MOSCOW, Sept 26 (AFP) - Retired Kremlin advisor and part-time  
 cosmonaut Yuri Baturin appealed Friday for a two-year extension of 
 the international Mir space station, which is set for dismantling 
 next June, ITAR-TASS said. 
    "I was very impressed by what I saw," said Baturin, who returned  
 last month from a two-week flight with the station's crew. 
    The accident-prone station, originally launched in 1986 with a  
 planned orbit of five years, is now expected to self-distruct and 
 pitch into the Pacific Ocean in June of next year. 
    Baturin, a lawyer who says his one-time stint as an astronaut  
 might be his last, said he feels the project is well capable of 
 continuing, adding that dumping the station and its 11.5 tonnes of 
 equipment into the ocean was "not economical." 
    Mir, like much of Russia's ailing aeronautics program, has  
 suffered in recent years from numerous technical malfunctions, 
 delays and, above all, chronically insufficient coffers. 
    The aging station made headlines for all the wrong reasons last  
 year, when the orbiter suffered two fires and faults in the oxygen 
 supply system. It also took a hit during a docking accident with a 
 cargo vessel sent up to remove trash. 
    A joint Franco-Russian mission that was to head to Mir in  
 February was recently put off indefinitely due to lack of funds. 
    In the latest scheduling snag, a cargo ship that was set to be  
 launched in October is now facing a delay of at least two weeks, 
 Russian Space Agency spokesmen announced Friday, according to 
 Interfax. 
    The agency's chief of manned missions, Mikhail Sinelshchikov,  
 attributed the delay to the "most banal" of reasons - not enough 
 money. He said there were not enough funds to buy a crucial Soyuz-U 
 booster rocket for the mission. 
    Meanwhile, the idle cargo ship, bearing New Year's gifts for the  
 crew, is ready to go and waiting at the Baikonur space station in 
Kazakhstan, Interfax said.