DUSHANBE - Russian border guards seized 12 kilograms (26.4 pounds) of heroin overnight on the Tajik-Afghan border, the border guards' press service said Monday.
Border guards tried unsuccessfully to detain a man crossing the Pyandzh River from Afghanistan into Tajikistan, the press service said. When their quarry fled back into Afghanistan, the border guards found a sack containing the heroin.
Russia has some 25,000 troops deployed in Tajikistan to help guard the border against drugs and weapons smugglers.
Last month, they seized more than 300 kilograms (660 pounds) of illegal narcotics, including 270 kilograms (594 pounds) of heroin, along the volatile 1,206 kilometer (744-mile) Tajik-Afghan frontier. //AP

MOSCOW - Embattled Russia coach Oleg Romantsev is embroiled in a row with Lokomotiv Moscow after suggesting that the club's keeper Sergei Ovchinnikov did not want to play for the national side.
"Usually, I don't like to comment on the national team coach, but now I must say something," Lokomotiv coach Yuri Syomin told a news conference at the weekend.
"Oleg Romantsev alleges that Ovchinnikov refuses to play for the Russian national team. This is simply not true".
Asked last Friday if he planned to recall Ovchinnikov to the national team, Romantsev told local media that he saw no role for the 31-year-old keeper in his squad.
"No, it's out of the question," replied Romantsev, who also coaches Russian champions Spartak Moscow.
"It's an honour to play for the national team for any player, but apparently not for Ovchinnikov."
"But if Ovchinnikov asks you, then what?" a reporter quipped, keeping up the pressure on Romantsev.
"Well, so far he only gives interviews, telling everyone what a great goalkeeper he is," the coach shot back.

ANGRY SYOMIN
Romantsev's remarks upset Syomin.
"I don't know how Romantsev will find a way out of this situation, but I don't think it is very nice to mislead public opinion with such rumours," the Lokomotiv coach said.
"I don't know, maybe Romantsev got this information from his assistants, then he ought to deal with that sort of assistant because Ovchinnikov has never refused to play for the national team," he added.
"I know for a fact that Ovchinnikov specifically returned to Russia this season to have a chance to play in the World Cup."
Ovchinnikov, who played for Lokomotiv from 1991 to 1997 before being sold to Portugal's Benfica, in January rejoined his old club on loan from Porto.
The Russian premier league club also issued a statement on Sunday, saying Romantsev's remarks "cast doubt on Lokomotiv Moscow and Sergei Ovchinnikov".
The controversy was another blow for Romantsev following Russia's second consecutive setback in World Cup warm-ups.
Last week, the Russians suffered an embarrassing 2-1 defeat to European soccer lightweights Estonia after being beaten 2-0 by Ireland in Dublin in February.
Romantsev has frequently been under fire for his comments about players.
Last month, Russian international Rolan Gusev claimed he was dropped for Estonia's friendly because he chose to move to CSKA Moscow from city neighbours Dynamo instead of joining Spartak.
"Ever since I decided against joining Spartak, I didn't rule out such an action," the CSKA winger said.
Last year, Romantsev labelled former Spartak captain Andrei Tikhonov, Yevgeny Bushmanov and Valery Kechinov as "finished and having no chance of making the national team".
That brought an angry response from Krylya Sovietov Samara boss German Tkachenko.
Tkachenko, who lured Tikhonov and Bushmanov to Samara, said the comments were "against any ethical norms which exist in professional football". //Reuters

SEATTLE - Ivan F. Novikoff, a Russian immigrant ballet master whose students included Robert Joffrey, has died. He was 102.
Novikoff, who died March 20 of pneumonia, traveled by bus around the northwestern United States to teach dance until after he turned 97, when he abandoned his rounds to care for his ill wife, Beuhal Kirberger Novikoff. She died at age 92.
"He never would retire," said his daughter, Anna Novikoff. "Till the day he died, he had one or two students."
Born in Kazan, Russia, Novikoff studied at the Imperial Ballet School along with Vaslav Nijinsky and Anna Pavlova.
He fled from Russia after the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, taught dance to the children of Russian soldiers in Harbin, China, and emigrated to the United States in 1923.
Settling in Seattle, he founded the Novikoff School of Russian-American Ballet and eventually opened more than 20 schools in Washington and Oregon states.
In 1944 he composed the ballet "Swan Queen and the Prince."
His thousands of students ranged from basketball players to Joffrey, who founded the Joffrey Ballet School-American Ballet Center in New York in 1952 and the Robert Joffrey Ballet in 1956.
In 1989, Novikoff was given the Governor's Heritage Award for significant cultural contributions to the state
Beside his daughter, Novikoff is survived by a sister, Tanya Weise, and two grandchildren.
Funeral services have been held. //AP

MOSCOW - Russia's oil production was temporarily reduced by 39,900 tons of oil (about 291,000 barrels) as a result of the change to daylight saving time, an oil official told RBC. Thus, Russia's budget will under-received about $2.6m in oil export revenues. The source said this was enough to justify Russia's rejection to implement its agreement with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to extend oil production cuts of 150,000 barrels a day into the second quarter of 2002.
Meanwhile, a leading oil analyst told RBC that changes to daylight saving time may have a negative impact on the implementation of the Russian federal budget, which relies heavily on oil and gas exports. According to experts, the Russian budget may under-receive about $30m (more than RUR 800m) in export revenues as a result of the change to daylight saving time over the next decade. This sum would be enough for paying about 650,000 monthly pensions.
Although some analysts say that these losses would be compensated for when daylight saving time ends, this is a pure theory. According to the Paris-based International Energy Agency, oil prices may fall significantly by the beginning of October. The agency official believes that oil will be replaced by gas condensate of higher quality, and by methane hydrate, which is already being produced by a number of large transnational oil companies. //RBC

TBILISI - A rally organized by the widow of Georgia's first post-Soviet president Sunday urged President Eduard Shevardnadze to introduce legislation to restore state privileges to her family.
About 500 people gathered in central Tbilisi in support of the request by Manana-Archvadze Gamsakhurdia, the widow of the late Zviad Gamsakhurdia.
Gamsakhurdia was ousted in 1992 and fought a short war in a bid to return to power. He died in mysterious circumstances in 1994, and his followers still staunchly oppose Shevardnadze.
The rally also commemorated the birthday of Gamsakhurdia, who would have been 63 on Sunday.
For the first time in 10 years, Gamsakhurdia supporters did not call for Shevardnadze's resignation. Instead, participants in the rally spoke out against the policy of Russia toward Georgia.
Mrs. Gamsakhurdia said, "today, when our nation is facing hardships, it should consolidate."
On Friday, the Georgian parliament adopted a bill commemorating the first president. //AP

ALMATY - Kazakh opposition leaders on Monday called on the embassies of the United States, Russia and several European countries to support the nation's democratic movement, while rival protesters traded barbs outside the embassy where an opposition leader sought refuge.
The opposition appeal followed the arrest last week of former Energy Minister Mukhtar Ablyazov, whom the government has accused of corruption, and the escape of Galymzhan Zhakiyanov, another opposition member facing an arrest warrant, into the French Embassy in Almaty. Both men are leaders of Kazakhstan's Democratic Choice, a new political movement dominated by former government officials who disagree with the policies of President Nursultan Nazarbayev.
"The authorities are exerting unprecedented pressure on the democratic opposition of Kazakhstan," leaders of Democratic Choice and another opposition movement, the Forum of Democratic Forces of Kazakhstan, said in an appeal to the embassies of France, the United States, Russia, Germany, Great Britain and Spain.
They accused the government of unleashing "a massive attack on freedom of speech, independent media and democratic parties," noting that more than four independent newspapers and several regional television companies had been shut down recently.
Outside the building housing the French, British and German embassies, human rights activists stood vigil to try to protect Zhakiyanov. Pro-government protesters also gathered alongside police, shouting anti-opposition slogans. Opposition members claimed that those demonstrators had been organized by the municipal government of Almaty, Kazakhstan's largest city, where many embassies are located despite the Kazakh government's move to a new capital, Astana.
"This is how the great conflict between the authorities and their opponents is starting," said Gulzhan Yergaliyeva, a leading member of Kazakhstan's Democratic Choice.
Nazarbayev, who has led the Central Asian country since the breakup of the Soviet Union, has shown little tolerance for dissent. His re-election in 1999 was criticized by international monitors as being rife with fraud.
Earlier this year, he warned that opposition rallies demanding elections at all levels of government could lead to civil war, and he called on prosecutors to launch investigations into opposition members' statements. The opposition has vowed to collect enough signatures to require a referendum overturning the current system, in which local officials are appointed to their posts. //AP

CHISINAU - About 3,000 Moldovans camped overnight into Monday outside government headquarters to demand the resignation of the ruling Communists amid tension over the disappearance of an opposition deputy.
Protesters, angered by what they say are government attempts to drag their former Soviet republic back into the sphere of its imperial master, Russia, erected tents on Chisinau's central square and vowed to keep up round-the-clock rallies.
More than 50,000 Moldovans had massed in Chisinau on Sunday to demand the Communists resign and call early elections in the country of four million wedged between Ukraine and Romania.
The ranks of the protesters began to swell again on Monday as schoolchildren, dodging classes, joined the campers.
The protests have been initiated by the nationalist opposition, which wants the Communists banned from government.
Protesters took to the streets in Moldova, one of Europe's poorest countries, in January when the government announced plans for schoolchildren to learn Russian alongside Moldovan, the national language which is identical to Romanian.
The demonstrations dwindled after the government scrapped the plan, but the disappearance of opposition deputy Vlad Cubreacov, a driving force behind the rallies, on March 21 has given new life to the protests.
The opposition nationalist pro-Romanian Christian Democratic People's Party says Cubreacov vanished after a driver dropped him off outside his home. The police have found no trace of him.
Communists hold 71 seats in the 101-seat parliament and took 50 per cent of the vote in elections a year ago, thanks to a strong power base in rural areas. But they are facing growing discontent over their failure to improve living standards.
More than 80 percent of Moldovans live below the poverty line of one dollar a day. Emigration, legal and illegal, is at a record high.
"We came here to win. We will stay on this square until the Communists resign," Yurie Rosca, leader of the Christian Democratic People's Party, told the crowd on Sunday. Banners read: "Down with the Communists" and "Stop Russification".
President Vladimir Voronin says the nationalists are waging a smear campaign against his party.
Many protesters vented their anger over what they said were government plans to drag Moldova away from its close links with Romania. Much of present-day Moldova once belonged to Romania and contacts across the border were severely restricted in communist times. //Reuters