CROAT RESCUERS FOR RUSSIAN AMPHIBIOUS PLANE

MOSCOW, September 13 (RIA Novosti) - The Be 200 pioneer multipurpose amphibious aircraft, of Russian design and manufacture, will have demonstration flights in Croatia within the several next days. The tests will be timed to a visit to Zagreb, September 14 into 16, of Sergei Shoigu, Russia's Minister for Emergency and Calamity Relief, reports the ministerial Information Department.

Croatia is taking a major interest in what the leading-edge plane can do to fight forest fires, which sweep that country as a seasonal disaster year in, year out, a ministry spokesman said to Novosti.

The Emergencies Ministry presently possesses two such craft, designed by the Siberian-based Irkut research-cum-production corporation. The ministry will receive another five Be 200s by the year 2007. Three are to base in the Ramenskoye airfield near Moscow. Siberia's Krasnoyarsk and Khabarovsk in the Russian Far East will have two each.

The BE 200 is better than any of its overseas analogues in fighting environmental disasters, and has honorably proved its worth in practice, said our informant.

Mr. Shoigu will attend a 4th plenary session of the Russian-Croat intergovernmental commission for trade and economic, research and technological cooperation, to gather in Zagreb.