MOSCOW, September 5 (RIA Novosti) - Russia supports the idea of international cooperation to deal with the threat of an asteroid collision, the head of the federal space agency said on Friday.

"The problem really exists, and we need to think about how to solve it - naturally through broad international cooperation within the framework of the UN," Anatoly Perminov said in an interview with the Russian daily Krasnaya Zvezda.

He said a Russian radar facility, RF-70, used by the Space Forces, could be useful in dealing with the threat.

Russian scientists earlier suggested nuclear explosive devices are the most effective means of protecting the Earth from possible collisions with space bodies, including comets and asteroids.

Scientists around the world have been seeking ways of protecting the Earth from the threat of dangerous Near Earth Objects (NEOs). Scientists say such collisions pose a threat on average once every 200-1,000 years.

An earlier report by a Moscow scientific conference identified the 99942 Apophis, or Asteroid 2004 MN4, with a diameter of 350 meters, as the Earth's biggest space threat.

In 2029, this NEO will be just 36,000 km (22,400 miles) - closer than orbiting satellites - from the Earth. The planet's gravity could alter the asteroid's path in such a way that it could end up on a collision course with Earth on its next approach in 2036.

The explosion could surpass the famous Tunguska explosion of June 30, 1908, which affected a 2,150 square kilometer (830 sq miles) area of Russia felling over 80 million trees in the Krasnoyarsk Territory in Siberia.

Some researchers believe, however, that blowing up NEOs in space contains other dangers and could result in large fragments, which survive any blast, continuing on their collision path with Earth.

They propose a more cautionary approach toward dealing with NEOs, by deflecting them from their collision path toward the Earth.