Accompanied by Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, Putin was visiting the launchpads for the Proton and Soyuz rockets and laying flowers at a monument to victims of a rocket explosion in 1960, when the installation was in its infancy and Kazakhstan was part of the Soviet Union.

Putin and Nazarbayev were also expected to inaugurate a 200-million-dollar (163-million-euro) programme to build the Russian-Kazakh space rocket called Baiterek.

Russia is providing the engineers and Kazakhstan the finances for the Baiterek, which is planned for its first lift-off in 2008 and will carry civilian payloads, especially commercial satellites. The two presidents were to lay the first stone in foundations for a new launch pad that will serve the rocket.

Russian specialists say the Baiterek will be modelled on the new Angara military rocket, which is due for launching in 2008 from Plessetsk, a cosmodrome in north-west Russia.

Proton, one of the workhorses of the Russian space industry and a key supply vehicle to the International Space Station following the grounding of all US space shuttles, uses a toxic fuel, but the Baiterek and Angara will run on cleaner liquid oxygen and kerosene.

Both presidents will also attend a reception and concert marking the anniversary and sign a series of accords on ecological protection, scientific research and customs controls.

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