Nazarbayev signed the accord with visiting Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Russia currently leases the cosmodrome, built during the 1950s as its main launchpad to space, under an agreement signed in 1994, following the Soviet Union's collapse.

According to the text of the agreement released to the media, the two presidents "agreed to increase the level of ecological security and space activity on Kazakh territory."

Kazakhstan had been expected to extend the agreement, which still had another 10 years to run, although it has voiced discontent over what it sees as damage to the local environment.

There was no mention in the text of a change in the present level of the rent, some 150 million dollars a year.

The level of launch activity at Baikonur has decreased sharply in recent years as Moscow has repatriated most of its military space activities to a launch site at Plessetsk, in northwestern Russia.

The cosmodrome, which is 125 kilometres (75 miles) long and 85 kilometres wide, borders the Syr Daria river and is wholly administered by Russia.

It is now used mainly for commercial and scientific launches.

SPACE.WIRE