"The meeting will probably be rescheduled for another date," the deputy director of the Rosaviakosmos space agency, Nikolai Moiseyev, told a press conference at the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

NASA head Sean O'Keefe and the director of Rosaviakosmos, Yury Koptev, were to have discussed the financing of the ISS at the talks.

Moiseyev did not explain the reason for the postponement, but the RIA-Novosti news agency reported that Koptev was ill in hospital in Moscow.

"We will discuss all these questions during working meetings at Baikonur," Moiseyev said, adding that O'Keefe was expected at the cosmodrome for Saturday's launch of a replacement crew for the ISS.

Russia has been the only country servicing the orbiting space station since the United States grounded its shuttle programme following the breakup in February of its Columbia spacecraft as it returned to earth from the ISS.

SPACE.WIRE