2007-05-26 02:48:48 -

MOSCOW (AP) _ The head of a Russian rocket and space technology company went on trial Friday for allegedly leaking sensitive technologies to China _ the latest case involving a Russian scientist being targeted by security agencies, despite claims that the sensitive materials are in the public domain.
Igor Reshetin, the head of the company

TsNIIMASH-Export, accused authorities of fabricating the case, telling reporters at Moscow's Lefortovo District Court that the accusations were «sheer fiction.»
Reshetin, whose company does substantial business with Russia's federal space agency, has been in custody since his arrest in November 2005 by the Federal Security Service. He said the information his company had transferred to China wasn't classified.
«I haven't done anything of what they accuse me of,» Reshetin said in televised remarks. «There were no secrets in that; it was absolutely open.»
Another company official facing charges, Mikhail Ivanov, also said the information transferred to China was the type usually presented at scientific seminars.
The case highlighted Russia's concerns about China's growing might and also reflected authorities' growing suspicion about academics and scientists involved in sensitive technologies having contacts with foreigners.
Prosecutor Anna Kupriyanova said in televised comments that Reshetin and several others suspects had failed to obtain state licenses for the know-how they provided to China. The FSB said in a statement that the information Reshetin had handed over to the Chinese could be used for building missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads.
TsNIIMASH-Export, based outside Moscow, is owned by the state-controlled Central Research Institute for Machine Building _ the top research institute of the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, providing technical oversight for many Russian space-related projects.
After decades of rivalry, Moscow and Beijing have developed what they call a strategic partnership since the 1991 Soviet collapse, and China has become the biggest foreign customer for Russia's weapons industry.
Russia also sold China the technology that formed the basis of its manned space program. The Chinese Shenzhou closely resembles the Russian Soyuz, the spacecraft that is the backbone of the Russia program.
Despite burgeoning ties, however, some Russian politicians and experts have voiced concern about China's dynamic economic and military growth, and its bursting-at-the-seams population, particularly just over the border from Russia's scarcely populated Far East.
Russia's space agency chief said last fall that the government would not transfer any sensitive technologies that could enable Beijing to become a rival in a future space race.
Several other Russian scholars and journalists have been targeted by the FSB for alleged espionage or misuse of sensitive information. Rights advocates say the security agency has been emboldened in its efforts to discourage unsupervised contacts with foreigners since Vladimir Putin, a former FSB head, first was elected president in 2000.
In 2004, physicist Valentin Danilov was convicted of spying for China and sentenced to 14 years in prison for providing allegedly sensitive information that he said had been published in part in publicly available scientific magazines.