MOSCOW -- The Russian Aviation and Space Agency (Rosaviacosmos) will not back away from launching U.S. millionaire Dennis Tito to the International Space Station (ISS). In fact, officials here hope that negotiations with NASA and European Space Agency (ESA) will allow Russia to send more tourists to the orbiting scientific outpost and thus allow Russia to raise badly-needed cash to meet its ISS obligations.

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Two years ago Rosaviacosmos offered its space station partners a chance to buy one of the three seats aboard the Soyuz TM spacecraft which is to take off to the station in April. However, both agencies declined the offer, the official said.

"All of them, including the Japanese and Canadians, were offered this seat and none showed real interest, but now they are suddenly alarmed and speak against" Titos flight, the official said.

Tito is set to take off April 30 in the Soyuz TM atop a Soyuz booster. The cosmonauts on the flight are scheduled to be Russian Yuri Baturin and his Kazakh counterpart Talgat Musabayev.

The space official said ESA contacted Rosaviacosmos immediately after the Russian agencys director general Yuri Koptev publicly announced that Tito would take off and urged the Russians to replace the U.S. millionaire with one of its own astronauts.

Despite being surprised by this sudden appeal, Rosaviacosmos did respond to it, offering to withdraw either Baturin or Musabayev from the crew so that both Tito and the ESA astronaut could be on the April 30 launch to the ISS, the official said.

However, ESA declined the offer, arguing that at least two professionally trained Russian cosmonauts should be in the Soyuz capsule to be able to do emergency trouble-shooting if needed, he said.

"Whatever their official reasons are, we still believe that ESA simply wants to prevent Tito from flying," the Rosaviacosmos official claimed. "They are trying to bring us down on our knees, which is not exactly the best position to discuss something as equal partners," he said.

"The ISS is a partnership and we plan to work together until we come to an agreement," said NASA spokesperson David Drachlis. "First and foremost NASAs concern is for safety and operational integrity of the international space station, [the] ISS crew, and all of the partners assets onboard," he said. "A detailed criteria are needed for selection, assignment, training and certification for all [crew] categories."

While arguing that Tito should fly in any case, the Rosaviacosmos official admitted that ISS partners should sit down and thrash out an official document that would regulate flights of commercial visitors to the $60 billion station.

"We need to ensure that there will be no such arguments in the future," he said. He said Russia needs to sell seats in its visiting crews to raise cash because the Russian federal government has allocated only half of the 4 billion rubles [$140 million] that Rosaviacosmos needs to meet its space station obligations this year.