THE highly strategic Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam was Moscow's glittering prize of the Cold War and Russia's military made it clear this week that it wants to keep it that way.
The visit of Defence Minister Igor Sergeyev to Hanoi appears to have paved the way for new talks on the future of Cam Ranh after current agreements end in 2004.
Senior military sources quoted in the Moscow press over the past few days insist the famous site on Vietnam's south-central coast is too important to lose and current financial constraints should be ignored.
Carl Thayer of the Australian Defence Force Academy, an authority on the Vietnamese military, said: 'Certainly it is hard to see how they could ever get another chance to get to access to something like Cam Ranh. I have every confidence that they will be able to renegotiate an extension.' The bay was built into a vast naval base and airfield by US forces, seized in 1975 by a victorious Hanoi then - in an unprecedented deal - signed over to the former Soviet Union in 1978 as relations between Vietnam and China degenerated into war in a move that alarmed Cold War hawks in the West.
A large Soviet naval presence all but disappeared under the rule of Mikhail Gorbachev but between 200 to 500 Russians remain amid considerable secrecy to man a electronic spy-base, military analysts believe.
Vietnamese forces now run much of the base but the signals intelligence unit remains firmly in Russian hands, with only certain information passed to Hanoi.
