"The situation (in the Russian space industry) is difficult" and "there are risks" that ISS operations may be suspended, he said.

His remarks came a day after the press quoted space official Valery Ryumin as saying the situation had become "desperate" and he had written to NASA to discuss "temporarily suspending" the station.

Ryumin said that Moscow had committed to sending six unmanned Progress cargo vessels to the ISS and two manned Soyuz capsules each year.

But he warned: "We can only launch two (freighters next year), just to maintain the orbit of the ISS and keep it from plummeting to Earth."

The Russian space construction company, Energia, is forced to borrow money and is failing to repay its debts which amount to one billion roubles (about 32 million dollars) thanks to insufficient state subsidies.

"We've had these problems for a long time. The government is trying to deal with them, but that will take time," said Gorbunov.

Russia's space programme will only get 1.2 billion roubles (38 million dollars) of subsidy in 2003 which will not cover repayment of debts or the fulfillment of its ISS obligations, according to the Russian press.

The US space authority NASA, facing severe budget cuts, has also announced that it will reduce its contributions to the ISS but has not said by how much.

A senior official at the European Space Agency (ESA) -- one of the five agencies involved in assembling and operating the ISS -- told AFP that the remarks partly reflected the Russians' "very difficult financial situation."

But they also sought to prompt NASA to decide quickly about the biggest problem facing the ISS, namely the supply of a "lifeboat" to evacuate its future six-person crew in an emergency, Joerg Feustel-Buechel, who is ESA's director of manned space flight, said from Noordwijk, the Netherlands.

The United States is bound, under the ISS contract, to supply an emergency evacuation vehicle for three of the station's crew.

However, it has frozen work on building this craft because of budget constraints on NASA.

To resolve that problem, said Feustel-Buechel, the Americans are being pressed to buy a couple of Russian-made Soyuz spacecraft. Two would be needed, as one craft is moored to the side of the ISS for a maximum of six months, and is then rotated with the second one.

The Russians have proposed around 130 million dollars per year, over the ISS' 10-year design life, to build and operate the two Soyuzes, although that figure could be brought down and other agencies could contribute a little to ease the cost for NASA, he said.

"This solution is the probably the most simple and the most appropriate," the official said.

The 15 countries taking part in the ISS are due to meet in December, with the hope that NASA will have decided on the lifeboat question by then.

The Soyuz solution is not the only option, Feustel-Buechel said. Another possibility is that the Americans revive their own lifeboat design, but this would take around five years to complete.

During that time, the crew numbers would be limited to three, because this is the maximum that could be evacuated under the two Soyuzes that Russia already supplies to the ISS for the evacuation of its own crew.

A reduced crew would seriously affect scientific work aboard the ISS, a matter of great concern to Europe, which has already spent a billion euros (dollars) on preparing a module, Columbus, that is due to be slotted into place in late 2004, and to Japan, which is preparing its own scientific unit, called Kibo.

The other option would be to maintain a full crew but have only the evacuation capability of three. In the event of a catastrophe, such as a major fire or asteroid strike, members who could not be evacuated would withdraw to a "safe haven" on the station, where they would hole up to await rescue.

All rights reserved. � 2002 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.

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