The authorities here say there is nothing untoward. In fact, Azeri President Heidar Aliyev is due to extend Russia's lease on the site for another ten years when he flies to Moscow on Thursday.

But local people, ecologists and independent scientists are convinced that the massive electro-magnetic rays pumped out by the station are unleashing a stealthy ecological and health catastrophe on this area.

"It's like living next door to Chernobyl," said 31-year-old Gamzam Ismailov, a teacher in the village of Amili which stands directly beneath the forbidding 16-storey concrete monolith.

In operation since 1984, the Qabala station is the cornerstone of Russia's missile early warning system and one of only three of its size remaining in Russia and the former Soviet states.

If a ballistic missile is launched anywhere in the Indian Ocean or the south Pacific, it will appear as a blip on a screen in the Qabala control room.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and Azerbaijan became independent, Russia negotiated to lease the site so the radar station could keep working.

But in the muddy, desperately poor villages which ring the complex, the people want nothing more than to see it closed down.

"You have to tell people what's going on here," pleaded Rovshan Sadugov, a villager from Amili. "I have four children. One of them died and the rest are ill all the time. Three of my brothers' kids have died."

"All my kids' teeth have fallen out. Whenever I have enough money I take them to the doctors but they can't do anything."

In the village of Zalam, a little further up a mud track and still in sight of the listening post, 48-year-old Alovshad Alimamedov is tramping in the snow around the unmarked graves in the cemetery.

For every adult grave there are four smaller ones, where children are buried. He buried four of his children there, side by side. None of them got to be older than four years old. He blames the radar station.

Nearby Akif Alimamedov points to his son, Elshan. He looks about six years of age. "Look at him," says the boy's father, "you wouldn't think so but he is 12 years old. It's the radar station that's done that."

The anecdotal evidence is backed up by scientific research. A 1992 inquiry commissioned by the then government, since ousted, compared key indicators of public health before and after the radar station started operating.

It found that birth defects had increased four times and illnesses of the nervous system were 7.8 times more common than before.

Rates of kidney disease shot up 8.5 times, the birth rate fell from 6.1 percent to 1.7 percent in 1992 and Qabala district was found to have the highest rates of cancer among 15-20 year olds in Azerbaijan.

A joint Russian-Azeri commission of inquiry last year exonerated the Qabala radar station from any blame. It found some anomalies but said health overall was no worse than in other districts.

But that inquiry, said Eldeniz Yusubov, director of the Azeri Independent Ecological Research Centre and a former local government chief in Qabala, was a whitewash.

"They didn't do any research. A couple of commission members spent two or three hours in Qabala but no one else went near the place," he said. "The current government is afraid of putting its foot down."

With little prospect of the radar station closing down, all of the people living nearby say they want to leave. Most though are too poor to move. They look with envy at the 300 Russian servicemen who work at the station.

Natiq Khamidov, an activist with the opposition Musavat party in Qabala, said: "They get transferred back home after two years but we are condemned to live here until we die."

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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