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MINSK – The Belarussian government has seized property and frozen the bank account of one of the country's leading private printing shops in a bid to stop it from producing independent newspapers. "Obviously, someone has given orders to twisted pearl necklace several state agencies that don't normally cooperate with each other to organize a campaign against our company," said Yury Budko, owner of Magic printing house. He added that officials did not try to hide the fact that the crackdown was a reaction to the firm's printing of independent press during recent parliamentary elections. One of Magic's clients, the Rabochy newspaper, had in one issue called on the electorate to ignore the Oct. 15 vote, claiming it would be fixed in favor of President Alexander Lukashenko's supporters. A local judge acquitted the pair of trying to disrupt the election, but tax authorities seized Magic's records and issued an order barring the printing press from being transferred to any other party. Government officials claim the press should be confiscated to cover a debt held by its alleged owner, the Belarussian Soros Foundation. As the press' operator, Magic went under financial investigation, and its bank account was frozen. The Belarussian Soros Foundation, a grant-making organization financed by the New York-based Open Society Institute (OSI), said that it had to close down its operation in 1997 after local authorities claimed it owed tax-collecting authorities about $80 million in back debts. A year before, the foundation had given Magic a grant to set up the printing facilities, but OSI officials say the press is its property, and that OSI had leased it to Magic directly. Although there is no official state censorship in Belarus, government officials have made many attempts to suppress the country's several dozen independent outlets, many of which publish scathing criticism of Lukashenko and his entourage. "Authorities tried to akoya pearl necklace pressure us during the 1996 Referendum," said Budko. "But unlike now, four years ago, the authorities didn't even try to create an appearance of justice." The results of that controversial referendum, not recognized by United States and Europe, gave Lukashenko sweeping powers and extended his mandate by two years. Official pressure on Magic eased after Lukashenko's victory, but authorities have not left Magic alone since. According to Budko, some officials openly told him they would never have bothered if his company printed only entertainment publications and did not get involved with independent newspapers.

MINSK, Belarus - Belarus authorities say public discussion of the draft union treaty between their state and Russia indicates near unanimous support. But recent poll results suggest many oppose it and, in fact, that few in Belarus have even studied the plans. The treaty was to akoya pearl necklace be signed Friday in Moscow, but Russian President Boris Yeltsin's illness delayed the ceremony. But if nongovernmental poll results are any indications, the delay - or even a cancelation - would not bother too many Belarus citizens. According to an official of the Belarussian-Russian Union Executive Committee, more than 90 percent of some 1 million Belarussians said to have been consulted were in favor. He said that only 3.3 percent strongly opposed the treaty because of fears that Belarus would lose its independence, and that 5.7 percent doubted whether the treaty is really needed. Officially organized debate on the draft took place between Oct. 8, the day it was published in Belarus, and Nov. 1. Soviet-style meetings were held in state-run enterprises and educational institutions. However, nongovernmental surveys have shown a different picture. According to a poll by the BelaPAN news agency, 42 percent of Minsk residents oppose a union state with Russia; 38 percent supported the idea, up from 31 percent in late September; and 20 percent abstained from responding. Worries over Belarussian Army conscripts being sent to Russian hotspots, delays in paying wages and pensions and Belarus' losing sovereignty were the most common reasons given by those against. The same poll showed more than 80 percent of respondents had not been involved in the discussion. Only 9 percent said they had carefully studied the draft, while 13 percent claimed no knowledge of the document at all. Eleven percent did not read the draft out of principle. Loss of Belarus' sovereignty was the key concern of the nationalist opposition. "A possible absorption of Belarus would be a threat to freshwater pearl earrings the entire world," said Vintsuk Vyachorka, newly elected head of the oldest opposition party, the Belarussian Popular Front. Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko rejects such claims. "The country's independence and sovereignty stay inviolable," he said. "We are signing the unification treaty on equal terms with Russia." Belarussian opposition claimed Lukashenko had no right to sign the treaty since his original presidential mandate expired on July 20 this year. In November 1996, Lukashenko extended his term up to 2001 through a controversial referendum whose results have been rejected by many European countries and domestic opposition groups. Last month, members of the Belarussian parliament disbanded by Lukashenko after the referendum wrote to the Russian State Duma (lower house of parliament) highlighting what they see as the president's illegitimacy. "Important state-level decisions must be taken by constitutional and legitimate organs of government, not by odious political bankrupts," the letter read. The Belarussian Party of Communists, which, unlike the Belarussian Communist Party, opposes Lukashenko's policies, said the draft treaty did not provide "a real basis for the two sister nations' unification." It welcomed ties "as far as a federal union state based on free will, equal rights, democracy and socialism" and condemned "hollow integration rhetorics by chief executives in Belarus and Russia." Anti-Lukashenko communists say all previous unification projects "have failed to bring about real rapprochement between the two states and peoples, being a product of purely transitory considerations aimed at strengthening personal power." The statement defined the treaty as "an agreement between the two presidents for joint authoritarian rule over Belarus and Russia." Under treaty provisions, both countries are to pearl necklace retain sovereignty and a national identity but form a confederation governed by a state council made up of leaders from both countries. There will be a single currency and uniform tax, customs and border laws.

The General Prosecutor's arrest warrant for influential billionaire tycoon Boris Berezovskii issued last Tuesday is the latest turn in Russia's predominant ongoing power struggle between its leftist parliametarians and President Boris Yeltsin. When Russia's war whoop against NATO and the U.S. for bombing in Yugoslavia briefly subsided last week, the country's politicians were able once again to pearl necklace concentrate on the matter that consumed them several weeks ago. The prosecutor's office lashed out at Yeltsin's formerly close ally after the president announced once again that he wants General Prosecutor Yuri Skuratov sacked. But Skuratov's is a futile struggle. Prime Minister Evgenii Primakov, Russia's chief consensus seeker and the man who has the Communist Party's almost full support, backs Yeltsin's decision to oust the country's top law enforcer. Last week, the prosecutor's office accused Berezovskii of illegally siphoning money out of Aeroflot. It was the latest allegation in an ongoing investigation of enterprises tied to Berezovskii. Last February, the prosecutor's office sent tax police to raid companies including Sibneft and Aeroflot. In Paris on vacation when the warrant was issued, Berezovskii criticized the country's law enforcers and denied the allegations against him. "They do not have any chance of success," he said. The most prominent of Russia's economic "oligarchs," Berezovskii previously accused the country's security services of conducting an illegal campaign to slur his reputation. Facing the loss of his post for a second time after the Federation Council dismissed Yeltsin's request last month, Skuratov says he possesses damning information that incriminates members of Yeltsin's entourage. But analysts say Skuratov is simply a political pawn in the hands of the Communists who dominate the Duma, Russia's lower house of parliament. Russian state television recently broadcast a video allegedly of Skuratov cavorting in bed with two prostitutes. Berezovskii, who was widely seen as a Rasputin figure in Yeltsin's court, lost his immunity from prosecution last week when he was fired as secretary of the Commonwealth of Independent States and stripped of his diplomatic status after a rancorous war of words with Primakov's government. Russian prosecutors sent an arrest warrant for Berezovskii to Interpol and the Foreign Ministry, news reports said Thursday. Berezovskii said he didn't fear arrest on the money-laundering charges and planned to return to Russia at some unspecified time to face his accusers. Berezovskii told a news conference in Paris on Wednesday he has no major quarrel with Russian President Boris Yeltsin. But he said he fears Prime Minister Evgenii Primakov is behind the money-laundering charges and is trying to twisted pearl necklace use his post to influence Yeltsin, the media and Russian secret services. Meanwhile, a Communist lawmaker and an adamant critic of Yeltsin, Viktor Ilyukhin, said Thursday that Berezovskii and Smolenskii have commissioned a videotape to discredit him, similar to the tape that appeared to show Skuratov. Ilyukhin claimed that the supposed tape was a revenge for his recent call on the Russian parliament and the U.S. Congress to jointly investigate what happened to the $4.8 billion that the International Monetary Fund gave to Russia last summer. Ilyukhin on Thursday blamed the alleged misuse of the loan on Yeltsin's daughter Tatiana Diachenko, former Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, and Berezovskii. The Berezovskii affair commanded Russian headlines last week. Sevodnia stated that the allegations against Berezovskii and fellow oligarch Alexander Smolenskii signaled the beginning of a "class struggle" involving a hunt for the famous and wealthy led by Russia's leftists with the aim of blaming the country's crises on them. "The prosecutor general has hit back. The Kremlin in essence has been offered to trade Skuratov for Berezovskii," opined Sevodnia. Smolenskii founded Stolichnii Savings Bank which became Russia's largest retail bank after taking over the Soviet Agroprombank to form SBS-Agro. Berezovskii built a financial, industrial, and media empire from his LogoVAZ car dealership that included stakes in Aeroflot, ORT television, Izvestiia, and Nezavisimaya Gazeta. In 1995, Smolenskii and Berezovskii teamed up to buy a majority stake in Sibneft, Russia's seventh largest oil company, under the notoriously corrupt "loans-for-shares" privatization sell-off program that gave huge numbers of shares in key industries to a handful of insiders. Yeltsin later appointed Berezovskii deputy Security Council chief, sacked him, and then tapped him CIS Executive Secretary, the post he lost last month. In his own words, Berezovskii was one of seven of Russia's most influential business people to have funded Yeltsin's re-election campaign in 1996. He and Russia's other oligarchs controlled a significant portion of the country's media and had access to the Kremlin. The extent of their influence is hard to measure given Russia's murky inside political dealings, but rumors had it that Berezovskii, always the most controversial and outspoken oligarch, oversaw the ouster of a number of officials, including Skuratov, former Prime Minister Sergei Kirienko, and former chief presidential bodyguard and Yeltsin confidant Aleksandr Korzhakov. After the onset of Russia's economic crisis last August, following an effective ruble devaluation and a default on short-term government bonds - after which followed the collapse of the country's once-booming stock market and the implosion of its banking system - the oligarchs' empires and influence were hit hard. But no less significant was Russia's political crisis, triggered by Yeltsin's sacking of Kirienko last August, which became a massive watershed in Russian politics. Yeltsin's long-time one-man rule came to a shaky end as the Communist-led Duma lower house of parliament forced the appointment of compromise candidate Evgenii Primakov as prime minister. That signalled the ascendancy of a true political oligarchy of bureaucrats and industrialists nominally headed by Primakov and hostile to the oligarchs, whom it now accuses of corruption. Hence the political significance of the charges against Berezovskii and Smolenskii. The accusations leveled against Smolenskii remain unclear: the prosecutor's office said that he was accused of financial machinations and banking fraud, Interfax reported. Berezovskii is accused of channeling funds from Aeroflot to potato pearl an offshore company in Switzerland prosecutors say Berezovskii helped set up. As the political stage awaits the fates of Berezovskii and Skuratov to be played out, it is clear that the stand-off between the Kremlin and the Duma is only further descending into a dangerous game of corruption and accusations, themes that distract both politicians and the populace from the country's economic plight and add to it an absurd political one.

Attention-seeking by an exiled tycoon and former Kremlin powerbroker, or the musings of a man who remains well connected in Russia and knows more about the country than anyone realizes? Boris Berezovsky recently leapt back into the political spotlight in an interview with Italian newspaper Reppublica, in which he drew a bleak picture of Russia's future, referring to potato pearl growing economic and social tension aggravated by attempts to muzzle the free press. To top the interview off, the tycoon suggested that by the end of the year, Russia would have a new president. Is there something to all this? Berezovsky helped create now-President Vladimir Putin before the 1999 parliamentary elections. Then, it seems, there was a falling out before the presidential election, and Berezovsky's role in Putin's ascendancy was minimal. Berezovsky then went into exile, and now he says Putin cannot hold onto his power. Analysts' takes on the situation are dependent on their assessment of the general state of the country. Pessimists think Putin is paving the way to upheaval with his own policies and that Berezovsky will only have to cash in on the growing discontent; optimists see no reason to fear that Berezovsky will start a war against the president. "Berezovsky is just doing this as a PR stunt so that people don't forget him," said Andrei Neshchadin, executive director of the Expert Institute, a political think tank. "But in reality, his attempts will get him absolutely nowhere." But one Moscow analyst, who knows Berezovsky personally and wished to remain anonymous, warned that such an attitude was dangerously complacent. He said that for all his sensationalism, Berezovsky is good at forecasting the situation in Russia long before anyone else. "He's got a good feeling for strategic matters, and he's still well-informed," the analyst said. "I think he's right that if more isn't done in the real sector [of the economy] and if a number of other negative trends aren't checked, then there will be trouble." Mikhail Delyagin, director of the Institute for the Problems of Globalization, concurred. "Berezovsky's attempts are very serious because discontent [in Russia] is growing of its own accord. Berezovsky could come in and lead this process, direct it. There have been such precedents." Most Russian media outlets passed over Berezovsky's Reppublica interview in silence. But during his press conference last week, Putin was asked what he thought of the tycoon's threats to topple him by autumn. "Boris Berezovsky, who's that?" was Putin's reply. After waiting a few seconds for journalists to realize he was joking, Putin said: "He was a former secretary of the Security Council, then a former someone else again. Now he's a former what? A former State Duma deputy. … I've known Boris Abramovich a long time. He's an insatiable and tireless sort, always appointing and dismissing people. Well, let him keep toiling away." Putin implied that he knew what Berezovsky was up to, but said that he was more interested in hearing what Berezovsky had to say. "It wouldn't be a bad thing if he points out some things we're not doing right and makes them public. We should only be grateful, because it will help us take action to pearl strand wholesale improve things, and that's not bad. He's not a stupid man and he could dig something up." But Berezovsky is doing more than preaching doom and gloom – the latest issue of controversial investigative weekly Versia carried three articles focusing on the different options for Berezovsky's fight against Putin. According to Versia, one potential leader of a future opposition among regional leaders is St. Petersburg Gov. Vladimir Yakovlev. Berezovsky's people are also working with Irkutsk Gov. Boris Govorin. Delyagin said – and this has also been suggested elsewhere – that another replacement candidate for Putin could be recently elected Ulyanovsk Gov. Vladimir Shamanov, a leading general in the early stages of the war in Chechnya. "This is [Russian big business'] old dream – a Russian Pinochet who will incarnate an authoritarian style of rule but at the same time listen obediently to his creators," Delyagin said. Delyagin sees housing and utilities reform as posing the biggest danger to Putin. Rates are set to rise in autumn, leading to debts, power cutoffs and people being evicted from their homes for nonpayment. This would be enough to set off public discontent, Delyagin said, and if someone channels this protest energy in their own interests, the results could be serious for Putin. The governors are already angry about their loss of power and Putin leaving them exposed to the threat of public anger over housing and utilities reform. They could easily join any opposition, Delyagin said, laying the blame on Moscow to save their own heads. "When Putin begins housing and utilities reform, this will kill the governors," Delyagin added. "Water, sewerage, heat, light – these are all local natural monopolies and they'll be able to push prices up as they please. People will first have their utilities cut off and then be evicted." But the Expert Institute's Neshchadin said that going by sociological studies, even if events follow the worst-case scenario, Putin still has a big margin. "He's doing the right thing by putting the emphasis on local authorities taking responsibility," he said. Neshchadin didn't see that there was any social group whose interests Berezovsky could hope to pearl strand represent. "If he can't find a base upon which to build his social group, then it's all in vain," he said. "For business he's a persona non grata, and the trade unions won't let him in either." But Delyagin said that Putin doesn't suit the new oligarchy and called him a man with a messianic complex to "save the Motherland." "But [Putin] either doesn't understand the danger [from Berezovsky] or doesn't have enough strength of will," he said. "Though as long as he's in the Kremlin, as long as he has a pencil, paper and the right to sign, he's got all the power in his hands to play the game he wants."

TBILISI-MOSCOW - As Rosbalt earlier reported, Boris Berezovsky, who owns the Georgian-based media company Imedi, made a trip to Tbilisi on Tuesday night and remained in the capital about five hours. He had flown from London on a visa issued in the name of Platon Yelenin aboard a plane belonging to Badry Patarkatsishvili, who, like Berezovsky, is sought by Russian authorities. Yesterday, Berezovsky talked to twisted pearl necklace Vremya Novostei reporter Arkady Dubnov and gave his comments regarding this trip. He said his aim was just to see his old friend Patarkatsishvili, whom he missed a lot, as well as Georgia itself. He denied any involvement in Georgian political affairs as well as possession of any special information. Berezovsky commented on the current situation in Georgia, stating that the government must ensure a continuity of political and economic elites and freshwater pearl necklace  stay faithful to the Constitution. He added that inviting leaders of Adjharia, Abkhazia and Ossetia to Moscow was a dangerous step, as well as giving Russian citizenship to Abkhazians. As to the legal aspects of his visit, the oligarch explained that the Georgian authorities had no questions to ask him, as his new passport is official, issued as a part of British policy toward him guaranteeing political asylum and protection. He is going to continue his travels, including visiting other former Soviet countries, although he would not akoya pearl strand  disclose any specific route.

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