Politics and business

This new research was conducted by Olga Kryshtanovskaya, a respected academic, for the Centre for the Study of the Elite, part of the prestigious Academy of Sciences.

It confirms that the siloviki - ex-KGB operatives or those working for its successor organisation, the FSB - have done well in President Putin's Russia.

It has long been thought that their influence was growing. But this first, concerted attempt to provide empirical evidence of its scale, has produced some surprising results.

Among the presidential administration, members of the government, deputies of both chambers of parliament, regional heads, as well as the boards of Russia's top state corporations, four in five officials worked for the KGB, or continue to work for one or more of its successor organisations.

The research also suggests the political and business elites are rapidly coalescing, with some key industrial figures, such as the head of the state weapons export agency, also from the same security service heritage.

Contrast

How different Russia looks from other formerly communist countries in eastern Europe, where there have been attempts to identify individuals who worked for Soviet-era security services, many of which were highly repressive.

Some of these individuals have been put on trial for their alleged crimes.

But perhaps more significantly, there has been a real effort to keep them out of politics and big business.

But whatever it means for Russia's future as a democracy - or not - so far, unhappiness about Russia's new ruling class has been expressed only by the country's beleaguered liberal minority.

"That was long ago. It belonged to the days of Stalin," Velichko told Die Welt newspaper. He was referring to Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, who in the 1930s led a campaign of political persecution, repression and executions.

"In those days there was a special department called "V", which handled the liquidation of political opponents," said Velichko, who also heads the Veterans of Foreign Intelligence.

Asked about the assassination of Bulgarian dissident writer Georgi Markov, who was killed with a poison dart coated with deadly ricin shot from an umbrella in 1978, decades after Stalin's death, Velichko said this was probably the last one.

"In the system of Russia's secret services there was and is no department for liquidations," he said.

Velichko was asked if some people in his organisation might have wanted to settle scores with Litvinenko. He said, "No".

"I see it (Litvinenko's murder) as a dispute among criminals," he said.

At the same time, Velichko said Litvinenko had revealed secrets, which "made him a traitor under the law."

In a statement associates released after his death, Litvinenko accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of ordering his killing. The Kremlin has denied involvement.

POSSIBLE SUSPECT

German police vowed on Wednesday to examine the validity of comments by a Russian businessman Dmitry Kovtun, a contact of Litvinenko's, that he must have picked up traces of polonium from the murdered man when they met in mid-October.

The mid-October meeting in London was well before Litvinenko fell ill on November 1. A German prosecutor has said Kovtun could be a possible suspect in the case.

Kovtun, who also met Litvinenko on the day he fell ill and who is now in hospital in Moscow, denies any part in Litvinenko's poisoning.

Police in Hamburg on Thursday rejected a newspaper report that Kovtun had been in Berlin earlier this week. Investigating officers still did not have contact with their Russian counterparts despite repeated requests for assistance from Moscow, police said.

Velichko also told Die Welt that the use of polonium 210 to kill Litvinenko was a crude assassination that would not have been used by Russia security services.

"Professionals don't use polonium," he said.

The British Times newspaper reported, without naming its sources, that Limarev had fled his home in the French Alps.

"I yesterday (Tuesday) met the police again to tell them about anonymous death threats," the Russian added, after telling AFP on December 7 that he feared for his life and was "ready to talk to British and Italian investigators."

Limarev declined to say whether investigators had been in touch with him.

The probe into Litvinenko's death has led from Britain to Germany and Moscow, where British detectives spent the last week.

Limarev said he gave Mario Scaramella, an Italian contact of Litvinenko, a memo accusing former Russian secret service agents of seeking to kill certain exiled Russians.

Scaramella met with Litvinenko in London the day he fell fatally ill. The Italian said they had discussed a Russian secret service hit-list on which both of their names figured.

"Mario did indeed receive information about this from my contacts and asked me if they were credible. I answered yes," Limarev earlier told AFP, confirming that the contacts were "contacts from Russia" whom he could not name.

"My name has been brought up in the case along with Litvinenko and

Scaramella," Limarev said. "And I really fear something might happen to me."

Litvinenko died on November 23 after being poisoned with the radioactive substance polonium-210. Scaramella also tested positive for polonium contamination but not at a deadly level.

Cuban officials are notoriously tight-lipped over the health of their President which they treat as a closely guarded state secret. While occasionally they have broken their silence to report that Mr Castro is suffering from a non life-threatening illness, these claims have been roundly discounted by Western sources.

Mr Castro's death, when it comes, is expected to have repercussions far beyond the shores of Cuba. On the one hand there are fears of an exodus of Cubans towards the US.

Equally, concerns have been raised that hardline anti-Castro groups in south Florida will stage their own attempt to destabilise the regime by sending a flotilla of ships to the island in expectation that Cubans will be prepared to rise up against the government - a scenario with potentially disastrous consequences.

Either way, political developments in Cuba have the potential to influence domestic politics in the US. When, in 2000, the then president Bill Clinton allowed the child Elian Gonzalez to be sent back to his homeland, the Cuban vote turned solidly Republican - and many blame the controversy for Al Gore's subsequent loss of the presidential election that year. Now, as the 2008 presidential campaign grinds into action, Cuba will again become an increasingly sensitive topic in America, especially as speculation surrounding Mr Castro's health mounts.

Cubans themselves are used to being told very little about the inner workings of their government on security grounds, but dissidents say uncertainty over the country's political future has fuelled impatience with the secrecy surrounding his health. While posters proclaiming "80 more years" of Castro's leadership are still hanging all over the capital, Havana, and the country decked the halls on Saturday for his birthday celebrations - for which he was himself absent - many Cubans doubt their leader will ever govern again.

Despite repeated assurances by the authorities - the most recent came last week as Vice-President Carlos Lage Davila spoke at the end of a conference on Mr Castro's place in history - that Mr Castro will return to lead Cuba for years to come, more and more people suspect he is close to death, even though they have been told little about his condition other than that he underwent emergency surgery to stop intestinal bleeding in July and is now recovering. "It's strange they have not said anything about Fidel," Orlando, a telephone company worker and government backer, told Reuters. "They must have their reasons, but I'm worried. It has been a long time since we heard about him."

Even at his 80th birthday celebrations, held with much fanfare over the weekend, Mr Castro did not get a mention other than a cursory "Viva Fidel" at the end of a speech by his brother, designated successor and acting President, Raul Castro. "People are convinced he has cancer," said Joel, a social worker. "We all expected to see him at the parade, and nobody said a word."

The US has begun moving terror suspects detained at Guantanamo Bay into a new $37m (£19m) maximum-security prison.

Forty-two prisoners were transferred from another high-security facility on the US naval base in eastern Cuba, the Associated Press reported.

The new 178-cell prison will allow commanders to close the wire-fence camp originally built for early detainees.

The US holds some 430 men at Guantanamo Bay on suspicion of links to al-Qaeda or the Taleban, most without charge.

UN human rights investigators and foreign governments have called on the US government to close the entire detention centre.

But the new facility has been built to provide more permanent secure accommodation for those judged to be "enemy combatants" and detained by the US military.

Guard security

The new facility is designed to limit contact between detainees and reduce the risks of attacks on staff, AP reported.

The individual cells contain long, narrow windows looking out towards communal areas furnished with metal tables and stools.

Designed as a communal living space, that area will now be off-limits.

"The new, climate-controlled camp is designed to improve quality of life for both detainees and the guard force," base Commander Robert Durand told AP.

An open-air recreation area has been divided into smaller spaces, which will hold only one detainee at a time.

There will be facilities for detainees to meet lawyers, plus medical facilities.

The triple suicides at Guantanamo Bay in June prompted fresh protests against the camp from lawyers and human rights activists.

A senior US state department official and a Navy admiral appeared to say the deaths were part of a co-ordinated attempt to discredit the US, calling them "a jihadi tactic" and an act of "asymmetrical warfare".

Many in Beirut say that U.S. failure to stop Israel's onslaught against Hezbollah last summer crippled the Lebanese government - a U.S. ally - while strengthening Hezbollah - a U.S. enemy. That created an environment in which the Shiite Muslim militia could call for overthrowing Sunni Muslim Prime Minister Fuad Saniora and his Cabinet.

"Hezbollah has more support in the population now because they are the 'victorious resistance,'" Cabinet member Ahmed Fatfat said. "And it weakened the government because we did not get any concessions ... the last war was a disaster for Lebanon and the image of the United States."

Fatfat, like several other Cabinet members, has been in hiding at the government building in downtown Beirut for days as tens of thousands of protesters outside demand a new administration led by Hezbollah, a group that's on the U.S. State Department's list of terrorist organizations.

The standoff between Shiite Hezbollah and its allies and the Christian and Sunni government has sparked street fighting in Beirut's neighborhoods and raised the specter of civil war.

It's also underscored a belief among some regional leaders that the United States has lost its footing in the Middle East. On Tuesday, the bipartisan Iraq Study Group recommended in Washington that the Bush administration reach out to Syria and Iran - U.S. foes - in a search for ways to resolve Iraq's violence. The group called for Syria to cease aid to Hezbollah and to stop trying to topple Saniora's government as part of a deal that might include Israel returning the Golan Heights to Syria.

But those suggestions seem behind the times as Hezbollah presses its campaign to force Saniora out.

Fatfat and other Lebanese officials said that while there was a complex set of reasons for the crisis - Syria is trying to derail a tribunal from investigating Syrian participation in political assassinations, Shiites long have felt underrepresented by their government, Iran is pushing against U.S. interests across the region - the conditions largely were set by U.S. actions during the conflict last summer.

The fighting began in July when Hezbollah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers, an act that began weeks of thunderous Israeli bombing and artillery barrages - often using munitions bought from U.S. suppliers - that killed at least 1,000 Lebanese, mostly civilians. Hezbollah answered by launching hundreds of rockets into Israel.

Saniora pleaded with American officials to intervene, but for weeks Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and others said there first must be a "durable solution," meaning primarily that Hezbollah had to be contained and then disarmed.

As the fighting stretched on for more than a month and the Bush administration didn't intervene, Saniora looked ineffectual, a nearly unforgivable sin in a region in which military force and political strength are often synonymous.

"This summer was a catastrophe on many levels. This summer was bad news," said a Western diplomat in Beirut, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation. "In general, Lebanon is in a much, much weaker position now than it was in June. There's no question at all levels - politically, economically, in terms of unity - everything is much worse now than it was in June."

How did the U.S. response contribute to that?

"It was painful to be here this summer, you know. I'll just leave it at that," the diplomat said.

Hezbollah officials have harped on the Lebanese government's reliance on U.S. help at a time when American policy makers weren't putting pressure on Israel to stop its aerial bombardment.

"It's no coincidence that all those who supported Israel in the war are today supporting what remains of this falling government," Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said Thursday night via video feed to a cheering crowd of thousands.

"Does any Lebanese accept ... supporting a government that George Bush and (Israeli Prime Minister) Ehud Olmert support?" he asked.

The sea of men, women and children booed and screamed for the government's downfall.

Asked for comment, a representative at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut referred a McClatchy reporter to remarks by Rice last summer in which she said any peace deal had to ensure that Lebanon didn't return to its "status quo," again meaning that Hezbollah must be brought under control.

But Hezbollah now appears more in control than ever.

The United Nations Security Council resolution - with American approval - that ended hostilities in August mandated that Lebanese and United Nations troops patrol southern Lebanon, Hezbollah's heartland. The introduction of soldiers in the south, where the militant group was used to complete freedom of movement, probably ordained that Hezbollah would move against the government.

Hezbollah "knew all along that Saniora's government is pro-American and wants to disarm them as a military organization," said Hilal Khashan, a political studies professor at the American University of Beirut who's written extensively about the group.

The push against Saniora was an easy sell to Hezbollah's rank and file.

"Saniora's government did not help us during the war," said Hussein Ali, who was sitting with a group of friends across from his shoe store in a southern suburb of Beirut.

Ahmed Musalmani, who sells ceramic tiles, added: "And Fuad Saniora was kissing Condoleezza Rice."

Rubble from Israeli bombing runs stood in piles throughout the neighborhood. Where buildings once stood, craters were carved in the ground. Collapsed roofs leaned against fragments of walls.

The two men were with a group that was heading to join the demonstration downtown outside the building where Fatfat and his fellow ministers were living behind armed guards.

"You cannot play with Hezbollah," Ali said. "We are going to bring down the government."