Russia won't privatize Aeroflot

MOSCOW, Sept. 9 (UPI) -- Russia won't privatize its national airline soon, the transport minister said Thursday.

The Transportation Ministry opposes privatizing the national airline Aeroflot in 2005 and privatization may not be approved at all if selling the government's 51 percent controlling share "is not in the interests of the state," Transport Minister Igor Levitin told a Moscow briefing, Interfax reported.

"The ministry has from the very start been against including Aeroflot on the list of companies to be turned into joint stock companies in 2005 and our position has not changed," Levitin said.

Aeroflot was for a long time the world's largest airline through the Soviet era. The Russian government has allowed privately owned airlines to develop and compete with it in recent years. But they have also plowed new investment sums into Aeroflot to modernize it.

President Vladimir Putin is said to regard state control of the airline as essential to maintain unprofitable but socially essential passenger and transportation services across the vast Russian federation.