Japan will build a five-story, $90 million embassy in Moscow by 2005, the Japanese Embassy has announced. The move will provide five times as much floor space as the current premises.

Work is due to start in January on a site leased from the Moscow city government at 19-27 Grokholsky Pereulok, near the Prospekt Mira metro station. The American Medical Center and the Irish and Portuguese embassies are located on the same street.

The embassy will be built by Japan's Shimizu Corp. construction company, which in 1999-2000 built a business school for Moscow State University. The architect is Nikken Construction Bureau, a private company.

Shimizu won a tender for the project, beating out two other Japanese firms, an embassy official said last week. For security reasons, the tender had been offered only to Japanese companies, he said.

A spokesman for Shimizu said it was too early to give details, adding the final contract for the construction of the embassy had not been finalized.

Japan's Asahi Shimbun newspaper quoted Japanese Foreign Ministry officials as saying it will be the third-largest Japanese Embassy, trailing only those in Washington and Beijing.

The 16,500-square-meter concrete building, with tennis courts and a swimming pool, will give staff more space than the cramped quarters at 12 Kalashny Pereulok, near the Arbat, that have served as the Japanese Embassy since 1957, the official said.

The current embassy opened in 1956 after Russia and Japan re-established diplomatic relations that had been broken off during World War II.

Before the war, Japanese envoys had much more spacious accommodation, including the Dom Druzhba on Vozdvizhenka Ulitsa and the current Nigerian Embassy on Malaya Nikitskaya Ulitsa, the embassy official said.

"After the war they were confiscated by the Soviet government without compensation, and when we restored diplomatic relations in 1956, we mutually waived our rights to compensation," the official said.

When the Main Administration for Service to the Diplomatic Corps -- GlavUpDK, or UpDK -- provided the site in Kalashny Pereulok in 1957, just 28 staff worked for the embassy, he said. Today there are 84 Japanese staff and 73 local employees.

"We don't have enough space for guests, for conferences or meetings," he said.

The new embassy is to be furnished by the Japanese Foreign Ministry, which is caught up in allegations of overspending.

The official dismissed reports in the Japanese media that the new embassy will be luxurious.

"In the new building, we will not be able to secure individual rooms for all embassy staff," he said.

The new embassy will have 120 rooms, but some of these are for technical services, he added.

Japanese criticism has focused on plans for a swimming pool, but at only 17 meters long and three lanes wide, the pool will hardly be deluxe, the official said. Several other Moscow embassies have swimming pools, and his embassy's pool will allow staff to exercise.

The construction budget would be paid out annually and be subject to scrutiny by the Japanese Finance Ministry and the Japanese parliament, leaving little room for wayward expenditure, he said. The embassy could be finished for even less than the estimated cost of about $90 million, he added.

Before finding the new site, the Japanese had been offered a site on Mosfilmovskaya Ulitsa, in western Moscow, but rejected it as too far from the city center, he said. The German, Swedish, Yugoslav and several other embassies are located on that street.

Japan, with the world's second-largest economy, ranks as Russia's 12th-largest trading partner, with trade in the first half of this year totaling about $1.8 billion, according to State Customs Committee figures. Russia exports about three times as much to Japan as it imports, the official said. Key exports are aluminum, coal and fish.

The State Statistics Committee ranks Japan as Russia's 10th-largest foreign investor, with total investment from 1991 through June 2001 of $553 million.

The embassy official said Japan's business with Russia is large and steadily growing. The official figures do not include significant Japanese investment, such as JT International's takeover of a St. Petersburg cigarette plant, valued at $500 million, imports of Japanese cars and electronic equipment from third countries and Japan's participation in the Blue Stream gas pipeline to Turkey, he said. About 1,000 Japanese live in Moscow, the official said, down from close to 2,000 during Soviet times, when state orders were very large.

David Whitehouse, managing director of Hanscomb International Construction Consultants Russia, said that many embassies, located in old buildings assigned to them in Soviet times, are seeking more modern premises.

"Most of the [Group of Seven leading industrial nations] are looking to move," he said. "In the next five years, it will be something that has to happen."

"We are talking to a lot of embassies at the moment who are looking either to move or to refurbish."

Engin Colpan, regional director of Turkish construction and contracting firm Alarko, said building a new embassy was in many cases not a luxury, but a necessity. Before Alarko built a new Turkish Embassy in Moscow in 1993, the old embassy had been deteriorating, he said.

"It's important that countries have state-of-the-art embassies in this world capital," he said.