20000130

Civilian version

of U-2 flies

through Russian

airspace

EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, (California): Nearly 40 years after an American U-2 spy plane was shot down and its pilot captured by the Soviet Union, a civilian version of the aircraft flew through Russian airspace this week with permission.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration mission was aimed at finding clues to ozone loss in the stratosphere over the Arctic.

One of NASA's California-based Er-2 aircraft, a variant of the Lockheed U-2, passed southwest of Moscow on Thursday during a six-hour flight for the international research programme.

The flight was closely coordinated with Russian observes, NASA said on Friday.

On May 1, 1960, a U-2 reconnaissance plane was downed by a Soviet missile and pilot Francis Gary Powers was captured, triggering a crisis that forced cancellation of an imminent Paris summit conference.

Powers was tried in Moscow, forcing President Dwight Eisenhower to admit he lied when he denied the existence of the U-2 programme, which had been under way for years.ÑAP