Russian military personnel will withdraw next year from the space centre at Baikonur in Kazkahstan, which was set up in the 1950s when the republic was still part of the Soviet Union, the Russian space agency said Wednesday.
But Russia will continue to use Baikonur for civilian satellite launches and manned missions to the International Space Station, while moving its military satellite and rocket tests to northern Russia.
"The last (Russian) military units will leave the Baikonur cosmodrome at the end of 2007," Ria Novosti news agency quoted agency chief Anatoly Perminov as saying.
The Baikonur cosmodrome, in the central Asian state, remains one of the world's three space bases capable of launching manned missions. The others are Cape Canaveral in the United States and the China's Jiuquan Space Centre.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, its main launching station was now located on what had become an independent republic.
In 1994, Russia agreed to rent the site from Kazakhstan for 115 million dollars (91 million euros) annually, and this lease will continue until 2050 under the terms of a new agreement signed in 2004 by President Vladimir Putin and his Kazakh counterpart Nursultan Nazarbayev.
Several sites at Baikonur cosmodrome would be under Russian space agency management for manned missions to the International Space Station and to launch civilian commercial satellites, said General Vladimir Popovkin, commander of Russian space rockets. The Russian space agency is a non-military body.
Launch facilities for Russian military satellites and ballistic missiles will be transferred to another space centre at Plessetsk near Arkhangelsk in northern Russia.
Source: Agence France-Presse
