Russia may reduce Baikonur military contingent - defense minister

MOSCOW, October 9 (RIA Novosti) - The Russian Defense Ministry intends to reduce its military contingent at the Baikonur launching site in Kazakhstan, minister Sergei Ivanov said in Lisbon Sunday.The contingent at Baikonur that Russia leases until 2050 will be reduced to 2,800 by 2007. "If [military] launches occur once in four-five months, we do not need so many people," Ivanov said. "We have excessive troops there."Plesetsk (the northern part of European Russia) will gradually become the main military launching site of the Russian Defense Ministry but will also see some civil launches, he added. Ivanov said another launching site, Svobodny, built by former president Boris Yeltsin in the Far-Eastern Amur region near the Chinese border in 1996, would be used for monitoring but would see no significant financing.