and c.c. to:  Mr. Luc HIERGENS (Intas Finance Manager)
                Mr. Hermann ZEYEN (Uni. Paris-Sud)
                Mr. Yuri YUROV (Spetsgeofizika - Moscow)
                Mr. Valentin GEYKO (Geophys. Institute of NAS, Kiev)
 
 

Subject:    INTAS-IA-96-03 duration
 

Dear Mr. Vardapetian,

on behalf of all the four Teams involved in our INTAS-IA-96-03 Infrastructural Action, i.e.:

• Research Institute on Seismic Risk of CNR (Milan - Italy) EU CO
• Geophysical Institute of University of Uppsala (Sweden) [*] EU Cr
• Spetsgeofizika (Moscow - Russia) NIS Cr
• Geophysical Institute of NAS (Kiev - Ukraine) NIS Cr

• as you and everybody knows, the real beginning of our Moscow operations, in the first months of 1998, have been very difficult, due to the local well known finance and economical problems, as stated also by Intas, in his www news. Because of this, only in July 1998 it was possible for us to establish the first of the two seismic Labs, in Moscow, with at least 4 months delay on the scheduled timing on our plan;
• as a consequence of Russian crisis, also in Ukraine the situation was getting worse, as affirmed by our local Partner. And in fact only in the next period of December 8-18, 1998 it will be possible to establish the second seismic Lab., in Kiev, after having purchased all the necessary hardware and software tools;
• the general social and economical situations both in Moscow and Kiev are still not clear, but it seems that now the minimal conditions that could guarantee the full success of our project do exist. The only problem now could regard the 'manpower' duration of the local grants (obtained with part of the Intas funds included in the global amount of our budget): due to the local change-unsteadiness their actual duration for the local Collaborators could be reduced, and this is a pity… But this should be a general problem which certainly Intas has already examined, I hope, maybe also with Isconis organisation's contributions;
• after taking into account these several delays and in order to properly complete our scheduled Programme (as stated in the Work Programme as annexed part of the Co-operation Agreement document), we need the requested further few months to realise the following:
• complete the second seismic Lab's establishment in Kiev, and start with the first seismic data acquisitions and processing;
• a correct management of the first steps in the long process of seismic data acquisitions and processing, which could be valid for both the Labs;
• install, check and monitoring the quality of networking technologies (local Internet providers);
• design, test and monitoring a possible structure of these special DSS database, in order to configure an easy-to-use tool open to international collaborations in the future of the two Organisations involved in Moscow and Kiev.

Of course, if this request will be satisfied, it will be clear that all the already agreed statements in the Co-operation document will be shifted to the new expiry date of March, 31 1998, which would become the new Completion-date for our Project. Therefore, some articles of our Co-operation Agreement INTAS-IA-96-03 (Intas protocol 20 Oct., 1997, LG/rt/97123) should be updated in at least the two points regarding the Intas Scientific Officer (Art. 1.2) and the new duration of the project (Art. 2), I think.

Thank you for your attention and best regards;

yours sincerely