BLAGOVESHCHENSK. March 14 (Interfax-AVN) - Cosmodrome Svobodny has been closed, Amur Region Governor Leonid Korotkov's press service told Interfax on Wednesday.
"The regional authorities have received official confirmation of this from Moscow," a spokesman said.
"Unfortunately, we failed to persuade the Defense Ministry" to leave it open, the press service said.
The Defense Ministry has been instructed to make proposals on the further effective utilization of the former cosmodrome's infrastructure for the armed forces' needs, it said.
The elaboration of the proposals will involve the administration in Uglegorsk, where the cosmodrome is located, the Amur region administration, and the staff of the presidential envoy to the Far Eastern military district.
"The region administration is interested in the existence of Uglegorsk. If its status as a restricted-access compound is changed, the Amur region will have one more problem town," Korotkov was quoted as saying.
It is not yet clear where servicemen currently deployed at Uglegorsk will be transferred, Vladimir Tokarev, the head of the administration in Uglegorsk, told Interfax.
"The situation is very complicated, and it is a drawback for the town. I think the town will not be left for plunder, that it will live on. The region administration and the staff of the presidential envoy to the Far Eastern military district are working on this issue. It has not been ruled out that that the cosmodrome will be saved for commercial launches," he said.
Tokarev said the launch of an Israeli satellite set for 2008 would hopefully take place there.
Uglegorsk has a population of 5,135, 2,000 of whom are likely to lose their jobs after the cosmodrome's closure.
"As of December 1, 2007, we will have 815 unemployed persons, plus the 56 we already have. This is a problem not only for Uglegorsk, but for the whole region. Something must be done to prevent people from fleeing the town, to make the town live on. Some production facilities should be deployed there," Tokarev said.
Svobodny was built at the site of a missile base on an order from the president on March 1, 1996. Since then it has been used to launch five satellites. The last satellite to be launched from the cosmodrome - Israel's Eros B - was launched on April 26, 2006.