The delegation of engineers from Starcem, the company which markets Soyuz rockets, was received here by officials from Arianespace, a private European company responsible for managing and marketing Ariane rockets.

French sources have said that France is prepared to allow Russia to launch its Soyuz rockets from the European space centre at Kourou, in French Guyana, as part of a European-Russian partnership in which Moscow would buy 36 Airbus airliners.

The key issue would be to determine to what extent Russia would link up with the European space and aeronautics programme to form a Euro-Russian industry, according to the sources.

Currently Soyuz rockets routinely launch from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

"They have come here to study technical criteria and the conditions of bringing in and launching Russian Soyuz rockets from the site at north Malmanoury," Arianespace said.

Although a decision is yet to be made the Guianese space centre has already identified a launch site at Malmanoury, six kilometres (four miles) from the Ariane-5 launch pad at Kourou.

The move to French Guiana, including building the launch site, would cost and estimated 300 million euros (dollars). The European Space Agency expects Russia to pay a third of those costs, but the matter is still under negotiation.

Starcem, created in 1996, is a consortium of the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS) -- the largest shareholder -- along with Arianesespace, the Russian aerospace agency and Russia's Samara Space Centre.

The Russian technicians are due to leave on Friday.

Even if there was an agreement to launch Russian rockets from here, it would be some three years before the technical preparations had been completed, according to French industrial sources.

SPACE.WIRE