RUSSIA TO QUIT CUBA SPY CASE

By Martin Arostegui

REUTERS

MOSCOW, Oct 17 (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin announced on Wednesday that the Russian military would pull out of the Lourdes base in Cuba, a big Russian spying centre near the coast of the United States.

The move, announced by Putin at a meeting in the ministry of defence, appeared to be a major step towards ending completely the Russian military presence on the Caribbean island.

The Kremlin leader did not say when the withdrawal of forces from the electronic intelligence centre would take place. The Kremlin press service quoted him as saying the decision to close the base was taken after long discussions.

RIA news agency separately quoted chief of the general staff General Anatoly Kvashnin as saying that it was costing Russia 200 million dollars a year to keep the base running.

The Lourdes base, which was built in the 1970s and is situated just outside Havana, has been home to about 1,500 Russian military and their families.

Kept by Russia on land leased from its former Cold War ally in exchange for crude oil and other supplies to Cuba, Lourdes has been the source of controversy between Moscow and some political quarters in Washington.

Last year, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill to try to prevent the United States from rescheduling hundreds of millions of dollars in debt owed by Russia unless Moscow shut down what U.S. critics saw as a spy station.

Moscow has said, for its part, that the intelligence centre was needed to observe U.S. compliance with nuclear treaties and monitor U.S.missile launches.

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