BUDAPEST -- Kazakhstan hopes to hold coal production stable this year after steep drops in output over the last three years, a senior government official said Monday.


Kazakhstan used to produce one-fifth of all coal mined in the former Soviet Union, but production has fallen sharply since it became an independent republic in 1991.


"We plan to produce 102 to 105 million tons of coal in 1995, little different from 1994," said Erken Anafin, deputy minister of the Energy and Coal Industry Ministry.


The thinly-populated but resource-rich republic produced some 104 million tons of coal in 1994, 112 million in 1993 and 127 million in 1992.


Anafin said output had fallen over the last three years because Kazakhstan had failed to find buyers for its coal.


The ministry had been forced to close three mines in the northern Karaganda region, which accounts for around 30 percent of the republic's coal output because they were no longer profitable.


Anafin dismissed problems of industrial unrest in Karaganda, saying a recent strike there by miners who had not been paid for months was over.


However, regional miners' leader Vyacheslav Sidorov said Thursday miners had voted at a mass meeting to continue the week-old stoppage and that the strike had halted production at 20 out of 23 pits.


The government had not been able to pay wages because coal shipments from the Karaganda pits were not being paid for on schedule, Anafin said.


Kazakhstan saw the best chances for its coal industry, which meets some 80 percent of the republic's electricity needs, in exporting to Russian, Ukrainian and Asian markets.


The republic, which has a land area the size of Western Europe, sits on huge undeveloped coal reserves.


Anafin said a railway link with China would allow the impoverished republic to export coal to the Far East.


Kazakhstan exported some 30 percent of its high quality coal production to Russia and the Ukraine last year under long-term supply agreements.


Anafin said a railway link from Kazakhstan via Turkmenistan to Iran that would allow access to new coal markets was also under consideration, but he refused to give any further details.