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Baikonur Debt Plan

MOSCOW () -- Russia has agreed to write off some of Kazakhstan's debt in exchange for rent on the Baikonur launch site, a newspaper reported.


Segodnya said it was hard to assess the deal since official figures on Kazakhstan's debt have not been released. But if unofficial figures of $500 million are correct, it said, the deal would be unlikely to fully compensate Russia for losing Baikonur when the Soviet Union broke up in 1991.


According to Segodnya, Boris Yeltsin and Kazakh President Nursultan Nazerbayev will sign the debt-for-rent agreement next month.

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