RUSSIA - July 4 - Yukos Chief Summoned In State Theft Inquiry.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the country's richest businessman and Yukos CEO, is summoned for questioning by federal prosecutors in connection with an investigation into the alleged theft of state assets. The summons follows the July 3 detention of the company's second largest shareholder Platon Lebedev in connection with the alleged theft of a state-owned stake in a fertiliser plant in 1994. He was arrested in his hospital bed. The head of Yukos' security department Alexei Pichugin was charged with being an accomplice in the murder of two individuals in 2002. Yukos rejects the charges. Liliya Shevtsova, senior associate of the Moscow Carnegie Centre, said: "This is a definite warning to Khodorkovsky to keep out of politics if he does not want to share the fate of Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky [two exiled oligarchs]. It is an alarming symptom". Political analyst Kiril Rogov said the arrests represented a new phase in the confrontation between Pres. Putin and the oligarchs. (The moves against Yukos shook overseas investors' confidence that Russia was becoming a more predictable market in which to do business. The move triggered a sharp fall in Yukos shares and cast a shadow over the planned $35 bn merger of Yukos with rival Sibneft. However both groups insisted that the deal would be finalised as planned by end-2003. The actions against Yukos come in the build up to the parliamentary elections in December. They risk threatening the informal agreement reached by Pres. Putin with the influential 'oligarchs' early in his term - that he would not re-examine the contested privatisations through which they acquired assets if they withdrew from politics. Khodorkovsky recently hinted that he has high political ambitions. He has funded two liberal opposition parties and has warned that if pro-Kremlin forces gain a two-thirds parliamentary majority, they could change the constitution).