But when you work for a newspaper that has been falling apart for years and your salary is just enough for a bottle of vodka, what else are you going to do?"The deeper reason behind the row was a disagreement over editorial policy. "Our journalists seem to like partying too much," Theodoros Giannikos was quoted by the Moscow Times as saying. "They think they can do no work and still get a salary.""There are violations of discipline, but do foreign journalists only drink tea?" Mr Ilyin retorted "Our newspaper is like any other Maybe we are not the most organised in this respect. Later it turned out that the medals, which collectors will pay up to $1,000 apiece for, had been moved to the Greeks' safe.In the ensuing row, charges of drunkenness were made. He called the police.The Giannikos brothers, directors of Pravda International which has published the paper since 1992, turned up and were denied access to the building. In Soviet times not only loyal citizens, but also organisations were given medals and Pravda was the proud owner of three Orders of Lenin which it printed on its masthead as symbols of its "history and service to society".Earlier this month, Mr Ilyin had a nostalgic urge to look at the medals themselves and went to the safe where they were kept, only to find that the combination had been changed and he could not open it.

Moscow - The newspaper Pravda, for decades the mouthpiece of the Soviet Communist Party and still popular with leftist opponents of President Boris Yeltsin, has been closed down indefinitely after a row between its Russian editor and its Greek financial backers. Meanwhile, some of the staff are bringing out a tabloid version of Pravda, but it is nothing like the Sun or the Daily Mirror and certainly there are no page 3 girls. It is just a single sheet of paper folded into a small square to make reading easy for commuters on the packed Moscow metro. The row between the editor, Alexander Ilyin, and Theodoros and Christos Giannikos, two Greek brothers who have kept the newspaper afloat since the collapse of the Soviet Union, was ostensibly over three valuable medals which were misplaced. Jakarta refused to accept Mr Kupa after it was revealed he had criticised the alleged corruption of the Suharto family.. "A treaty always assumes common political standards or commitments," he said.Even before this week's riots, relations had become strained over Canberra's appointment last month of Miles Kupa as new ambassador to Indonesia. Australian newspapers have strongly criticised President Suharto's handling of the crisis and have called for a rethink of policy towards Indonesia.James Dunn, a former Australian intelligence officer and consul in Portuguese Timor at the time of Indonesia's invasion, said the crackdown showed that Canberra had been unwise to sign a security treaty with Jakarta. Mr Howard plans to make Jakarta the destination of his first overseas visit as Prime Minister.Yet the longer that instability lingers in Jakarta, the more the Australian government risks angering public opinion.

In its last months in office Mr Keating's government concluded a controversial security treaty with Indonesia amid some secrecy.Since it succeeded Labour five months ago, the Liberal- National government of John Howard has fallen into line with its predecessor over Indonesia. Indonesia is now Australia's twelfth-largest trading partner and its second-biggest market in South-East Asia.The previous Labour government of Paul Keating made Indonesia of primary importance, as it focussed Australia's foreign relations towards Asia. Protests in Australia over human rights abuses in East Timor, the former Portuguese colony that Indonesia has occupied since 1975, were brushed aside. In an attempt to dispel traditional Australian fears of an "invasion from the north", Canberra's policy-makers have gone out of their way to turn a country once seen as an enemy into a friend. "Well, we don't conduct our affairs in Australia in the same way," he said.Policy-makers in Canberra are anxiously watching events unfold in Jakarta, knowing that Australia risks being embarrassed over its failure to condemn the Suharto government's violation of human rights, while being quick to speak up over abuses in countries that are further away, such as Burma.Australia's contorted policy reflects its problems in trying to balancing its strategic interests as a democratic country of 18 million people, most of European descent, living next door to the world's fifth-most populous country and the most populous Islamic state. While the United States has called on Indonesia to protect democratic rights, Alexander Downer, Australia's Foreign Minister, said only that he was "concerned" about the unrest and hoped it would "settle down very quickly". He refused to criticise the military regime's use of force to attack the Jakarta headquarters of the Indonesian Democratic Party.