...AS UKRAINE OBJECTS TO SECOND LAUNCH DELAY. Speaking to journalists in Kyiv on 13 July, Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma said he cannot comprehend Kazakhstan's decision to block the launch, originally planned for 12 July, of a Ukrainian rocket that is to release a Ukrainian-Russian research satellite into orbit, Reuters reported (see also Part II). Kuchma added that Ukraine is incurring huge economic losses because of the delay. He noted that the Ukrainian rocket does not use the same highly toxic heptyl fuel as Proton rockets. Kazakhstan claims that spills of heptyl fuel have contaminated large swathes of its territory, a claim Russian experts have rejected. The head of Ukraine's space agency, Oleksandr Nehoda, told Reuters earlier on 13 July that Ukrainian Premier Valeriy Pustovoytenko had appealed to his Kazakh counterpart, Nurlan Balghymbaev, not to penalize Ukraine for the 5 July Russian proton rocket disaster. LF