The Russian government has set aside the $25 million needed to bring down the Mir space station, an official said.

"The Russian government has already taken the decision to provide the financial resources needed to deorbit Mir," said Russian space agency chief Yuri Koptev. The statement runs contrary to some media reports.

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As claimed several times by various officials in the past two months, Russia plans to bring the 14-year-old orbital outpost down over the ocean in late February, said Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov. A final decision has yet to be made. It also been unclear whether the funds for deorbiting, not to mention the $200 million that could bail out the station and keep it operating beyond February and for another year, were available. The $25 million would cover the cost of launching an automated cargo spacecraft to Mir, with fuel needed to safely direct the station to a designated location over the Pacific Ocean.

"We have to think about the safety aspect of shutting down Mir and we don't have to make the decision to deorbit Mir when the station becomes uncontrollable," said Koptev.

The final official decision on the proposal to dump the aging Russian space station in the Pacific Ocean will come early next year, he said.

Mir has been losing altitude since a two-man crew left the outpost in June, and space officials have said it is necessary to raise its orbit if it is to continue operating well into 2001 to prevent the 130-ton station from reentering Earth's atmosphere out of control.

An uncontrollable plunge by Mir is a nightmare that Russian space officials want to avoid at all costs, since heavy fragments of the station could fall on populated areas. No space agency in the world has experience deorbiting such a complex and bulky spacecraft.

The Russian government, which owns Mir but stopped financially supporting it last year, has leased commercial rights to Amsterdam-based MirCorp. The private company has spent more than $40 million this year to keep Mir alive and has scrambled of late to continue raising funds, announcing plans last month for an initial public stock offering.

MirCorp's President Jeffrey Manber called Koptev's deorbiting funds claim a "non-story."

"For three years, the Russian government has said it will allocate the funds. The problem is they don't have the money," Manber said. Plans remain intact for businessman Dennis Tito's visit to the space station, Manber said. Tito put up $20 million for the opportunity and has trained for the flight. If successful, he'll become the world's first space tourist.

"We're going to fly Tito in January," Manber said.

Mir's downfall would also be a problem for the producer of an upcoming reality-based television program, Destination: Mir. Mark Burnett promised that the show's winner would get a free visit to the space station.

The termination of Mir's more than 14 years in space also could end a brewing conflict between the American and Russian space agencies. NASA openly criticized Russia for continuing to support Mir, claiming resources to keep Mir going were detracting from Russia's efforts to meet its commitments to the International Space Station (ISS).

Ironically, Koptev, who made his comments about the Mir funds while traveling last week in Paris with Russian President Vladimir Putin, also said he was happy about the successful installment of the first crew aboard the ISS.

"From a historical perspective, the arrival of the first permanent crew aboard ISS this week represents all the efforts invested since 1992 when we started to talk about bilateral and international space cooperation," said Koptev. "Even if we don't move forward as quickly as we'd like to, we still have moved forward."