Did Irkutsk NOT switch from IRKT to KRAST?

[Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [E]]

With Irkutsk up in the air, I'll revert "asia", "europe", and "zone.tab" for tomorrow's update, leaving only the Chile, Morocco, and tz-link changes.

				--ado

From: Tim Parenti [mailto:tim at timtimeonline.com] 
Sent: Thursday, March 31, 2011 2:57
To: tz at lecserver.nci.nih.gov
Subject: Did Irkutsk NOT switch from IRKT to KRAST?

I've been alerted to a couple reports that on 2011-03-22, the Russian government decided NOT to allow the Irkutsk Oblast to transition from IRKT (UTC+8) to KRAST (UTC+7+1) on 2011-03-27, and that instead Irkutsk transitioned to IRKST (UTC+8+1) under the existing Russian DST rules and plans to stay there for the time being like the rest of the country.  The articles are in Russian, which I don't speak, but I've provided excerpted Google translations below.  The reports follow:

http://www.irk.ru/news/20110325/time/ (2011-03-25)

Irkutsk region remains in its time zone

March 27 residents of the Irkutsk region with the rest of the Russians set the clock forward one hour. Previously reported that the Angara will not translate clock to daylight saving time and thereby reduce the difference with Moscow, with 5:00 to 4. Irkutsk officials have prepared all necessary documents. However, an official decision on this has not been signed. In this case, the matter has not withdrawn completely, but only postponed indefinitely.

http://gazetavremya.ru/day/16739-irkutskaya-oblast-poteryalas-vo-vremeni.html (2011-03-24)

Irkutsk region is lost in time

After that we asked for comments to the Legislative Assembly of Irkutsk region Yuri Faleichik, who confirmed this information and added that it is the most painless for our scheme to reduce the time difference with the capital from 5 to 4 hours.

And suddenly, on Tuesday revealed that information on the transition to Krasnoyarsk time was premature!
The same Jury Faleichik told our newspaper:
- The decision to move the Irkutsk region in the time zone of the Krasnoyarsk Territory Government is not accepted.

Our source in the regional government said that the decision "not to move to Krasnoyarsk time" was made in connection with the upcoming elections.

--
Tim Parenti