The specialist Russian company Reshetnev and its Indian partners will work together on the development of Glonas-K satellites as laid down by "an intergovernmental agreement on cooperation ... for development of the Glonas navigation system", according to Albert Kozlov, head of Reshetnev, quoted by Interfax.

The agreement provides for joint work on putting into orbit Glonas-M satellites and the future Glonas-K satellites using Russian and Indian launchers, Kozlov said.

The Glonas system was developed by the Russian military in the 1980s and is the counterpart to the US GPS system and the future European Galileo network but has fallen behind for lack of finance.

In December last year India signed a deal with Russia to develop the Glonas system which should be fully operational in 2007.

Three Glonas-M satellites are due to be put into orbit on December 25, bringing the total number in the system to 17.

All rights reserved. copyright 2018 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.