "big" and "cold."

If Russian-American market-research firm Business Analytica is correct,
however, 2002 could be the year that stereotype starts to die away. The
company says that this year, for the first time ever, the drink of the
czars will be knocked from its throne and replaced by beer as Russia's
alcohol of choice.

In another part of the world, that news might go unnoticed. But in Russia,
some worry that a little bit of the national character might be drowned in
the mad rush to switch to barley and hops. As one observer put it, it's as
if the French put down their glasses of Bordeaux and called out for
Budweisers.

"Young people today prefer beer; I don't understand it," said Alexander
Chernenko, a middle-aged vodka devotee who tends bar at the Magic Cauldron,
a watering hole in south-central Moscow.

"We have an old saying: Drinking beer without vodka is like throwing your
money into the wind."

There's certainly a lot of money being thrown around, on both beverages.
Business Analytica says spending on beer is on track to hit $6.5-billion
(U.S.) in 2002, up from $5.7-billion last year. Vodka sales, meanwhile,
will hold steady at $6.2-billion.

Next year, it's predicted that beer will account for 40 per cent of all
alcohol sold in the country, compared with 38.5 per cent for vodka.

Moscow is still home to a thriving contingent of wooden-walled,
hard-drinking establishments like the Magic Cauldron, which serves a wide
variety of vodkas alongside a limited menu of sausage and garlic stalks.But
they now exist amid dance clubs, even oxygen bars, where trendy kids are
less apt to order a vodka neat and more likely to take a Heineken -- or a
Baltika, the top local brand.

Analysts say the country's youth are leading the switch. Unlike previous
generations, today's young Russians have a keen eye on Western trends. More
body-conscious than their elders, they see a pint as a healthier way to get
a buzz than the straight vodka their parents and grandparents relish.

One popular ad features a cartoon Albert Einstein taking a break from his
work to down a frothy pint -- suds that suddenly inspire a breakthrough in
his calculations. "They pretend beer is good for your health and that it
distracts teenagers from drugs. But any alcohol is a drug," said Sergei
Polyatykin of No to Alcoholism and Drug Addiction, a charity.

Even the government seems to be supporting the switch from strong spirits
to the "milder" beer. Although Mikhail Gorbachev's overt mid-1980s campaign
to persuade Russians to give up vodka failed outright, Moscow has allowed
beer companies to promote their products freely -- a subtle but huge
advantage over vodka makers, who are barred from advertising.

As a result, annual beer consumption now stands at an estimated 41 litres
per person in Russia, up from almost nothing when the Soviet Union
collapsed in the early 1990s.

And statistics show that the increase is coming on top of, rather than
instead of, vodka drinking, which means overall alcohol consumption is
rising. Many Russians now see beer as an early-evening drink, a way to
"warm up" for the harder stuff later on.

Even those making money off the trend say they're concerned.

"It's ruining people's health," said Pavel Shapkin, chairman of the
National Alcohol Association, an industry lobby group. "People begin with
beer, but end with vodka. I would say beer is a locomotive, carrying
forward a whole train of alcohol."

The skyrocketing consumption is also causing concern in the Russian
parliament. Duma deputy Viktor Semyonov, concerned that young teenagers and
even preteens can be now be seen walking the streets with bottles of beer
in hand, has drafted a law that would prevent beer companies from targeting
children and teenagers with their ads. "We need to guard the young from
beer," he said recently.

There are those, however, who see the trend more benignly.

Waiting for the evening's first customers to arrive at his bar, Mr.
Chernenko sounded almost wistful as he spoke about why young people are
turning to beer. They live better than his generation, he says, and have
more time on their hands. Vodka was always comfort for the tortured Russian
soul, and today's youth are a little less tortured.

"Beer is a casual drink. Young people, they have a drink and then they go
back to work, or they go to the gym," he said. "Vodka is a serious drink.
For serious problems."

Mark MacKinnon is The Globe and Mail's correspondent in Moscow.

Bottoms up
Market trends indicate young Russians - bent on becoming more Western - are
switching to beer drinking, a taste habit that threatens to replace vodka
as the national drink. All figures are in U.S. dollars.

SPENDING ON ALCOHOL IN RUSSIA:
Beer
2001..........$5.7-billion
2002*.........$6.5-billion
Vodka
2001..........$6.2-billion
2002..........$6.2-billion
PER CAPITAL ANNUAL CONSUMPTION OF ALCOHOL
Beer
1996.......15 litres
2002*......41 litres
Vodka
1996.......15.5 litres
2002*......14.4 litres
-*Forecast
SOURCE: BUSINESS ANALYTICA LTD.

********

#2
Washington Times
November 23, 2002
Putin pouts over NATO 'problem'
By Bill Sammon

     PUSHKIN, Russia — Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday called
NATO's expansion an unwarranted "problem," even as President Bush insisted
it should be welcomed by the Russian people.
     The two leaders locked horns for 90 minutes here at the worn,
snow-shrouded Catherine Palace one day after NATO stretched to Russia's
border by adding seven former Soviet satellites to the alliance.
     Mr. Putin later publicly expressed support for the United States'
quest to disarm Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, but pointed out that Osama
bin Laden is still at large. And Mr. Putin was sharply critical of two U.S.
allies, accusing Saudi Arabia of financing terrorism and chiding Pakistan
for its weapons of mass destruction.
     "We don't agree 100 percent of the time," Mr. Bush said during a brief
joint news conference with his Russian counterpart. "But we always agree to
discuss things in a frank way."
     Mr. Putin called the unscripted meeting "very, very frank," a common
diplomatic euphemism for contentious.
     "We discussed practically everything between the sky and the Earth,"
Mr. Putin said. "The problem of NATO expansion. And the development of
relations between Russia and NATO."
     Mindful of Russia's unease about the expansionfl which included the
Baltics, once part of the Soviet Unionfl Mr. Bush jumped at the chance to
smooth Moscow's ruffled feathers after the historic NATO summit that
concluded yesterday.
     Mr. Putin invited Mr. Bush to Russia during a phone call several weeks
ago, when Mr. Bush was soliciting his support for a U.N. resolution on Iraq.
     "As regards [to] the expansion, you know our position well," Mr. Putin
said yesterday. "We do not believe that this has been necessitated by the
existing facts."
     Mr. Putin complained that the alliance, which added three nations in
1999, keeps transforming.
     "We do not rule out the possibility of deepening our relations with
the alliance," he said, adding, "if the activities of the alliance are in
accord with Russia's national-security interests."
     Mr. Bush tried to put the best possible face on the expansion to
reassure Russia, the United States' former foe.
      "I have just come from NATO," he said. "The mood of the NATO
countries is this: Russia is our friend.
     "We've got a lot of interests together," Mr. Bush pointed out. "The
expansion of NATO should be welcomed by the Russian people."
      He added: "The strategy of NATO is going to be based upon the fact
that the Cold War is over. Russia is a friend; Russia is not an enemy."
     NATO officially decided Thursday to expand the military alliance to 26
members. The seven countries invited to join — Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia,
Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia — were once part of the communist
bloc dominated by Moscow that NATO was designed to counter.
     Mr. Putin declined an invitation to attend the summit in Prague. But
Mr. Bush, who left the summit yesterday morning, relayed good wishes from
fellow NATO members.
      "As I was leaving the NATO summit, a lot of leaders came up and asked
me to send their personal regards to him," Mr. Bush said of Mr. Putin. "And
in terms of our bilateral relations, we'll continue to work to make them as
strong as they can possibly be."
     One area where the two leaders found common ground was Iraq. They
issued a joint statement pledging "our full support" for implementation of
U.N. resolutions demanding the disarming of Saddam.
     The statement called on Iraq "to cooperate fully and unconditionally
in its disarmament obligations or face serious consequences."
     Mr. Bush publicly thanked Mr. Putin for working to pass the latest
U.N. resolution on Iraq. But instead of returning the compliment, Mr. Putin
hinted that the United States should not go beyond the confines of the
United Nations.
     "We have to stay within the framework of the work being carried out by
the Security Council of the United Nations," he said.
     The two leaders also talked about the importance of rooting out
terrorism in Chechnya, where separatists have been waging war against
Russian forces.
     Mr. Putin went on to grouse about U.S. allies in the war on terrorism.
     "We should not forget about those who finance terrorism," Mr. Putin
said. "Of the 19 terrorists who committed attacks on September 11 against
the United States, 16 are citizens of Saudi Arabia. We should not forget
about that."
     Fifteen of the hijackers were from Saudi Arabia.
     Mr. Putin also noted the United States' failure to apprehend bin
Laden, echoing a criticism leveled recently by outgoing Senate Majority
Leader Tom Daschle, South Dakota Democrat. Along the way, Mr. Putin took a
swipe at Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, a key U.S. ally.
     "Now, where has Osama bin Laden taken refuge?" Mr. Putin asked. "They
say somewhere between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
     "We know what Mr. Musharraf is doing to achieve stability in his
country, and we are supporting him," Mr. Putin said. "But what can happen
with armaments, arms, weapons that exist in Pakistan, including weapons of
mass destruction?
     "We are not sure on that aspect," he added. "And we should not forget
about that."
     Mr. Bush used yesterday's news conference as an opportunity to laud
the arrest of Abd al-Rashin al-Nashiri, suspected of being a top al Qaeda
official.
     "We did bring to justice a killer," the president said. "And the
message is, we're making progress on the war against terrorists, that we're
going to hunt them down one at a time, that it doesn't matter where they hide.
     "As we work with our friends, we will find them and bring them to
justice," he added. "And America and Russia and people who love freedom are
one person safer as a result of us finding this guy."
      Despite his disagreements with Mr. Putin, Mr. Bush seemed pleased to
be in the presence of his Russian friend. He smiled often and stood close
to Mr. Putin in this city 20 miles south of St. Petersburg, Mr. Putin's
hometown.
     "I'm very pleased to see the mood the president of the United States
is in," Mr. Putin said. "It is what we need, actually."

*******

#3
BBC
23 November 2002
Russian press welcomes Nato expansion

Russian newspapers on Saturday welcome the Nato Prague summit's
acknowledgement that Moscow no longer poses a threat to world peace but see
numerous problems in the organisation's expansion.

Among these are trans-Atlantic tensions, the relative weakness of the new
recruits and an increased risk of military conflict.

Government daily Rossiyskaya Gazeta hails the invitation to the former
Warsaw Pact members and Soviet republics as marking "the end of the Yalta
era that divided Europe into two hostile camps".

However, "given the new recruits' real resources, Nato resembles more a
large political club than a military alliance," it goes on.

And transatlantic tensions simmered beneath the "family portraits".
"Despite all the attempts to suppress their differences on a range of
crucial issues, the Americans and Europeans failed to reach agreement" -
above all on Iraq.

The daily also says Nato ceases to be a purely defensive bloc. "By amending
the North Atlantic Treaty, the alliance gave itself the right to wage
preventive wars beyond its own borders - which is clearly a factor that
increases the risk of military conflict.

"True, this is in the context of the fight against international terrorism,
but as recent events show, there are various ways you can interpret that."

Transformation

The mass circulation Moskovskiy Komsomolets agrees that the summit "more or
less completed the transformation of Nato from an anti-Soviet bloc into an
antiterrorist bloc".

"On the other hand, the new Nato members which were former members of the
Warsaw Pact and former Soviet republics did not conceal that Nato was for
them of interest primarily as a guarantee against possible revanchist
outbursts from Russia."

The mid-market daily Vremya Mn sees the summit as confirmation of
Washington's ascendancy. "Winner takes all", it comments, noting that even
the summit security was handled by the Americans rather than the locals.

President George W Bush is "free of the political and strategic complexes
of the Cold War", Vremya Mn goes on. "Asked to explain yet another round of
invitations to the alliance, he said the new members were attracted by
stability and liberty. With hand on heart, who could disagree?"

Put simply, Nato's new members are better off looking to the West than to
the East, it writes, for "there was never any real choice for the small fry
in the post-confrontation years".

The conservative hard-line daily Trud wonders how the new Nato members will
regard Russia now.

President Bush, the paper says, was at pains to assure President Putin that
Russia has nothing to fear from an expanded Nato. "We'll see just how the
newly-fledged Nato members behave," the paper says.

********

#4
Bush fetes NATO expansion, says backs Baltic states
By Steve Holland

VILNIUS, Nov 23 (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush praised Baltic
nations on Saturday for defeating tyranny and told the NATO invitees they
had the full protection of American military might in confronting any
future aggression.

Bush won a loud cheer when he emphasised that NATO's security guarantee was
backed by the U.S. armed forces.

"Our alliance has made a solemn pledge of protection. Anyone who would
choose Lithuania as an enemy has also made an enemy of the United States of
America," he told an enthusiastic crowd of several thousand at Rotuse
Square in the 16th century centre of the Lithuanian capital.

"NATO and Bush -- that's two security guarantees and now Russia will never
attack us again," said Julija Kairiene, a middle-aged housewife waving a
Stars and Stripes flag.

Bush said Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia's fight to rid themselves of Soviet
occupation was a lesson on the need to stand up to tyranny, an argument he
has invoked frequently to back his drive to disarm Iraqi President Saddam
Hussein.

"We must be willing to stand in the face of evil and to have the courage to
always face danger," he said.

The three Baltic states endured half a century of occupation by the Soviet
Union until they won their freedom in 1991. They remain suspicious of
Moscow and regard NATO as a guarantee they will never again be dominated by
Russia.

Bush later flew to Bucharest, his last stop, to celebrate NATO's expansion
in the turbulent Balkans and thank Romania and Bulgaria for backing
Washington's drive to disarm Iraq.

Thousands were gathering in central Bucharest's Revolution Square, scene of
fierce fights between anti-communists and security forces in 1989, to hear
Bush congratulate Romania on winning an invitation this week to join the
19-member alliance.

By inviting Romania and Bulgaria to join, NATO gets a land bridge through
the Balkans to Greece and Turkey and helps to stabilise the states of
ex-Yugoslavia after a decade of war.

WARM TIES WITH PUTIN

In Vilnius, Bush carefully avoided mention of who tyrannised the Baltics,
mindful of lingering Russian unhappiness at the Prague NATO summit decision
to expand into Moscow's backyard and keen to keep warm ties with Russian
President Vladimir Putin.

Bush met Putin in St. Petersburg on Friday, winning grudging acceptance of
NATO expansion and qualified backing for his drive to rid Iraq of suspected
weapons of mass destruction.

Putin said finding and destroying prohibited weaponry was the job of the
United Nations, whose arms inspectors returned to Baghdad this week for the
first time in four years.

In Prague, Bush won a pledge from NATO allies of "effective action" to back
the U.N. disarming of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, a formulation that
papered over unhappiness in many European states at Washington's
willingness to go to war.

East European states are less critical of U.S. policy than their West
European counterparts and Bush has looked to them as a counterweight to
traditional NATO pillars France and Germany, who see little merit in taking
weapons from Saddam by force.

Bush sees the moral necessity of rewarding the "love of liberty" in eastern
Europe in the same light as the obligation which he says he feels to fight
"tyrants" like Saddam.

He is likely to repeat this argument in a keynote speech in Bucharest from
a podium that faces the balcony where Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu
made his fateful last appearance in December 1989 before his bloody
downfall and execution.

NATO's new members can reinvigorate the alliance's sense of purpose, he
said, and help reshape the former Cold War defence machine into a broad
alliance that can fight global terrorism.

"Our alliance of freedom is being tested again by a new and terrible
danger," he said in Vilnius. "Like Nazis and communists before them the
terrorists seek to end lives and control all life...the terrorists will be
defeated."

WARM WELCOME

Bush feels comfortable and welcome in eastern Europe and in his five-day
trip across the Atlantic, he has only visited ex-communist countries.

In tiny Lithuania, home to only 3.5 million people, Bush's visit was a
celebration of escaping the hated Soviet fold.

"We were captive nations under Soviet rule, but we always felt the strong
support of the United States which never recognised the Soviet occupation,"
said former President Vytautas Landsbergis, who led Lithuania to freedom in
1991.

Aides say the trip has been a success, winning as much backing for
Washington's Iraq policy as could be expected, sealing the expansion and
reform of NATO, and avoiding major rows with Europeans that have marred
previous visits.

Bush returns to Washington on Saturday evening.

*******

#5
Voice of America
November 32, 2002
Ivanov: Forcing Iraq to Disarm Will Not Solve Global Terrorism
Lisa McAdams
Moscow

Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov says forcing Iraq to disarm will not
solve the problem of global terrorism. Mr. Ivanov's comments come one day
after the U.S. and Russian presidents issued a joint statement urging Iraq
to fully comply with its disarmament obligations or face serious consequences.

Mr. Ivanov says the international community must take a coordinated and
comprehensive approach to combating terrorism, which he says has acquired a
global reach.

He says the goal should be to make terrorists feel unsafe, wherever they
may be, and to ensure that weapons of mass destruction never fall into
their hands. At the same time, Mr. Ivanov warned the international
community against laboring under the false impression that settling the
Iraqi problem will lead to an end to terrorism.

Mr. Ivanov made the statement after a meeting of foreign ministers of the
Shanghai Cooperation Organization, (SCO) a group formed on a common
platform of fighting terrorism. Members include Russia, China, Uzbekistan,
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

Mr. Ivanov's comments Saturday appear to have been made in order to clarify
or expand upon comments made by Russian President Vladimir Putin Friday,
following a brief summit in Saint Petersburg with the U.S. president.

While issuing a statement in support of Mr. Bush's Iraq policy, Mr. Putin
expressed doubts about the war on terrorism.

He urged the international community not to forget about those who finance
terrorists. During the talks, Mr. Putin also is said to have questioned
whether U.S. allies like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia were doing enough to
fight terrorism.

Mr. Bush countered by citing the recent arrest of a top al-Qaida member as
evidence of the U.S.-led coalition's success.

*******

#6
Chechen militant warns of attacks on Russia-paper

BERLIN, Nov 23 (Reuters) - The Chechen guerrilla commander who says he was
behind last month's mass hostage-taking in Moscow has warned of new attacks
if Russian troops do not withdraw from Chechnya, a German newspaper
reported on Saturday.

Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev has appealed to NATO leaders to put pressure
on Russia to withdraw from his homeland and start political negotiations,
Germany's Welt am Sonntag reported in a release issued ahead of publication
on Sunday. "We warn you, the Chechen mujahideen have the complete right and
the opportunity to carry out terrorist attacks on the land of the
aggressors, which correspond to those that are practiced by the Russian
army in Chechnya," the paper quoted Basayev as saying in a letter addressed
to NATO leaders.

It was not clear how the newspaper obtained the letter nor was it apparent
whether it was issued to coincide with this week's NATO summit in Prague.

"We warn you, all military, economic and strategic properties on Russian
territory are legitimate targets of war for us," Basayev said.

"We warn you, for a generation of tens of thousands of orphans, whose
fathers and mothers were murded by the Russian regime, revenge will be
their most important driving force in their relationship to Russia and its
allies."

Basayev, who became Russia's most wanted man after a major hostage-taking
raid in 1995, has said he alone planned and directed last month's
hostage-taking in a Moscow theatre, in which 128 hostages and 41 Chechen
rebels died.

The Kremlin has dismissed his claim, saying it was an attempt to divert
blame for the attack from fugitive rebel president Aslan Maskhadov.

Russian forces have been battling Chechen separatist rebels in the
rebellious southern province on and off since 1994.

After the theatre siege, Russia stepped up "anti-terrorist operations" in
Chechnya where 80,000 troops are in action. The Kremlin remains firmly
opposed to relaunching peace talks with Chechnya's elected but exiled leaders.

*******

#7
No peace in Chechnya, say analysts
By Lisa Troshinsky

WASHINGTON, Nov. 22 (UPI) -- The war between Chechnya and the Russian
Federation is not likely to end any time soon without international help,
given the current leadership in Russia and the present opinions of Russian
citizens, said Russian analysts at two recent think tank forums in
Washington , D.C.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his generals want the war to continue,
said Ruslan Khasbulatov, former chairman of the Parliament of the Russian
Federation, at a forum Thursday jointly sponsored by the Johns Hopkins
University School of Advanced International Studies, known as SAIS, the
Central Asia-Caucasus Institute and the American Committee for Peace in
Chechnya. Khasbulatov is also chair of the international economics
department at Plekhanov Institute in Russia.

Khasbulatov has presented a detailed peace proposal to the Russian
government on how to end the four-year, full-scale war that has taken the
lives of 250,000 civilians and 30,000 soldiers and officers. Neither the
proposal, nor the efforts of the ACPC have made much headway, analysts said
at the forum.

"The results from the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya have been
zero," said Glen Howard, ACPC's executive director, at the forum.

Part of the problem is the structure of the Russian government, they said.

"People moved into leadership in Russia, into their positions, quickly; our
election was superficial," Khasbulatov said.

"Putin has a consistent high level of support," said Richard Rose, a
professor at the Center for the Study of Public Political Policy at the
University of Strathcelyde, Glasgow, Scotland. Rose, who spoke on Wednesday
at another forum on Chechnya sponsored by the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace, polled 2,000 Russian citizens in a nationwide survey
last summer.

"Popularity for Putin doesn't spill over into other things," Rose
continued. "The Russian people don't like the government, they like him."

Seventy-seven percent of the people Rose polled said they approved of
Putin's performance, but only 45 percent said they approved of the
performance of the Russian government. Yet, 58 percent said they would vote
for Putin if an election was held next Sunday.

Meanwhile, 45 percent said they blamed the Chechen terrorists for the death
of more than 100 hundred people they took hostage in a Moscow theater late
last month and 37 percent said they think the conflict will be protracted
and spread to other parts of the North Caucasus.

Khasbulatov said that his peace plan won't come to fruition without strong
international cooperation. His strategy, often known as the "Liechtenstein
Plan," was developed last August in concert with Chechen Vice Premier Akmed
Zakayev, who is currently in Danish custody pending the outcome of an
extradition request from the Russian Federation.

"There must be an international solution to the Chechnya crisis, Chechnya
must have its own status, and the international community must provide
guarantees," Khasbulatov said. "The situation requires direct activity and
strong international organization. If not, it needs to be brought forth in
front of an international court."

"If the west needs Putin as a partner, and it does, it must approach him
and say this war has to come to a stop. The worst assistance would be to
ignore the war," he said.

"We need international patronage; we hope we won't see arrogant rejections
like we have in the past," he said. "The United States must stop passing
the buck to Europe and Europe must stop passing the buck to the United
States. This is an international matter. It's still a violation of the
Geneva Convention and though I don't think it involves international
terrorists. We need to act like we did in Bosnia and Afghanistan."

But the harshest critics in the Kremlin say that Moscow won't enter into
his proposal, Khasbulatov said. Why?

"The sides have become so polarized it has become personal, a civil war,
which is almost impossible to stop. It only draws in new leaders to
continue the war. More young Chechens are joining the rebels in the
mountains," Khasbulatov said.

The terrorist attack in Moscow on Oct. 23 shut the window on future talks,
Khasbulatov said. And the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States confused
the issue, since people are trying to link the al-Qaida terrorists with the
problems in Chechnya, but there are no common ties, only propaganda that
there are ties, he added.

Post-communist Russia's dire straits are directly related to its continued
war with Chechnya, he said.

"Thirty-five percent of our federal budget goes to the war in Chechnya.
Russia's federal budget is less money than one city's, like New York City.
We have to support the fleet and weapons, and still come up with money for
education, science, roads and housing."

The ACPC estimates that the war costs Moscow upwards to $100 million each
month, and that as many as 10 to 20 Russian conscripts and contract
soldiers die every day.

"Crime has gone up drastically because of the war," Khasbulatov said "In
Russia, the premiers are criminals and prisoners are released and sent to
Chechnya."

"I thought the 21st Century wouldn't see wars, that we would be addressing
questions like the state of the drinking water and the arts. Now the 21st
century is seeing violent and savage wars where we no longer have fronts.
They are local conflicts that resemble conflicts from the middle of the
last century," he said.

*******

#8
BBC Monitoring
PUTIN SECURES "GUARANTEES" OVER RUSSIA'S ECONOMIC INTERESTS IN IRAQ - PAPER
Source: Izvestiya, Moscow, in Russian 23 Nov 02

At his meeting with George W. Bush in St Petersburg, Russian President
Vladimir Putin managed to obtain "guarantees" over the future of Russia's
economic interests in Iraq, according to the Russian newspaper Izvestiya.
But while these guarantees amount to little more than a "gentleman's
agreement", the paper argues that Putin's policy of pragmatism is
justified. There is no point, the paper suggests, in Putin trying to
"protest against the inevitable" - the prospect of war in Iraq. The
following is the text of the article, published on 23 November. Subheadings
have been inserted editorially:

Putin the pragmatist When, about a month back, George Bush called Vladimir
Putin to try to persuade him to support the US version of the UN resolution
on Iraq, the president of Russia invited him to pay a visit immediately
after the NATO summit in Prague. Bush agreed, without even seeking the
advice of his aides. About 10 days later (Izvestiya was the first at the
time to report on the summit that was in preparation), State Department
officers set off for Russia's northwest to find a place for the US
president's plane to land. Nothing was found close to St Petersburg. But,
ultimately, Tsarskoye Selo was a spot perfectly suitable for a "royal"
agenda. Bush was not intending, of course, to paint Putin a fantastic
picture of "strategic partnership" and a great friendship between America
and Russia in the style which the Americans used for, say, Gorbachev in the
period of the presidency of Bush pere - as a "reward" for the disbandment
of the Warsaw Pact and support in the first war against Iraq. Nor is Putin
Gorbachev. He is much more pragmatic. And he understands the pointlessness
of protests against the inevitable, preferring to extract from this
inevitable the maximum dividends. And if violence (war) in Iraq is
inevitable, we need to "relax" and derive the maximum "pleasure" - the
maximum in the way of guarantees that the USA will not forget about
Russia's economic interests after its victory. Putin obtained such
guarantees yesterday. In the form in which Bush could give him them.

"Do you trust Putin?" a Lithuanian reporter caustically inquired of Bush in
Prague in the course of the meeting of the Euro-Atlantic Partnership
Council, which followed the NATO summit proper. "Yes, of course," was the
immediate response. Bush believes that Putin would also answer a similar
question in the same way. And this is why he set out from Prague yesterday
bound for Tsarskoye Selo - to assure his Russian friend once again that
there's nothing so terrible in NATO's expansion to Russia's borders
(through the admittance of seven new members - Lithuania, Latvia, and
Estonia together with Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia): "Russia
does not need to form a defensive buffer zone around itself; it needs
peaceful prosperous neighbours that are its friends... newspaper's ellipsis
We, on the other hand, need a strong and democratic Russia as a friend and
partner in order to confront the new threats of the new century together."
Such assurances hardly contain anything new. What is new is the decided
restraint of Russian diplomats when it comes to uttering recitatives
concerning "disagreement in principle" on NATO expansion. But how much can
you spit against the wind?... newspaper's ellipsis

"Gentleman's agreement"

Bush's visit is in this respect that same language of diplomatic gestures
that is at times more eloquent than all formal treaties. For example, if in
Prague Bush was photographed in the company of the leaders of Albania,
Macedonia, and Croatia, this was not just for the sake of it. This was a
consolation prize for them: you were not in time for this wave of NATO
expansion, but it is you who are now the main candidates for admittance in
the next wave. As soon as the voice of America announces it. Or another
gesture: the "micro-summit" in Prague of Bush and German Chancellor
Schroeder, the main European critic of the USA's Iraq policy, a person
whose minister called Bush "Hitler", lasted a minute: they exchanged
greetings - virtually through clenched teeth. So if Bush is flying to St
Petersburg specially for 80 minutes (as was stipulated by protocol) after
the summit and on the eve of an apparently inevitable war against Iraq,
does this mean a deal on Iraq? Not entirely. The word "deal" is improper.
"Promise" is more fitting. Of a person that trusts another person and
believes that the latter trusts him. A gentleman's agreement.

So then, Bush promised Putin yesterday that America would "respect"
Russia's economic interests in a new Iraq. The significance of this word
may be assessed only in the context of the keen struggle within the US
leadership: it is against this word that the team of hawks had been
fighting throughout recent months. The hawks believe that great and
powerful America owes poor and weak Russia nothing. Bush nonetheless deemed
it necessary to say on the eve of his meeting with Putin that he
understands that Russia has interests in Iraq. While specifying, "as do
other countries as well". The sole document that it had originally been
contemplated signing in the course of the summit, incidentally, was a
two-page joint statement on energy dialogue.

Simple arithmetic

Russian diplomats unofficially acknowledge that the question of Russian oil
contracts in a post-Saddam Iraq has been on the agenda of all recent
consultations with the USA on Iraq. In addition, the question of a world
oil price that is "unacceptable" to Russia has also been raised: an abrupt
fall in the latter as a result of Iraqi oil coming onto the market over the
next five years must somehow be averted. The arithmetic here is simple.
Were the price of oil to fall by 6 dollars, Russia's economic growth, which
is now hovering around an unconvincing 4 per cent a year as it is, would be
halved. Were the price to fall below 13 dollars a barrel, a large
proportion of Russia's oil companies would be operating at a loss, and the
country would sink into crisis. Russia's budget has been put together on
the basis of a price of 21 dollars a barrel. The price this year has
hovered around 25 dollars. Russia is today the world's second largest oil
exporter in terms of volume, behind Saudi Arabia's 7.4m barrels a day
(Russia - 5.4m). Were billions in foreign investments to be pumped into
Iraq, with UN sanctions having been lifted, and the oil-production
infrastructure restored, it could in five to seven years' time be reaching
an export level of 7m or even 8m barrels a day (total proven Iraqi oil
resources are at this time put at 112bn barrels, second after Saudi
Arabia's 264bn). Moscow would then have to console itself with the fact
that Iraq might, perhaps, begin to repay its debt to Russia - of 8bn
dollars. Whether LUKoil would be allowed to participate in the development
of West Qurna, one of the biggest fields, is a big question. And the answer
is known only in Washington.

At the same time, on the other hand, the Americans have refused in the
course of lobby conversations with the Russians to assume commitments when
it comes to the "guaranteed retention" of the world oil price at no lower
than 21 dollars. Although the US oil companies (which have great influence
on the present administration) have no interest in a drastic fall in price
either. Which cannot fail to influence US policy in a direction that is
desirable for Russia. So on this issue Putin is playing with Bush Jr a far
more pragmatic game than Gorbachev did with Bush Sr: we don't need any
global alliances or dizzying plans for Russian-US fraternity from Europe to
Mars. Let's come to an arrangement specifically.

A united front?

In exchange for "specifics" on Iraq, it will be necessary, it is true, to
listen to the US president's unpleasant speeches about Chechnya. The latter
had, all the same (otherwise he would not have been understood either at
home or in Europe), to utter words about the need for "a political solution
to be found" and about the need for the "observance of human rights in
Chechnya" - together with words, far more obliging to Moscow, of support
for decisive antiterrorist measures. Everyone understands that Bush is not
the Belgian reporter who, at the recent EU-Russia summit, made Putin
hopping mad (more precisely, made him advise circumcision) with his
question-cum-justification about the Chechen gunmen. And in Tsarskoye Selo
Bush did not and never would put undue emphasis on Chechnya against the
background of his unwillingness to seek the same sort of political
settlement with Bin-Ladin or Husayn. That's assuming we can talk of a
united antiterrorist front against a similarly united terrorist front.

*******

#9
Russia's Putin assures China on forthcoming trip

MOSCOW, Nov 23 (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin, eyeing a
forthcoming visit to China when he may offer assurances to his hosts over
his pro-western foreign policy, said on Saturday he expected his trip to
push relations to new heights.

Meeting Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan in the Kremlin, Putin said
relations were on the up and he hoped his December 1-3 visit "would succeed
in reaching new boundaries in cooperation."

The visit will give Putin an early chance to size up China's new chief of
the ruling Communist Party, Hu Jintao, who took the top job at a party
congress earlier this month.

The Kremlin said earlier this week Russia was glad China had re-affirmed
continuity in developing relations with Russia following the reshuffle. Hu
is expected to succeed President Jiang Zemin next year.

Referring to the political reshuffle, Putin said in televised comments he
was impatient to meet the new leadership.

Russian-Chinese relations have flourished since Putin came to power in
2000, when, eager to restore ties with old Soviet allies, he paid his first
official visit to Beijing that July.

But his swing to the West since he threw Russia's weight behind the U.S.
global war on terror following the September 11, 2001, attacks in
Washington and New York has caused some unease in Beijing over the future
of the strategic partnership.

But Tang, in what could be a foretaste of official rhetoric during Putin's
visit, appeared to suggest China could take Russia's policy changes in its
stride.

"Whatever global changes take place, China will unshakeably develop its
relations of friendship and cooperation with Russia," Tang was quoted as
saying by Interfax news agency.

Tang was in Moscow for a meeting of foreign ministers of the six-nation
Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, a regional security organisation which
apart from Russia and China also includes four countries of former Soviet
Central Asia.

Cooperation in the fight against terrorism is likely to be a major
international topic for discussion by Putin and Jiang, Hu and other members
of the Chinese leadership.

With densely populated China a net energy importer, oil deliveries from
Russia, the world's second largest oil exporter after Saudi Arabia, will
also loom large in talks.

Russia, where oil output is booming for the fourth straight year, wants to
become a major oil supplier for China's fast-growing economy by 2005 and is
building a 400,000 barrels per day pipeline from western Siberia to
north-east industrial China.

*******

#10
Russian scientists seeking to lengthen human life

MOSCOW. Nov 23 (Interfax) - Russian scientists are working on technology to
at least double the lifespan of humans, if not increase it "to infinity," a
researcher has said, adding that experiments have lengthened the life of
mice and rats 30% to 35%.
   "We hope that it will soon be possible to develop technologies to extend
the life of man, if not to infinity, then at least by a factor of two to
three. At the moment there are experiments on laboratory mice and rats, and
an extension of their life that has been achieved in the experiments is 30%
to 35%," Liudmila Obukhova of the Biochemical Physics Institute told
Interfax.
   She said Russian gerontologists had immortalized some cells by
implanting a certain gene in them.
   "Despite numerous attempts by Western scientists to find a longevity
gene and use the potential of gene engineering to extend life, our
scientists put greater hopes on antioxidants, independent substances that
are one of the causes of the aging of the organism. Synthetic preparations
have already been developed in Russia," Obukhova said.

******

#11
NationalReview Online
November 21, 2002
Prostitution in Russia
Does the U.S. State Department back the legalization of prostitution?
By Donna M. Hughes
Donna M. Hughes is a professor at the University of Rhode Island.

On Thursday, Presidents Bush and Putin will be meeting in Moscow. The
trafficking and prostitution of women and children should be on their agenda.

In Russia, a grassroots coalition of groups known as the Angel Coalition is
fighting a human-rights battle to save women and girls from trafficking and
prostitution. Their expected opponents are organized-crime groups, corrupt
politicians, and strip-club owners. But there are some shocking additional
opponents, comprising what can be considered a pro-prostitution mafia: the
U.S. State Department, U.S.- and Dutch-funded nongovernmental organizations
(NGOs), and a Russian political party - the Union of Right Forces. So far,
President Putin has given some indication that he will side with the Angel
Coalition against the pro-prostitution mafia, but the battle is still raging.

Russia has one of the worst trafficking problems in world. Each year,
thousands, and possibly tens of thousands, of Russian women and girls are
recruited to go abroad in search of work and other opportunities only to be
deceived and coerced into slavery and prostitution. Russia is also a
receiving country for trafficked women; there are an estimated 150,000
women from the former Soviet republics on the streets and highways around
Moscow. To make matters worse, Russia does not have a law against trafficking.

A decade ago, Dr. Juliette Engel, an American physician went to Russia and
discovered the scourge of epidemic trafficking while working with
orphanages, from which groups of girls were mysteriously disappearing. Vans
would arrive at the orphanages to take girls on field trips. They packed
their lunches and overnight bags and hopped into the vans, never to be seen
again.

Dr. Engel and the organization she founded, MiraMed, received initial
funding from the United Nations and the U.S. government to start
trafficking-awareness programs in Russian high schools. As she described
the trafficking industry's methods of operation, many mothers and teachers
would start to cry as they realized the likely fate of their daughters and
pupils who had gone abroad and not been heard of since. A survey conducted
by MiraMed Institute found that in some regions of Russia 30 percent of
people had a close friend or family member who had been trafficked.

Dr. Engel realized that a nationwide awareness campaign was needed. In
1999, she fostered the founding of the Angel Coalition, a coalition of 43
grassroots organizations from Russia and other former Soviet republics
dedicated to fighting sex trafficking. The Angel Coalition held training
conferences and prevention programs throughout Western Russia and Siberia.
In 2001, the Angel Coalition launched a mass-media campaign in newspapers,
radio, and TV to warn citizens about trafficking.

During this time, the pro-prostitution mafia was organizing. Their goal was
to muscle out the Angel Coalition and install their own NGOs. They gave the
Angel Coalition a chance to join them before they set out to destroy them.
In late 2000, Dr. Engel and the Angel Coalition were asked if they would
support the legalization of prostitution in Russia. They absolutely
refused, and consequently were warned that they would not be doing
anti-trafficking work in Russia in the future.

The pro-prostitution mafia's plan for Russia seems to have been formulated
in August 2000 at a policy forum at the U.S. State Department hosted by an
NGO that had previously financed academic exchanges, but done no
anti-trafficking work. Their policy recommendations state that the
"solution" to trafficking of women in the newly independent states and
Central and Eastern Europe was to decriminalize prostitution and redefine
it as "sex work" - i.e., a form of labor. They recommended that since
"migrating sex workers are simply responding to a demand for their labor,"
migration laws should be reformed to accommodate their transnational
travel. Prostitution in foreign countries was described as potentially
"empowering" for women because it would enable them to migrate to other
countries and to achieve "greater economic independency and autonomy from
men."

Since the Angel Coalition refused to go along with this "sex work" plan for
women in Russia, the pro-prostitution mafia launched a campaign to destroy
it. Pro-prostitution Dutch-funded NGOs refused to associate with the Angel
Coalition because they claimed it will put their U.S. State Department
funding at risk. Representatives at the U.S. embassy in Moscow that had
previously supported the Angel Coalition turned hostile and accusatory. In
the winter of 2001, a disinformation campaign was initiated against the
work and reputation of the Angel Coalition began. The grassroots members of
the coalition throughout Russia got telephone calls and visits from staff
members of U.S.-funded NGOs and their subcontractors advising that their
future funding would be conditional on withdrawing from the Angel
Coalition. By spring 2001, all MiraMed grant proposals to the U.S.
government had been rejected or cancelled. In June 2001, the NGO that
hosted the pro-prostitution policy forum at the U.S. State Department
received $2 million dollars from the U.S. government to do
"anti-trafficking" work in Western Russia.

In summer 2002, Duma Deputy Elena Mizulina from the Party of Rightist
Forces announced she was introducing legislation to legalize prostitution
in Russia. The pro-prostitution mafia announced that it would work with Ms.
Mizulina to draft complementary anti-trafficking legislation. Currently,
the U.S. embassy is setting up meetings to draft legislation that include
only prostitution supporters. Representatives of the Angel Coalition have
been excluded.

The Angel Coalition is fighting back. According to their representative:
"Legalization of prostitution would ruin this country. Russian women have
suffered enough exploitation. They do not deserve to become the
[prostitutes] of the world."

In September, 185 people comprising a broad international coalition of
human-rights and women's-rights policy organizations, churches, and
faith-based groups wrote to President Putin urging him to stand against
prostitution supporters, including the U.S.-funded NGOs and the U.S. State
Department. (A copy of the letter was sent to President Bush.) They
committed themselves to being President Putin's allies in the fight against
trafficking, especially because their help will be needed in opposing their
own State Department.

Although the U.S. State Department claims that it does not support the
legalization of prostitution, it seems unable to stop its own officials at
the Moscow embassy who continue to actively work with the pro-prostitution
mafia and to support its legislative agenda.

At this point, President Putin may be the only hope for the women and
children of Russia. When President Putin meets later this week with
President Bush, perhaps he can ask him why the U.S. is supporting the
legalization of prostitution in his country.

********

#12
Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002
From: "Fernando Orlandi - CSSEO" 
Subject: Conference: Samizdat and Dissent in the Soviet Union. An Assessment

Dear David,
you and some JRL readers may be interested in our forthcoming conference.
"Samizdat and Dissent in the Soviet Union. An Assessment" is the topic of
the international conference organized by the CSSEO (Centro Studi Storia
Europa Orientale) in Trento (North Italy) on December 6-7, 2002.
Here the program. After the conference the paper presented will be
available on the CSSEO web pages.
For informations please write to: dissent.conference@csseo.org or
info@csseo@org
Best,
Fernando

SAMIZDAT AND DISSENT IN THE SOVIET UNION. AN ASSESSMENT
Friday, December 6
9.00 a.m. Opening of Works

Giovanni Bensi
(CSSEO)
Presentation

Welcome greetings

Fernando Orlandi
(CSSEO)
The Many Faces of Dissent

Vladimir Tolz
(Radio Liberty, Prague)
The Dissent in the Soviet Union of Khrushchev Era (Reflections on Texts)

Piero Sinatti
(CSSEO)
“The Chronicle of Current Events”

Catherine Cosman
(RFE/RL, Washington)
The Soviet Non-Russian Samizdat

Mara Dell’Asta
(Research Center Studi “Russia Cristiana”, Milan)
Religious Dissent and the Religiousity of Dissent

Andrei Zubov
(MGIMO, Moscow)
Dissent and the Russian Orthodox Church

Friday, December 6
3.00 p.m. Second Session

Victor Zaslavsky
(LUISS, Rome)
Dissent and Emigration

Luigi Vittorio Ferraris
(University of Trieste-Gorizia, former Italian Ambassador in Germany)
The Helsinki Process and the Dissent

David Satter
(Hudson Institute, Washington)
Soviet Dissent and the Cold War

Jurij Malcev
(Catholic University, Milan)
The Revolt of Reason

Mauro Martini
(University of Trento)
How Long Lasts Dissent in Literature?

Aleksandr Daniel’
(Memorial, Moscow)
Where Ended Up the Dissidents?

Saturday, December 7
9.00 a.m. Third Session

Carlo Ripa di Meana
(Former President of Biennale, Minister and European MP)
The “Biennale del Dissenso”, Venice 1977

Adriano Guerra
(Historian, Roma)
Soviet Dissent and the relations between ICP and CPSU

Vasile Buga
(Political Analyst, Kiev)
Soviet Dissent in Eastern European Eyes

Viktor Yasmann
(Radio Liberty, Prague)
KGB Against Dissents

Nikita Petrov
(Memorial, Moscow)
The KGB Special Structures and their Activity against Dissidents, 1954-1989

Sergei Kovalev
(Member of the State Duma, Moscow)
The Dissent from Within

Yurii Afanas’ev
(President of the RSUH, Moscow)
Dissent and perestroika

Donald Jensen
(RFE/RL, Washington)
Reflections on the Samizdat Movement: Lessons for 21st Century Totalitarian
Regimes

******

#13
Central Asia: Verdict Still Out On U.S. Engagement Policy
By Jeffrey Donovan

It has been just over a year since the United States launched its military
campaign in Afghanistan with the help of several Central Asian nations. But
has U.S. engagement in the region helped or hindered the embattled causes of
human rights and democracy-building.

Washington, 22 November 2002 (RFE/RL) -- A little more than a year after
American troops touched down in Central Asia, U.S. officials say the verdict
is still out on whether Washington's "enhanced engagement" with the region's
authoritarian leaders is bearing fruit.

A year ago last month, with the acquiescence of Russian President Vladimir
Putin, U.S. troops were deployed to Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan to assist the
war on terror in neighboring Afghanistan. Washington also won fly-over rights
or other forms of cooperation from the remaining Central Asian nations.

While viewed as a strategic turning point in a region long regarded as
Russia's backyard -- and a buttress against the spread of Islamic terrorism
-- Washington's alliance with authoritarian regimes has drawn criticism from
human rights groups around the world. They say American support has bolstered
autocrats such as President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan, enabling them to
crack down more harshly than in the past on dissidents in the name of
America's war on terror.

Pauline Luong-Jones, a Central Asia expert, is a politics professor at Yale
University in the northeast United States. Luong-Jones said: "The main
problem to me seems to be the U.S. government is symbolically -- if not in
toto -- saying that security, military security in particular, is the most
important thing, that the only way to combat terrorism is through force. And
these governments are taking that as a symbol that they can continue to treat
their own real or suspected Islamists with force."

In just the latest example, England's Keston News Service, which monitors
religious rights in the postcommunist world, reported this week that
Uzbekistan has punished some 150 prisoners for trying to observe the
month-long Ramadan fast, which began on 6 November. The agency also reported
that prisoners detained on political or religious charges are being forced to
sign statements vowing that they will not observe religious rituals at home
following their release. Otherwise, they could be moved to a prison known for
its violent treatment of inmates. Uzbek authorities say they know nothing of
the reports.

By cooperating with the U.S. in its war on terror, Central Asian governments
have reaped significant benefits, analysts say. U.S. aid to the five Central
Asian states has more than doubled and now amounts to nearly $600 million.
And leaders once considered controversial in Washington have been given warm
receptions in this U.S. capital this year, including Karimov and Kazakh
President Nursultan Nazarbaev.

U.S. officials hope the new ties help stabilize a region where they seek to
reduce Russian influence, capitalize on energy resources, and suppress
Islamist militancy while gradually making the climate better for human rights
and democracy.

In an interview with RFE/RL this week, U.S. President George W. Bush made an
impassioned defense of the policy. "We value every life -- everybody counts.
And in my judgment, the more people relate to the United States, and work
with the United States, the more likely it is they will work to improve the
human condition."

But critics such as Luong-Jones say the reality on the ground in Central Asia
is quite different. She said that as their lives grow worse, people are
beginning to blame it on both their governments and the United States.
"They're seeing deterioration in their livelihood. They're seeing an increase
in repression. And they're attributing it to this new U.S. strategic
relationship with Central Asian governments."

Some leading human rights groups want Washington to take a much stronger
stand with Central Asian governments. Some organizations, such as Human
Rights Watch, advocate making all U.S. aid conditional on specific reforms in
each country.

But the Western human rights community is not of one voice. Some believe the
Bush administration, caught in a political and strategic dilemma, is
conducting itself fairly well in Central Asia.

Catherine Fitzpatrick is program director for the former Soviet countries for
the New York-based International League for Human Rights. She said U.S.
engagement over the past year has started to achieve some minor successes in
Central Asia which would have been unheard of just a few years ago. Among
them, Fitzpatrick cited Uzbekistan's decision to allow the United Nations'
special rapporteur on torture to visit this week to inspect Tashkent's
notorious prisons. She also notes its recent registration of a
nongovernmental organization -- a first in post-Soviet Uzbek history. Other
observers have cited with approval Tajikistan's decision to allow the
International Red Cross to inspect prisons and signs that Turkmenistan is
beginning to tolerate nongovernmental organizations and recognize the need to
ease the flow of people and goods across its borders.

Fitzpatrick said all these steps may be merely symbolic, but they are
important in a region she believes would be unlikely to change its ways even
if threatened with isolation. "I work backwards from the premise that if you
cut it [aid] off, you will not improve human rights. It's not like South
Africa; there you cut off, you get their attention, they change. But you
don't get that with the Uzbeks. They're not going to change."

Fitzpatrick had praise for the U.S. diplomat in charge of Central Asia,
Assistant Secretary of State Lorne Craner. She said, however, that Craner
could use a bigger staff and a stronger presence in the region. After meeting
with Uzbek officials in Tashkent earlier this month, Craner said further
expansion of bilateral ties is contingent on improvements on human rights. He
also criticized official reaction to three recent deaths in custody and noted
complaints from Christians of persecution. Craner said religious education
should be opened up, not repressed.

Ian Bremmer is president of the Eurasia Group consultancy in New York.
Bremmer also supports U.S. engagement in Central Asia, but said the Bush
administration could help its cause by speaking more clearly about what
constitutes legitimate counterterrorism activity. He said Central Asian
leaders are not alone in using the U.S. war on terrorism as a blanket to
cover their questionable treatment of opponents. He cited Russia and the
Chechens, Israel and the Palestinians, and China and the Uighurs as other
examples.

But like Fitzgerald, Bremmer said there have been some small improvements in
Central Asia as a result of U.S. engagement. He cited moves to liberalize
Uzbekistan's cotton industry, more transparency in its trade legislation, and
support for small and medium-sized businesses. "These are economic reforms
and these reforms will certainly make it more possible for Uzbekistan to feed
their people and develop economically and grow economically over time. I
think we would be hard-pressed to say Uzbekistan has become more democratic."

Luong-Jones also acknowledged that building democracy from the ground up is a
tall order in Central Asia, and a long-term project. In fact, she agreed that
the best way to achieve democracy is by working to build up vested interests
for reform through poverty-alleviation and economic programs.

To be sure, many reports of persecution, torture and media repression still
flow from Central Asia. The cause of Kazakh journalist Sergei Duvanov, who
was detained last month on what observers call politically motivated charges
of raping a girl, made headlines again this week when three leading U.S.
human rights groups urged Bush to take up the issue with Kazakh officials.

The U.S. State Department has weighed in on the case, saying Duvanov's arrest
follows a recent pattern of media harassment in Kazakhstan that began after
reports of high-level Kazakh corruption first surfaced earlier this year. But
U.S. officials are counseling patience in Central Asia, saying any meaningful
change will take time to achieve. "Our enhanced engagement has been in place
for only a short time," Lynn Pascoe, the U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary for
European and Eurasian Affairs, wrote recently. "It is too early to tell if
our calculated risk will lead to success."

*******

#14
New York Times
November 21, 2002
St. Petersburg: Name's Back, Soon Its Luster
By STEVEN LEE MYERS

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia -- Nearly 300 years ago, this city began to rise
from the Neva's boggy delta. Thousands of workers labored in a monumental
effort against time and the elements to satisfy the autocratic will of one
man: Peter the Great.

Today, thousands of workers are involved in an endeavor nearly as
monumental: to restore the city's elegance and Baroque grandeur. Once
again, they are laboring against time, as well as a bureaucracy and
corruption. Once again, they are doing so largely to satisfy the will of
one man: President Vladimir V. Putin.

In time for the 300th anniversary of St. Petersburg's founding next May,
the city has embarked on its largest reconstruction and restoration project
since the German siege of Leningrad — as it was known during Soviet times —
was broken near the end of World War II.

Eager to showcase St. Petersburg as Russia's window to Europe and the
world, as Peter originally intended it, Mr. Putin earlier this year decreed
the reconstruction of dozens of historical and cultural landmarks. Among
the projects is the reconstruction of the 1,000-room, 18th-century
Konstantinovsky Palace, begun by Peter but never completed. Under Mr.
Putin's plans, it will be a presidential residence and center for
international meetings.

The results are obvious. The city is fenced off, scaffolded and dug up.
Deep into the long winter nights, work drones on at many famous sites: St.
Isaac's Cathedral, Aleksandr's Column and the Peter and Paul Fortress, with
its golden, spire-peaked cathedral where czars are buried.

St. Petersburg today is like an aging beauty in the middle of a facelift,
one desperately needed after decades of neglect during the Soviet era,
which saw revolution, war and the shift of Russia's political power to Moscow.

"The officials are paying for the neglect of St. Petersburg in previous
years," said Olga V. Taratynova, deputy chairwoman of the city's monuments
committee.

With the prodding of Mr. Putin, himself a St. Petersburger and former
deputy mayor, the federal government has budgeted nearly $400 million this
year for the effort. The city itself has appealed for corporate and private
donations, and recently spent the last of a $31 million loan from the World
Bank to reconstruct Nevsky Prospekt, the main thoroughfare.

While the anniversary celebrations are only six months away, officials vow
that the bulk of the work will be completed and the city will once again
bathe in its lost glory.

*******

#15
Russian environmentalists face secrets probe over radiation data
Interfax

Irkutsk, 23 November: The Federal Security Service (FSB) Department for
Siberia has confirmed that a criminal case has been launched in connection
with state secret disclosure by Irkutsk environmentalists.

The FSB discovered that several organizations, including Baykal
Environmental Wave, had illegally obtained classified documents, the
department's spokesman told Interfax.

The FSB department launched the criminal case on 22 November, in keeping
with Article 283 of the Criminal Code that punishes the disclosure of state
secrets. The FSB searched the office of Baykal Environmental Wave and found
five classified documents on paper and digitally stored secret information,
the spokesman said. Identification of the people and organizations involved
in the crime is under way. Editor-in-Chief of The Wave magazine of the
Baykal Environmental Wave Yuliya Zhilina told the Ekho Moskvy radio station
that that the organization had not been charged with state secret disclosure.

Baykal Environmental Wave employees said earlier that FSB servicemen were
looking for a map on which the uranium content in the waters around the
Angara Electrolysis Chemical Plant is marked. Computers were confiscated
from the office, the employees said.

Zhilina clarified that "out of 18 computers, 15 were confiscated with the
aim of allegedly finding the secret map". "Paper maps and the digital
records on CDs were also confiscated," she noted.

Geologists who took water samples around the plant transferred the
pertinent materials to Baykal Environmental Wave, employees reported
earlier. There are no documents marked as secret, they pointed out.

These maps were supplied by "a special geological company and it should
face responsibility in keeping with the law", Zhilina said.

"We distributed these maps 10 months ago under a project that was wrapped
up six months ago. A long period of time has passed," she noted.

At present, the Baykal Environmental Wave is conducting a public review of
the Russia-China oil pipeline, she noted. Public hearings concerning the
project are being prepared, she said.

This work has been suspended because the equipment was confiscated for an
indefinite time, she noted.

According to Interfax news agency, Moscow, in English 1456 gmt 22 Nov 02,
the environmentalists believe that the search was prompted by a contract
the Baykal Wave had officially signed with the (?Sosnovgeos) company to
make a series of maps of radiation-affected waters and soil near the
Angarsk chemical plant.

The agency also said that during the search people working at the
headquarters were to stay at their work stations and were not allowed to
make phone calls. Law-enforcement officers also showed interest in the
materials the organization had received from geologists who took samples of
the water near the plant. The report said environmentalists were confident
the documents were not classified.

******

#16
The Irish Times
November 23, 2002
Doctoring Zhivago
Boris Pasternak's novel, 'Doctor Zhivago', may be the greatest love story
of all time, writes Enda O'Doherty, but it is also much more - not that you
can tell from David Lean's epic 1965 film, or from Andrew Davies's new
television version

In the Dublin of the 1960s and 1970s it was a byword for romance. Tucked
away in an alley off Baggot Street, the entrance just a doorway behind H.
Williams's supermarket, its proud claim to be "Europe's No 1 night spot"
might have seemed a large one, but there were surely few of the patrons of
Zhivago's who did not hope it might, for them too, turn out to be the place
"where love stories begin".

The love story which inspired the nightclub and gave it its name was, of
course, Dr Zhivago, David Lean's epic film of 1965, starring Omar Sharif
and Julie Christie as tragic lovers Yuri Zhivago and Lara Antipova. Behind
this stirring tale of war, revolution and doomed romance, we may have been
aware, was a novel by a Russian called Boris Pasternak, a book which many
had perhaps seen and some even bought, but fewer, one guessed, read to the
end.

Lean's film was a critical failure but a huge popular success. It helped
establish Christie as one of the great iconic faces of 1960s womanhood and
made Sharif, on the basis of a single film, the Valentino of his
generation. Above all, Zhivago provided the contemporary audience with a
dominant paradigm of romantic love, pure, disinterested, self-sacrificing
and, floating ethereally on Maurice Jarre's increasingly irritating musical
score, more than a little soppy. It was a film you could not - if your
intentions were to be taken seriously - decline to take your girlfriend to.

Understandably, Lean's Zhivago has faded somewhat from public consciousness
in the intervening years, and though it may still be admired for its visual
style, the central performances now look, in the words of British
screenwriter Andrew Davies, "stilted and dated". And so Davies, a prolific
and talented literary adaptor, has brought us, 37 years on, a new version
of Zhivago for our times , a three-part TV serial, but with the budget and
artistic ambition of a movie.

Boris Pasternak was born in 1890 in Moscow, into an artistic family of
Jewish origin. His father, Leonid, was a successful painter and his mother
a concert pianist. Indeed, Boris himself considered music as a career,
studying for six years under the influence of the composer Scriabin, a
family friend.

Eventually, however, he gravitated towards literature, mixing among the
young men and women of the futurist movement, and meeting some of the most
celebrated of Russia's new generation of poets. Pasternak's first book of
poems was published in 1917, the year of the February and October
revolutions. Poetry, memoire and short stories continued to appear
sporadically over the next 15 years. From the 1930s, however, conditions
for writers worsened dramatically, as the secret police and their
literary/bureaucratic allies enforced the doctrine of socialist realism,
whereby all art must either "serve the people" or cease to exist.

Many of the leading figures of Russian literature sank under the onslaught.
Isaac Babel and Osip Mandelstam disappeared into the camps; Mayakovsky and
Tsvetayeva committed suicide.

From 1934 to 1943, Pasternak published no original work, preferring, in the
prevailing atmosphere of fear and constraint, to make his living from
translations. But, curiously, his life was not threatened: according to one
story, he enjoyed the protection of Stalin himself, who, when informed of
plans for Pasternak's arrest, responded: "Leave that cloud-dweller in peace!"

It was probably in 1945 that Pasternak began work on the great book with
which his name is chiefly identified. Its completion was to take him 10
years and the circumstances of its smuggling out of Russia and eventual
publication, first in Italy, then throughout the Western world, almost
merits a book in itself.

Giangiacomo Feltrinelli was an astute and adventurous Italian publisher
who, in spite of his family's vast wealth, enjoyed excellent relations with
his country's powerful Communist party (PCI). It was through a party
contact, Sergio D'Angelo, an Italian-language broadcaster with Radio
Moscow, that Feltrinelli, in 1956, heard of the existence of a very
controversial novel, still in manuscript, whose author was apparently
encountering considerable difficulty with the Russian censors.

Using D'Angelo as intermediary, Feltrinelli persuaded Pasternak to allow a
copy of the Doctor Zhivago manuscript to be sent to Milan. When the Soviet
authorities came to hear of this, they asked Feltrinelli to postpone
publication, putting simultaneous pressure on Pasternak to emend his
manuscript.

At this point, Pasternak entered into a complex open and secret double
correspondence with his publisher, on the one hand sending telegrams
declaring himself dissatisfied with the manuscript and seeking its return,
on the other, smuggling out messages urging Feltrinelli to expedite its
release and, above all, to "take no account of any message signed by me
unless it is, like this one, written in French".

In spite of further pressure on its publisher from his PCI comrades, Doctor
Zhivago, for which Feltrinelli had secured world rights, finally appeared
in November 1957, selling 170,000 copies in Italy and eventually seven
million worldwide. For Giangiacomo Feltrinelli it was another sweet piece
of business. For Pasternak the blessings were more mixed. He was awarded
the Nobel prize but prevented from accepting it, accused by the authorities
of "parasitism" and expelled from the Writers' Union. Doctor Zhivago was
eventually published in the Soviet Union in 1987.

Pasternak lived on at the Peredelkino writers' colony, "in disgrace", but
with the satisfaction of knowing his novel published, until his death in
1960. The radical millionaire Feltrinelli, moving further and further to
the left throughout the 1960s, finally blew himself up while trying to
plant explosives at an electricity pylon outside Milan in 1972.

In a letter dating from 1946, Pasternak wrote of his new project: "This
novel will be my expression of my views on the arts, the Gospels, the life
of a person in history, and many other things." Among the many other things
- too unformed as yet, we must assume, to merit specific mention - was love.

By 1963, however, when David Lean and his scriptwriter, Robert Bolt, began
working on their film version of Zhivago, love had come floating to the
top. Bolt was inclined at first to see the story as primarily a political
one, but Lean strongly disagreed. "(The politics) must be stated as simply
as possible in my opinion. The audience will understand almost every nuance
of the love story. If we try to shift the weight on to the other conflict I
think they will become impatient."

Lean had good reason to hope to keep the audience "patient": MGM had lost a
bundle on its last big picture, Mutiny on the Bounty, and was counting on
recouping these losses with Zhivago; and the studio had given the director
a generous percentage deal on the profits.

Lean and Bolt, who cheerfully admitted to being a prima donna, eventually
settled their differences over the script. The next nightmare to be faced
was casting.

Lean felt the picture's producer, Carlo Ponti, had his wife, Sophia Loren,
in mind for the role of Lara. Mindful, however, that when the action of the
film begins Lara is a schoolgirl of 16, Lean was not so enthusiastic. "If
anyone can convince me she's a virgin, I'll let her play the part," he said.

Next to be considered was Jane Fonda, though Lean feared she would be
unable to lose her American accent; he wondered if she would agree to be
dubbed.

Then there was Sara Miles, later to star in Ryan's Daughter. But Bolt
dismissed her as "a north country slut". (Not long afterwards he married
her.) Finally, on the recommendation of John Ford, they settled for the
young and radiant, though largely unknown, Julie Christie. For Zhivago, the
names of Paul Newman, Burt Lancaster and Peter O'Toole were all considered,
but there were objections and problems with each. Finally, and in some
desperation, Omar Sharif was promoted from the more minor role of the
student Antipov to play the lead.

Filming, too, brought its share of problems, with the weather, an
absolutely vital part of the work's visual appeal, often refusing to
co-operate on the two main locations in Spain (too mild) and Finland (too
cold). But eventually, having swallowed up more than twice its allotted
budget of $ 7 million, Doctor Zhivago was made.

The film's long-awaited New York release in December, 1965, nearly turned
to disaster after the publication of the initial reviews. The respected
Pauline Kael found it "stately and dead", while Judith Crist of the
Herald-Tribune wrote of cardboard characters and a ridiculous plot.
Alexander Walker thought the later Lean was proving content to be a
photographer rather than a director, while another critic's caustic
dismissal read: "It does for snow what Lawrence of Arabia did for sand."
Yet, in spite of the sneers of what Robert Bolt now called "the highbrows",
MGM kept its nerve and poured a further $ 1 million into publicity, keeping
the New York premiere cinema open at its own expense until word of mouth
began, at first slowly, then in an avalanche, to turn the situation around.
In state after state, then country after country, the public loved it.
Lean's Zhivago won five Oscars and grossed more than $ 200 million worldwide.

Andrew Davies's Zhivago, which he says he hopes will "speak to us in our
time", is unlikely to be anywhere near as bad as a reading of some of its
advance promotional material might suggest. This is a "contemporary"
version, we are told, of "the greatest love story ever told", and
"contemporary" plus "love" can only mean sex.

"This is a love story and people are going to want to see some lovemaking.
We are not in the 1960s now," says Davies, somewhat snappily.

Director Giacomo Campiotti seems to agree. On TV today, he says, "we see
thousands of people being killed close up but we are not supposed to speak
of sex", an observation that is in fact a rather spectacular inversion of
observable reality, but never mind.

So we must expect more sex. Pasternak, incidentally, did not have any "on
page", and Bolt and Lean were remarkably restrained for what was supposed
to have been the swinging 1960s, but Davies is a man who in his time has
managed to insinuate the Serpent, even into the orderly and decorous
gardens of Miss Austen.

What we will not have, I would guess, is very much of Pasternak's views on
"the arts, the Gospels are the life of a person in history", that is, the
things the author insisted his book was about.

It is an attractive and plausible line, and one that is understandably
being pushed by the producers, that the Davies/ Campiotti version keeps
closer to the author's original than did Lean's now fading "cinema classic"
of 1965.

It is a claim, however, that we should take not just with a pinch, but with
a small mine of salt.

In what has now apparently been posthumously hailed as the love story to
beat all love stories, less than a fifth of the action of the book is in
fact devoted to the relationship between Yuri Zhivago and Lara.

The bulk of this comes in the last chapters, which is indeed fortunate as
much of it - and particularly the excruciating conversations between the
lovers - is today unreadable.

The story of Doctor Zhivago is the story of Russia's progress through some
of its most difficult and bloody years; it is also an account of a mind,
which may well be Pasternak's, of its philosophical and religious
reflections, which are more interesting, perhaps, to those conversant with
the Russian tradition, of its political analysis, which is reasonable if
not profound, and, above all, its way of seeing nature - as a very fine
poet. It is a big and baggy and exasperating book, marred by poor structure
and a truly hair-raising authorial enthusiasm for "coincidence" as a plot
device.

Davies's Zhivago, judging from the advance extracts I have seen, will be
well acted, well photographed, tightly directed and as full as one could
wish of delicious sex, shock and soft furnishings. What it will not be is
Pasternak or anything much like him. And, as in 1965, the audience will
love it.

Part one of Doctor Zhivago, adapted by Andrew Davies, will be shown on UTV
tomorrow night at 9 p.m. Parts two and three will be screened on the
following Sundays

******

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