No Air Tickets To Norilsk Will Be Sold To Foreigners From November 25

No air tickets to Norilsk, Krasnoyarsk Territory, Siberia, will be sold to foreigners from November 25, said Russia's State Aviation Service. This city, according to a list of territories approved by the government, will be closed to foreign citizens. "The Norilsk administration, meeting on November 6, also decided that all foreign citizens from CIS and non-CIS countries /bar Belarus/ having no Russian citizenship should be evicted from the city," the service noted. The local administration believes that these measures will not only improve the safety and operating conditions of defence plants, but also radically amend the moral climate in the territory: this Siberian city with 200,000 population leads the territory in the spread of AIDS and narcotics. About 15,000 foreign citizens are currently residing in Norilsk.