The prime minister has a 2 percent rating in public opinion polls. He was appointed by a lame-duck president with similarly microscopic approval ratings. Does that constitute the makings of a successful presidential campaign?

That's what political analysts across the country are asking.

President Boris Yeltsin has anointed Prime Minister Vladimir Putin his successor - something that would normally amount to
pearl necklace a political death sentence.

But despite the Kremlin's dark shadow hanging over him, analysts are not ruling out the possibility of Putin's winning the presidency.

"I think if he participates in the presidential race, his chances will be very high," said Gleb Pavlovsky, head of the Foundation of Effective Politics, a Moscow think tank.

"There is the power of incumbency he enjoys as prime minister - something that should not be underestimated. Who knew Stepashin before his appointment? Yet now he has a presidential rating, and Putin will have the same," Pavlovsky added.

Nikolai Popov, a scientific consultant at the Regional Political Research Agency, agrees. He believes aspects of Putin's persona that currently appear negative could be transformed into assets if used intelligently.

"Putin obviously needs to tactfully distance himself from the Kremlin and Yeltsin. But his reputation as a KGB officer - anathema to outside observers - could attract the support of a certain amount of the Russian electorate," he said.

"I have noticed that he has become a bit smoother," Popov observed. "So if he manages to convey this, along with the image of a strong person with a steady hand, it could play well."

Putin is believed to have initially hesitated about a presidential run.

But former first deputy head of the presidential administration, Oleg Sysuyev, said according to
freshwater pearl earrings his information, Putin is beginning to appreciate the attractiveness of the presidential throne.

"It seemed to me that he initially had a problem with his own desire [for the presidency]," Sysuyev said. "But people now tell me this is no longer the case."

Sources close to Putin say the prime minister is currently seriously considering options for transforming his image. Three possibilities have come to the fore.

The first came from Kremlin political advisers: to try to foster the perception of Putin as a modern-day Yury Andropov.

Andropov led the Soviet Union for 15 months after having headed the KGB. Despite the fear the secret police inspired among the population in those days, Andropov is remembered as an honest man who sought to bring order to the country, chiefly by combating corruption.

After Putin was appointed prime minister, many commentators immediately drew the comparison. As a former secret service chief, Putin - with his reserved attitude and steely glaze - looked every inch the spy.

Andrei Ryabov of the Carnegie Endowment Center believes the Andropov image is powerful and resonates with the electorate. But he says Yevgeny Primakov, the former premier and front-runner in presidential polls, is more likely to successfully exploit it.

"Primakov was also in the secret service and symbolizes political stability. Putin simply does not have the time to be able to match the former prime minister in constructing the Andropov persona," Ryabov argued.

Pavlovsky dismisses the Andropov analogy. "It's a silly retrospective observation," he said. "Andropov's image was based on the power he had accumulated before [he became leader], and he was appointed, not elected.

"Moreover, in relation to
twisted pearl necklace the fight against corruption, Andropov's successes were less than impressive. What counts is that a person is not tainted by corruption. In that sense, Putin is in a strong position," Pavlovsky said.

Another option discussed in the narrow circle surrounding the prime minister is that of a "Chubais with a human face." The authors of this strategy believe that presenting Putin as possessing former First Deputy Prime Minister Anatoly Chubais' reformist zeal in a more electorally palatable manner could prove attractive.

But from the point of view of a professional pollster such as Nikolai Popov, the suggestion is doubtful, bordering on the absurd.

"There is no electorate for Chubais in this country now," Popov said. "Besides, it is impossible to combine a powerful determination to implement liberal reforms with attention to the social sector. The two are incompatible."

The last possibility is for the prime minister to create and develop his own image. But both Pavlovsky and Ryabov expressed bemusement with the idea.

"It's nonsense to talk about constructing someone's charisma. A person either has it or doesn't. And in Putin thus far, I haven't noticed any charisma," Pavlovsky said.

"Putin simply does not have the personality," Ryabov concurred. "He looks like a good secret service agent, but he is not a public politician."

But other experts said a security service background does more than just impress the population. That three presidential "pretenders" - Primakov, Stepashin and Putin - hail from the security services is not just coincidence to many political observers.

The Federal Security Service (FSB), a successor to the KGB, is the only institution that still has a network in the regions, Ryabov said. The organization knows what is happening outside the capital, giving Russia's last three prime ministers a solid understanding of the country's provinces.

Pavlovsky says regional governors are now most interested in solving the problem of Russia's succession of power and will take the new prime minister seriously.

"If Putin proposes a real answer to
potato pearl the succession question, he has a chance [for the presidency]. It is not how the masses respond [to Putin] that is important, but what the regional elite thinks," Pavlovsky argued. "The governors want access to federal government support."

However, Ryabov sees no possibility of Putin's taking the top job "short of subverting the constitution by canceling elections."

"There is too little time to 'sell him' to the electorate," Ryabov said. Furthermore, the level of distrust among the population toward the Kremlin - of which Putin is a representative - is so strong that it is impossible for him to become president by democratic means."

In Russia, it often seems that an IPO is really just a private placement with some PR thrown in. This would appear to wish pearl gift set be the case with the recent announcement by Russia's major pharm aceutical company Apteka 36.6 to offer 20 percent of its shares on the Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange (MICEX) on Jan. 23. The company plans to offer 1.6 million of its common shares at $11-$16 per share.

Apteka 36.6 also plans to offer an over-allotment option, placing an additional 280,000 shares. The final price of the stake will be set on Jan. 22. It has refused to identify the amount it expects to
twisted pearl necklace
 make from the offering, but the market expects it to be in the area of $20 million to $25 million. The ING bank will be the placement's underwriter and lead manager, while MDM-Bank has been chosen as co-manager.

In almost every sense, the company's plans sound like an IPO, but there is a catch. A source close to this story told IA that the "public" part in this offering is largely absent. In fact, this source told us that the use of the term "private placement" would be more appropriate. The new shareholders have already been decided upon.

In itself this is fine, but the new freshwater pearl bracelet shareholders are expected not to be interested in trading their shares. Thus, we can expect not to see much liquidity in the stock. And the real IPO, which in theory will be its third, is not expected for at least a couple of years.

As Russia and the wider world looked on anxiously, the last hope of saving any of the 118 crew trapped on board the Kursk submarine rested solely on a British high-tech mini-sub being rushed to the Barents Sea accident site Saturday.

But most observers said Friday that even if the British sub did manage to dock with the Kursk ¡ª which has been lying on the ocean floor for seven days ¡ª it would probably be too late. The Russian Navy had said that the crew would run out of oxygen Friday, but Navy officials later said the air supply could perhaps last into next week.

The Kursk is lying 106 meters (350 feet) below the surface of the Arctic Barents Sea at an angle of 20 degrees and is said to be sinking into the mud.

The Russian Navy continued to
twisted pearl necklace
 attempt to dock with the submarine through Thursday evening and Friday morning, with RTR State Television's Arkady Mamontov ¡ª reporting from a ship above the accident site ¡ª saying that a Russian rescue capsule had docked with the Kursk late Thursday evening.

But, according to Mamontov, the capsule was forced to disengage when it did not have sufficient electricity reserves to decompress the chamber between itself and the Kursk. It was also reported that the hatch on the Kursk was damaged.

Mamontov also cited Russian officials as saying that debris had been discovered around the submarine, which they implied was evidence that the disaster was the result of a collision rather than an internal explosion.

Although public faith in the military top brass has evaporated over the past week ¨C due to its handling of the crisis ¨C a report that the submarine's periscope was still raised lent credence to the theory that the Kursk was preparing to surface when it collided with something.

But Western news agencies, citing unidentified U.S. intelligence sources, said American vessels in the Barents Sea area had detected two explosions on Aug. 12, the day the accident happened, and the second was a major one. Analysts said a possible scenario was that a torpedo in the Kursk's forward torpedo compartment had exploded, triggering a much bigger explosion in an adjoining torpedo section.

The Kursk can carry up to 28 torpedoes and anti-submarine missiles, each with warheads weighing up to
akoya pearl necklace 450 kilograms (1,000 pounds). Though the vessel is designed to withstand a single enemy hit, a blast of a few torpedo warheads would cause catastrophic damage.

Video footage of the submarine taken by an unmanned Navy vessel showed massive damage to the bow and conning tower of the submarine. Russian officials said the Kursk's crew probably had no time to escape "a catastrophe that developed at lightning speed."

The vessel's commanding officers would normally be in a section just below the conning tower, and experts said their chances of survival were minimal. Other senior naval personnel were also on board the Kursk to observe the war games the submarine was engaged in.

Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov, the head of the government commission reviewing the rescue effort, said there was a "terrifying hole" on the starboard side of the submarine, Russian news agencies reported.

"A rather big part of the crew was in the part of the boat that was hit by the catastrophe that developed at lightning speed," Klebanov said Thursday. He said there had been no sounds within the Kursk for a long time.

It had been reported that a tapping sound signaling "SOS" had been heard from the submarine until Tuesday, though there were conflicting statements on sounds from the submarine, with some officials saying nothing had been heard from the Kursk since it sank last Saturday.

All eyes and hopes Friday were on the British submarine, the LR5, which is described as something like an "underwater helicopter." It is built of glass-reinforced plastic and steel to withstand the massive pressures encountered at such depths. But the LR5 has only been used in exercises, and its capacity in real conditions remains unknown.

The plan is for three Russians, including a doctor, to join the LR5's crew in the first attempt to
freshwater pearl earrings open an escape hatch on the Kursk's stern. The LR5 will also carry oxygen, food and electric power.

Reaction by the Russian media to the handling of the tragedy by the government and military has been scathing.

The Komsomolsky Pravda newspaper published a special issue Friday with a list of the men aboard the Kursk, claiming it had paid Navy officials 18,000 rubles ($650) for the names. The navy has not officially said who is on board, fueling further criticism of the military's slow, confused and often contradictory response to the disaster.

President Vladimir Putin has also come in for the harshest criticism of his career over the affair.

"Those dying in the Barents Sea did not merit our statesmen interrupting their summer holidays." Izvestia wrote, referring to Putin choosing to go on vacation in Sochi even after news of the tragedy broke.

Putin, who announced Friday he was cutting short a meeting in Yalta with CIS leaders to return to Moscow, responded to the criticism, telling Interfax that when he heard of the accident his initial reaction was to travel to the scene.

"But I stopped myself from doing so, and I think I did the right thing," Putin said. "The arrival of non-specialists and top-ranking officials at the emergency area does more harm than good."

"As soon as communication with the submarine was disrupted on Aug. 12, it was clear that there was an emergency. A rescue operation began immediately," Putin added. "The other thing is that information on [the accident] was released to media later. You can criticize [Navy officials] for that or you can try to understand that they had to
pearl necklace figure out what was going on before issuing an official statement."

Necessity, goes the proverb, is the mother of invention. A rather overbearing mother in the case of Russia, but it makes Russians a very inventive people. Couple this with the thieving urge noted by even such patriots as 18th-century historian Nikolai Karamzin, and what do you get ¨C corruption, banking scandals and so on.

The average American might not know Karamzin, but they're getting the idea that you can't trust those diabolically inventive Russians. Some of the stories of Russian antics in the citadel of world capitalism have now passed into history. Russian comedian Mikhail Zadornov has tales of Soviet immigrants back in the 1970s weighing their own bananas in American shops. They'd do no more than brush the scales with the bananas, paying a few cents rather than a couple of dollars.

American salespeople eventually caught on and don't allow that kind of self-service anymore. But Russian inventiveness has since found plenty of other outlets. Take the scandal involving $900,000 in Salt Lake City at the end of last year. The capital of Utah, which is to hold the winter Olympics next year, has been getting visits from foreign Olympic committee officials, among them two representatives of the Russian Olympic Committee, coming to potato pearl open bank accounts and prepare the ground for their national teams.

The catch is that these two Russians ¨C they had Russian passports and (probably fake) IDs signed by the Russian Olympic Committee president ¨C opened bank accounts, received checkbooks and made off with $900,000. It's entirely possible the two fraudsters weren't Russian citizens at all, but that they used Russia as a cover says something in itself.

It may be unfortunate for Russia's image, but there are reasons why Russians get painted in such black colors in America. Just take another story of two Petersburgers who moved to New York, rented a car and set about rifling through the contents of mailboxes in the city's poorer districts. What they were after was envelopes containing credit cards, phone accounts and other financial documents. The swindlers' enterprising operations in cashing in other people's bank checks and withdrawing money using others' credit cards came to an end when they were caught by an old woman.

Her suspicions were aroused when she saw them come three times in one day to the same mailbox, knowing that a federal welfare check was due that day.

In Los Angeles, Russians, who had caught on to twisted pearl necklace the American love of various charities and funds, gathered donations for all kinds of monuments, environmental causes and people in need. Needless to say, the money didn't reach its stated destination. One pair of Russians even collected a tidy sum in the name of protecting dolphins, though they'd probably never seen a dolphin in their lives.

Another Russian opened a mobile fortune-telling clinic in California using a van stolen in Colorado. In just a couple of weeks, he diddled naive Californians out of more than $50,000 with his dubious consultations, but was caught after two old ladies called the police.

On a smaller scale, there's the age-old Russian love of getting something for nothing. When a group of high-placed Russian officials arrived in the United States to observe the presidential elections, they brought with them a host of respectable-looking chief secretaries and security people.

But the minute the bosses were busy in meetings, their respectable subordinates waiting in the reception areas of reputable American institutions stormed the telephones, calling Krasnoyarsk, Lipetsk and everyone back home. One Ukrainian intern in a well-known Washington foundation ran up $2,000 worth of calls back home from the office phones.

It might be some consolation to the average Russian that at least in all these cases, the people being taken for a ride are gullible Americans rather than unfortunate victims in Russia.

But the downside is that none of this will do anything to akoya pearl necklace persuade the average American, or the country's new president and his team, to change their perceptions of Russia.

(Yury Sigov is Washington bureau chief for Noviye Izvestia and a regular columnist for The Russia Journal.)

WASHINGTON - US authorities arrested former Kremlin property manager Pavel Borodin solely on a request from Switzerland which is seeking his prosecution on money laundering charges, a State Department official said Thursday."Mr. Borodin was arrested in response to a request from the Swiss government," the official told reporters on condition of anonymity.
Borodin, a confidant of former Russian president Boris Yeltsin, was arrested by agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation late Wednesday as he arrived in the United States at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport.
The arrest of Borodin, who was traveling to attend Saturday's inauguration of US President-elect George W. Bush, prompted an official protest from the Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, who demanded Borodin's immediate release.
The State Department official said pearl strand Washington was aware of news reports about Ivanov's protest but had not yet received it and referred all other questions about the case to the Department of Justice which oversees the FBI and will handle Borodin's extradition proceedings.
Switzerland launched an international search request for Borodin in January 2000 after an arrest warrant was issued by Geneva authorities in connection with an inquiry into two Swiss-based construction firms.
Swiss federal police spokesman Folco Galli said Bern would be asking Washington for a speedy extradition.
"We have a period of 40 to 60 days to proceed and we are going to ask for the extradition," he said.
Borodin has been under investigation for having allegedly taken at least 25 million dollars (27 million euros) in kickbacks for awarding lucrative construction contracts, including the renovation of the Kremlin.
In December, Russia's top prosecutor formally closed an investigation into the Kremlin scandal linked to two Swiss construction firms that won the contracts -- Mabetex and Mercata Trading.
Borodin's lawyer in Geneva, Dominique Poncet, said the situation was not a common one, pointing out that money laundering can only exist when a crime has been previously committed.
The Russians do not have any charges against him, Poncet said.
He said Borodin's defence was being organised in the US.
Borodin's lawyer in Moscow Pavel Kuznetsov said earlier that Borodin's arrest was absolutely illegal and could lead to a "major international and diplomatic scandal."
Borodin, 54, now holds a largely ceremonial post as chairman of an informal Russia-Belarus union. Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko denounced the arrest as an insult to pearl strand wholesale both Moscow and Minsk.
"The United States of America is responsible for this diplomatic scandal," Lukashenko said in a nationally televised address.
Once viewed as one of the most powerful people in the Kremlin, Borodin was one of the first officials removed from the Kremlin by President Vladimir Putin last July.