New passports will offer information about their bearers in a thoroughly new way, with microcircuits containing data on the bearer's identity and biometric parameters.
To all appearances, it will be a photograph plus two fingerprints, though a final decision on that score is still to be made. Photographs will no longer be glued on passports to give way to laser engraving, Trachuk added.
Total Russian expenditures on passport changes are roughly estimated at $20 billion, he said.
A majority of the world's countries will be switching to new passports in 2006, and Russia will have to accept updated standards, too.
According to Trachuk, a quick passport change campaign is ruled out, with old-pattern passports to remain valid up to the deadline.
St. Petersburg will host an international exposition, Watermark Conference on June 8-10. A maiden test batch of industrially manufactured passports is to be presented there.
