Moscow rgn power utility to resume electricity supplies to all customers.

MOSCOW, January 5 (Itar-Tass) - Moscow region power utility MOESK
promises to resume supplies of electricity to all the customers on the
region's territory who were blacked out pending ruptures of transmission
lines under the burden of wet snow in the first days of January.
Vitaly Strugovest, MOESK's official spokesman told Itar-Tass late
night Tuesday that a part of the customers will start getting electricity
by the end of Wednesday under what the power industry here calls 'a
provisional pattern of supplies'.
This means that if a township or village should get electricity from
two supply centers under the permanent pattern, all the electricity will
be supplied from just one center for the time being.
According to Strugovets, "some 84 repair teams numbering 343 workers
will be working all through the early morning" to restore the damaged
power lines.
He said the officials derive their hope for the capability to live up
to the promises from the fact that the number of disconnected transformer
plants reduced to 370 from 640 between 18:00 hours and 22:00 hours Tuesday.
In the meantime, residents of the Moscow region have been experiencing
problems with electricity supplies for the twelfth day on end. The
information released by the Ministry for Emergency Situations and Civil
Defense /EMERCOM/ suggests that the electricity outages continued
affecting about 15,000 people in 199 townships and villages Tuesday night.
A total of 43 power transmission lines are still out of operation,
although "practically all the high-voltage transmission lines except two
are back into operation," Strugovets said.
"The latter two electricity feeding facilities don't play a crucial
role in the functioning of the energy system," he said.
Tuesday, Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko set forth a task to resume
full-scale servicing of all the customers in the Moscow region within a
three-day period.
He also said about two months will be needed after that to ensure the
reliability of all the power networks. As part of the effort, the Moscow
region power utility will be expected to clear and clean all the forest
cuts-through serving as corridors for the transmission lines.
The peak number of transformer substations affected by the electricity
outages in the wake of the January 2 heavy snowstorm in the Moscow region
reached 2,200.

.Russian icebreaker evacuating trawler to clear waters in Sea of
Okhotsk.

VLADIVOSTOK, January 5 (Itar-Tass) - Icebreaker Admiral Makarov is
waging its way through the thickest ice of the Sakhalin Bay in the Sea of
Okhotsk clearing the way to ice-free waters for the Mys Yelizavety trawler.
The caravan is moving at a speed of only 1.5 knots (2,700 meters per
hour). The trawler is drawn fore-to-aft right up to the icebreaker by
heavy-duty cables, and escorting it by its side in the same caravan is
another icebreaker, The Magadan.
The crews of the two icebreakers needed almost twenty-four hours to
get to the trawler stuck amid ice floes and pulled by their drifting
towards the continental shoals.
It is expected that the caravan will reach the waters suitable for
autonomous cruising before noon Wednesday.
According to officials at the Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk Maritime Rescue &
Coordination Center, the caravan is traversing the fields of hummocked ice.
The air temperature in the Sakhalin Bay is at around minus 17 degrees
Celsius and the wind is blowing at about 10 meters per second.
Weather forecasters say frost is likely to become more severe, making
the ice even stronger than now.
The ice hummocks in the Sakhalin Bay took three ships into their grips
December 30 - the floating factory Sodruzhestvo, the refrigerating ship
Bereg Nadezhdy, and the research ship Professor Kizivetter.
January 3, the icy trap trapped the trawlers Mys Yelizavety and Anton
Gurin.
The former ships turned out in the most problematic situation, as it
was separated from the continental shoals by a distance of less than a
kilometer, and assistance was rushed to the distress area to rescue its
78-strong crew, in the first place.
The total number of seamen aboard the ships stranded in the ice
exceeds 500. The Sodruzhestvo floating factory has the biggest crew of 340
persons.

.US, EU say regretting closure of OSCE's mission office in Belarus.

WASHINGTON, January 5 (Itar-Tass) - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton and the European Union's High Representative Catherine Ashton
"regret the decision by the Government of Belarus to terminate the mission
of the OSCE's Office in Minsk," says a joint statement issued the U.S.
Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs Philip J. Crowley and
Darren Ennis, a spokesperson for Ms Ashton.
"The mandate of the mission is not completed, as the OSCE's critical
assessment of the presidential elections indicates," the document says.
"The elections and their aftermath -- particularly the continuing
detention of presidential candidates and new detentions and raids
targeting the media -- represent a step backwards in the development of
democratic governance in Belarus," Clinton and Ashton claim. They call for
the immediate release of all detained.
"They also reiterate their call on the Belarusian authorities to
fulfill their commitments to the OSCE by reforming the election process
and providing greater respect for human rights," the statement goes on.
"The OSCE has carried out valuable work in the country, in particular
in promoting institution building and the rule of law and supporting the
development of civil society," it says. "The United States and the
European Union remain willing to assist Belarus in meeting its OSCE
commitments in the field of human rights and fundamental freedoms."
-0-kle