"We have developed a new engine for cruise missiles in service with the Russian armed forces," Vyacheslav Boguslayev, chief executive officer of Motor Sich, said Saturday, RIA Novosti reported. "It features less weight, better fuel efficiency and is as powerful as the current P95-300 engine. We have offered to manufacture this engine for the Russian armed forces."

RIA Novosti described Motor-Sich as "a major foreign economic partner for Russia's aviation and rocket industry" that already manufactures engines for Russian X-35, X-55 and X-59 cruise missiles. The company is also expanding in Russia and is currently constructing a new factory in the town of Dubna near Moscow, the news agency said.

RIA Novosti said the new cruise missile engine was 30 percent the length of previous Russian or Ukrainian cruise missile engines and would boost their operational range from the current 78 miles to 120 miles.

But the news agency also noted the Russian government still might not buy the new Motor Sich engine because the Kremlin wanted to break away from its traditional reliance on Ukrainian-built missile engines and other military-industrial components. Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko wants his country, a former Soviet republic, to eventually join the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a development that would be anathema to Russian policymakers.

RIA Novosti noted that Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov warned last month that Moscow would cut off its traditional military-industrial cooperation with Ukraine if the Kiev government ever entered the NATO alliance.

Georgian-Abkhazian tensions rise before Rice visit. Dangers of a new explosion of violence in the Caucasus region grew this weekend when Sergei Bagapsh, head of the secessionist region of Abkhazia, warned Saturday that the former Soviet republic of Georgia had plotted to send armed forces into his Russian-supported area in April or May 2008.

"The plan (developed by Georgia's Defense Ministry) has been obtained by the Abkhaz military intelligence services and clearly demonstrates that Georgia intended to occupy ... the entire territory of Abkhazia," Bagapsh told a news conference in the Abkhazian capital, Sukhumi, according to a report carried by RIA Novosti.

Bagapsh claimed Georgia, whose leader, President Mikheil Saakashvili, hopes to join the U.S.-led NATO alliance, considered organizing two simultaneous military attacks against Abkhazia out of the Kodori Gorge and the Zugdidi region, and also to attempt amphibious landings at the same time at the Abkhazian-controlled ports of Ochamchira, Sukhumi and Gagra. He claimed Georgia had concentrated 2,000 troops in the Kodori Gorge and boosted its overall forces facing Abkhazian territory to 12,000 men since April, RIA Novosti said.

"These actions are aimed to destabilize the situation in the zone of the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict and to prepare the international community for possible aggression against Abkhazia," he said.

The claims came just days before U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was due to visit Georgia this week in an effort to defuse tensions within the country and assure its leaders of continued U.S. support. Georgian leaders have repeatedly accused Russia not only of supporting the Abkhazians but also of actively trying to destabilize their country.

Despite Rice's coming high-profile visit, the Russian Defense Ministry in Moscow lost no time in throwing its support publicly behind Bagapsh's accusations.

"We regard Tbilisi's plans (allegedly to attack Abkhazia) as another step toward the escalation of tensions in the region, which may lead to a new war," the ministry said in a statement quoted by RIA Novosti.

Russians deliver Mi-17 helicopters to Indonesia. The Russian arms export corporation Rosoboronexport handed over the first batch of three Mi-17-B5 Hip H medium assault/transport helicopters to Indonesia last Thursday, RIA Novosti reported.

The helicopters were manufactured at the Kazan helicopter plant under a deal negotiated in 2005. Three more helicopters are due to be delivered, the news agency said.

"Three helicopters were delivered to the Indonesian ground forces base in the city of Surabaya this morning. Their assembly will start Friday," helicopter company engineer Andrei Mironov told RIA Novosti.

The news agency also cited Nikolai Kireyev, a Rosoboronexport official based in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, as saying 15 Indonesian pilots and mechanics or engineers had received three months of training at the Kazan plant in maintaining the machines.

As previously noted in these columns, Russia has been moving energetically to penetrate the traditionally U.S.-dominated Indonesian weapons market. Last fall Russian President and current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin negotiated a giant $1 billion arms deal, selling Indonesia 22 helicopters, 20 tanks and two submarines on easy credit terms. Indonesia is also buying six Sukhoi combat aircraft for another $335 million.

RIA Novosti described the Mi-17 helicopter as a modernized upgrade of the tough, reliable old Mi-8 that the Soviet air force operated in Afghanistan during the 1979-87 Soviet involvement there. The news agency said the Mi-17 weighed 13 metric tons and had a capacity of 36 troops or four tons of cargo. It said the machines already had been sold to 80 nations around the world.

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