TEHRAN (Mehr News Agency) -- The Tupolev firm has conducted preliminary negotiations with Iranian technical experts regarding the possibility of selling Tu-204 airliner to Iran, Itar-Tass quoted Lev Lanovsky, the chief designer of this kind of aircraft.

He said he had learned from Iranian officials that they intend to purchase Tupolev Tu-204 airliners, since a large official delegation is to arrive in Russia within a month to conduct the negotiations.

Members of the firm must ensure planes deliveries, but the sides have not yet come to terms regarding the schedule of deliveries and prices.

Lanovsky said several aircraft were being built at the Ukrainian Aviastar-SP plant. The construction of more aircraft of the Tu-204 make will soon be started. The deliveries of such planes to Iran may possibly be started in late 2004-early in 2005.

a few months ago Russian Pravda had quoted Tupolev vice-president, Sergei Ilyushenko as saying that the Tupolev aircraft-manufacturing firm will create, on the Tu-204 basis, several modifications of passenger airliners - Tu-204-200, Tu-204-300, Tu-204-400 and so on, which are both for passenger and cargo carriage.

Ilyushenko also had told Pravda that Tu-204 is the most updated Russian airliner, meeting all the requirements of the International Civil Aviation Organization and the first specimens had been bought on the domestic aviation market while foreign-supply contracts had already been signed.

Tupolev's export model, the Tu-204-120 medium-range airliner, is capable of carrying 196 passengers in a typical configuration.

The U.S. trade embargo has made Iran turn out to specifically Russian-made aircraft. During recent years, Iran's domestic flights, which had shown up as one of the world most secure airliners before the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, has faced some terrible crashes due to the United States’ pressure on western companies not to sell any kind of planes.

The weekly magazine on Thursday said that Washington had put its pressure on Lufthansa over the German Airliner’s maintenance and overhaul of Iran Airplane engines while France’s Airbus had earlier canceled a $500 million due to the U.S. stepped up pressure.

Iranian official has repeatedly warned that accident rate would only get worse if U.S. insists on its position not to lift embargoes. AF/IS END MNA