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ROSOBORONEXPORT MADE DELIVERIES OF MILITARY EQUIPMENT TO 59 COUNTRIES IN 2004

RIA Novosti

MOSCOW, February 9 (RIA Novosti) - In 2004, Rosoboronexport made deliveries of military equipment to 59 countries and procured armaments for UN purposes, announced Rosoboronexport director general Sergei Chemezov during a press conference in Moscow.

"Rosoboronexport has 43 permanent representative offices in 43 countries and plans to open similar offices in Belgium, Italy, Venezuela and Myanmar in the near future," he said.

The head of Rosoboronexport also pointed out that India and China remained the major export partners of Russia. Their share of Russian arms exports constitutes 49% and 34% respectively.

Rosoboronexport plans to expand the work on license contracts with both countries. Mr. Chemezov said that India and China have well-developed industries and both countries are capable of manufacturing their own armaments. "Therefore, aside from selling Russian-made military equipment to these countries, we are actively conducting negotiations on the sale of weapons manufacturing licenses," Mr. Chemezov underlined.

He reminded the journalists that Russia and China had practically concluded a contract on licensed manufacturing of Su-27 fighters in China, and India had started to manufacture Su-30 fighters under Russian license.

Mr. Chemezov emphasized that India and China would remain major buyers of Russian-made military equipment in the near future, and their combined share of Russian arms exports would constitute 70-80%.

He also believes Rosoboronexport might increase the volume of arms sales by expanding its supply of spare parts and by creating military equipment technical maintenance centers abroad.

According to the head of Rosoboronexport, Russia is conducting talks with Malaysia on creation of such maintenance centers for servicing military aircraft and with India - for servicing combat ships of the Indian Navy. It also plans to create a military equipment technical maintenance center in Mexico.

Mr. Chemezov pointed out at the necessity of cataloguing all spare parts manufactured by the Russian defense industry.

At the same time, he mentioned that Russia has a realistic outlook on the prospects of its future cooperation with the countries of Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and others), that will probably require some adjustment due to the consequences of the recent natural disaster.

The head of Rosoboronexport underlined that Russia has successfully expanded its cooperation with such countries as Venezuela, Morocco, Libya and Algeria in the recent years.

Overall, the volume of Rosoboronexport sales in 2004 exceeded $5 billion. According to Mr. Chemezov, the share of exports in terms of types of military equipment was distributed in the following manner: for the Air Force - 61%, for the Navy - 24%, and for the Air Defense - 6%. Other deliveries constituted 9%.

In the future, the share of deliveries for the Navy in the structure of Russian arms exports will increase, he added.