MOSCOW, June 25 (Reuters) - Russian steel and mining company Metalloinvest will resume payments for the licence to Siberia's Udokan copper deposit won at a 2008 auction within the next few days, a source at the company told Reuters on Thursday.

Russia's largest iron ore miner paid 4.5 billion roubles ($144.2 million) shortly after winning the September auction, but it withheld about 10.5 billion roubles in additional payments while negotiating changes to the original agreement with the Rosnedra natural resources agency.

In a statement issued on Thursday, Metalloinvest said these talks had been completed.

'The parties reached an agreement about changes in the terms of the license agreement taking into consideration the interests of the government and the investor,' the statement said.

The company, half owned and founded by Alisher Usmanov, did not provide any details on the nature of the amendments to the licence.

Last year it agreed to invest $3.9 billion in the Udokan project, but since then Metalloinvest has suspended its overall capex programme in order to preserve cash.

Udokan is Russia's largest untapped copper deposit, and once it reaches full capacity it will be able to produce 474,000 tonnes of copper cathode per year.

(Reporting by Polina Devitt, writing by Alfred Kueppers) ($1=31.20 Rouble) Keywords: METALLOINVEST/UDOKAN

(alfred.kueppers@thomsonreuters.com; Tel +7 495 775 1242; Reuters Messaging: alfred.kueppers@thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net)

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