"The Russian proposal to strictly control sales of ground-to-air missiles was not supported by representatives of the military leadership of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Uzbekistan or Ukraine," an official responsible for CIS defence cooperation told the Russian news agency Interfax.

The differences emerged at a Monday meeting in the Kazakh capital of defence ministers representing the loose grouping of 12 former Soviet republics, Interfax said.

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov had called for fellow ex-Soviet republics to help track down shoulder-held Igla ground-to-air missiles, which have been used against Russian helicopters by separatists in the war-torn republic of Chechnya.

Ivanov argued that such missiles represent a global threat and pointed to the example of another ex-Soviet system, the Strela, which was used in an unsuccessful attack on an Israeli passenger jet at Kenya's Mombasa airport in November last year.

On Monday, Ivanov announced progress by a core group of six CIS countries in establishing an airborne rapid reaction force in Kazakhstan's neighbour Kyrgyzstan.

Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Georgia and Uzbekistan are not part of this six-member Collective Security Treaty group, which includes Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan.

Last August a Mi-26 helicopter hit by an Igla missile crashed into a minefield near Russian military headquarters a few kilometres (miles) east of the Chechen capital Grozny, killing 118 servicemen and civilians.

That incident was the biggest single loss on the Russian side since the beginning of the current Chechen conflict in October 1999.

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