MOSCOW, September 15. /TASS/. Russian state corporation Roscosmos is not refusing cooperation with the USA on the "Venera-D" Venus exploration project, it simply plans to avoid wide international cooperation on this mission, head of Roscosmos’ press service Vladimir Ustimenko told TASS on Tuesday.

"We did not say anything about refusing to cooperate with the USA on the Venera-D project. We are not refusing international cooperation. We simply talked about not involving wide international cooperation," Ustimenko said, commenting on the reports claiming that Roscosmos plans to continue realization of this project without the participation of the USA. -0—aab

He noted that the state corporation welcomes the participation of other states in the mission. "However, we are ready to bear the bulk of the research part and technical implementation within this project," the spokesman said.