FAS suggests exporting oil through exchange trading.

MOSCOW, March 6 (Itar-Tass) -- Russia's Federal Anti-Monopoly Service
FAS plans to ask the government to consider trading in the main export
items, first and foremost, crude oil, and also fertilizers and metals on
the Russian exchange, the FAS chief, Igor Artemiev told the media this
week.


He believes that the exchange trading will create oil price
indicators oust mediators, who are too numerous to count, from the market.
Also, the sale of export contracts through exchange trading will make it
possible to promptly charge export taxes. Simultaneously with the creation
of the mechanism of export trading there must be created "our own
indicator of crude oil, the way it was done in Saudi Arabia," the FAS
chief said, adding that in his opinion a country that accounts for 10
percent of the world oil trade has the right to do so.
Artemiev did not specify when this idea might materialize.
"Everything will depend on how the agencies concerned and the oil
producers react to this," he said, adding he hoped for the government's
understanding.

.Moscow to pay last respects to film director Vladimir Chebotaryov.

MOSCOW, March 6 (Itar-Tass) -- The ceremony of farewell with renowned
Soviet and Russian film director, Vladimir Chebotaryov, the author of the
legendary movie The Amphibian Man will take place the Cinema House on
Saturday. Cremation is due at the Khovanskoye Cemetery, the Film
Directors' Gild, of which Chebotaryov had been a member since the moment
it was founded, has told Itar-Tass.
Vladimir Chebotaryov's rise to fame began with his 1961 release called
The Amphibian Man. During the first year it was seen by an audience of 60
million in the Soviet Union. It was a debut for such future film stars as
Anastasiya Vertinskaya and Vladimir Korenev. Also, it featured Mikhail
Kozakov, who was at that time at the beginning of his career, but had
participated in several other films before.
The Amphibian Man - a romantic thriller with a profound social message
- was instantly popular in this country and abroad, and the music to it,
authored by Andrei Petrov, is still a hit that continues to be played in
concert and on the radio and television stations.
And still, the most dramatic and fundamental moment in Chebotaryov's
biography was World War II. At the age of 19 he graduated from an
artillery academy in Rostov and was dispatched to the frontline. After a
grave injury he was discharged from the military service and returned to
Moscow. He graduated from the film directors' department of the national
institute of cinematography. His teacher was Mikhail Romm, a Soviet film
classic in his lifetime.
The Amphibian Man was his first full-length independent work.
Chebotaryov has over fifteen releases to his credit. Most of them are
devoted to the generation that graduated from school in 1941, the year
when the Nazi invasion began, and went to war.
He is well-remembered for his war films, such as The Battalions are
Asking for Fire, Wild Honey, and How are You to be Called Now?.

.Six-point earthquake rocks Indonesia.

VLADIVOSTOK, March 6 (Itar-Tass) -- An earthquake measuring 6.5 points
has rocked Indonesia. A powerful earth tremor was registered at 16:06 GMT
(19:06) Moscow time on Friday, March 6.
The center of the quake was at a depth of 22 kilometers, southwest of
the Island of Sumatra, 165 away from the city of Bengkulu, 700 kilometers
from Indonesia's capital Jakarta, the United States Geological Survey has
said.
There have been no immediate reports of the effects.

.Ceremony of farewell with actor Yuri Stepanov due at his theater 11
am.

MOSCOW, March 6 (Itar-Tass) -- Moscow's Pyotr Fomenko Studio theater
on Saturday will be open at 11:00 on Saturday for the ceremony of last
farewell with one of its favorite and most loved actors, Yuri Stepanov.
The ceremony will last till 13:00. The actor, who died a tragic death in a
road accident earlier this week, will be buried and the Troyekurovo
Cemetery.
Theatergoers and television viewers will long remember Stepanov's
stocky build and his open face radiating charm. Despite his
humpty-dumpty-like, clumsy appearance he was capable of playing any part
in the world. He could by lyrical, or mercilessly ironic, but he could be
cruel and vicious. His control of his face was so precise, and his
expressions - so diverse, that he could impersonate any type of character.
Stepanov looked equally convincing as a very touchy and awkward doctor
in The Actress, a former thief in The Penal Battalion, a prosecutor's
office detective in the television series Mister Detective, or a gangster
in The Blind-Man's-Bluff.
"Yuri was a remarkable professional, someone who could be equally
persuasive and convincing in very different images - from a doctor in The
Wild Field to a career military in Cargo-200," says the president of the
Guild of Cinema Experts and Cinema Critics, Viktor Matizen. "Stepanov was
invariably true-to-life, whoever he might be asked to play. And, what is
most important, he created a certain mood, a certain aura around him and
his character."
Yet, his theater remained central to Stepanov all the time.
"Pyotr Fomenko says - never lose the place where you may take refuge
to lick your wounds till they heal," the actor used to say. "At this
moment in my life my theater is precisely the kind of place for me where I
come back to lick my wounds."
The audiences of the Pyotr Fomenko Studio will long remember Stepanov
for his unprecedented and accurate performance in The Noise and the Fury;
Order of St. Vladimir, third Degree; Wolves and Sheep; One Month in a
Village; Chichikov - the Dead Souls Volume Two; The Moth, Three Sisters
and others.
Late at night on March 2 Yuri Stepanov was on his way home after an
evening performance. He flagged down a car for a lift. Shortly afterwards
a terrible road accident followed. Stepanov died instantly. He was 42.

-0-str