The Wheels of History Pulling Back the Press? A kopeck for thinking of Russia. AAT.
Beglov Approved The city’s Legislative Assembly on Wednesday approved the appointment of Alexander Beglov as first vice governor, having previously rejected him. Page 2.
W W W. S P T I ME S RU S S I A . C O M
FRID AY, JULY 5 , 2002
Lawmakers draft new media bill. Page 4.
FRIDAY Thunderstorms High 25, Low 14 SATURDAY Cloudy High 20, Low 12
SUNDAY Partly Cloudy High 21, Low 12 MONDAY Showers High 21, Low 13
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Pointing the Finger An official in the pro-Moscow government of Chechnya has accused federal authorities of sabotaging a policing-transfer scheme. Page 3.
Cruel Tides The flooding that struck the south of Russia last week has washed away one town’s efforts at starting afresh. Page 4.
The Way Ford Ford Motor Co. is about to open its first plant in Russia, and has fixed the price of its standard model at just over $10,000. Page 5.
Playing Chicken According to a senior U.S. official, Russia and the United States are close to reaching an agreement over imports of U.S. poultry. Page 5.
WOLFGANG RATTAY/REUTERS
Relatives of some of the children killed in the crash arriving at the airport of Friedrichshafen on Lake Constance on Thursday.
Opinion. Page 6. Class Ads. Pages 7-8. World News. Page 9. Jobs. Page 10. CENTRAL BANK RATE
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By Alexander G. Higgins
Anger with Spanish officials over delays in granting visas turned to relief for five people who were not among the passengers on the doomed Bashkortostan flight. Page 3.
After the Korean confrontation at sea, the North looks for an agreement while, in the South, demonstrations go on. Page 9.
FRIDAY SATURDAY SUNDAY MONDAY TUESDAY
Families Mourn Victims of Crash
Twist of Fate
The Great Divide
SUNRISE SUNSET
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Police Scheme Looking to Future By Claire Bigg STAFF WRITER
The threats of terrorism, narcotics-related crime and soccer hooliganism are all issues that have surfaced only in recent years for Russian law-enforcement officers, while their British counterparts have already gained a good deal of experience in dealing with them. But officials involved in a 10-year old cooperative program between the Metropolitan Police Training Center, located in the London suburb of Hendon, and St. Petersburg’s Interior Ministry University, say that the aims of their program are much broader in scope and time frame. “The aim of the exchange program is not to tell Russians what to do, but to show them how we work,” said Richard Farmery, the head of External Liaison for the Metropolitan Police Service, in an interview during his visit to St. Petersburg on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the program last week.
“The program will bear fruit in the long run, once the young Russian cadets who were trained in England are in positions of power and can bring bout some changes on their own,” he said. In each of the last 10 years, 20 of the top students from the Interior Ministry’s university have taken part in a five-week exchange program at the Hendon center, where they receive training in a number of fields, including forensic science, interrogation techniques, crime investigation and prevention, as well as gaining extensive practical experience in patrolling the streets of London, accompanied by British police officers. The exchange program was created in July 1992, when Peter Imbert, then commissioner of London’s Metropolitan Police Service, came up with the idea following a visit to St. Petersburg, as a way to assist Russia in reforming its police forces and to facilitate a dialogue with Western Europe. The pro-
gram received its initial funding from Britain’s Know How Fund, which was targeted to provide bilateral development assistance to countries under transition in Central and Eastern Europe and Asia. See COPS, Page 2
UEBERLINGEN, Germany — Grieving families piled flowers on Thursday around the airliner wreckage that fell from nearly 10 kilometers up with their children on board, and investigators said the Russian pilot had been given just 44 seconds warning before crashing into an oncoming cargo plane. The initial results of a German-led inquiry into the collision — which killed 72 people, 45 of them Russian children headed for an end-of-school beach vacation — turned fresh attention on Swiss air-traffic control, which took charge of the planes shortly before the crash. The Swiss have already said that there was only one controller in the Zurich tower at the time and that there should have been two because a crashavoidance system was out of service for maintenance. The second controller had taken a break. Chief German investigator Peter Schlegel said analysis of radio transmissions showed the Bashkirian Airlines Tu-154 was given six seconds less than the 50-second warning Swiss and German officials had previously reported. That is nearly a minute less than the Swiss had claimed shortly after the crash. The Russian-made Tupolev began to dive just 14 seconds after the initial warning and 30 seconds before the crash. The Russian plane was responding to a second Swiss warning. “The Tupolev should have begun descending, at the latest, one minute before the crossing point,” Schlegel said, at a news conference in the northcentral German city of Braunschweig. But he said it was too early to determine blame in the collision with a Boeing 757 DHL International delivery-service jet just before midnight Monday. Both pilots on that plane died. Schlegel denied a Russian news report that experts decoding the planes’ flight data and cockpit voice recorders found the Russian pilot asked to change course one minute before the collision. The children — all gifted students from Ufa, an industrial city in Bashkortostan region in the southern Ural Mountains — were heading to Spain as a reward for getting top grades. On Thursday, parents and other relatives of the young Russians hugged, cried, piled flowers and placed wreaths at the wreckage in a solemn farewell. Some of the 150 family members were so overcome with grief they needed medical treatment, officials said. Women leaned on one another in the sun as they walked from a golden See CRASH, Page 3