The company said the cost of the restructuring would result in charges of $348m after tax in the fourth quarter.

US tobacco companies last month agreed a $206bn compensation fund to pay compensation for smoking-related illnesses.

Action had been taken against them by 46 US states.

The money will be used to pay for treatment for smoking-related illnesses and to launch a programme to discourage young people from smoking.

US to see 1,000 more jobs go

In the United States, RJR said its RJ Reynolds Tobacco Co, the No. 2 US tobacco company and maker of Camel, Winston and Salem cigarettes, was cutting about 1,300 jobs, including 315 announced last month.

Chairman and chief executive Steven Goldstone said: "We knew when we agreed to resolve the state tobacco litigation that the domestic tobacco company would have to make enormous sacrifices both financially and operationally."

"Financially, Reynolds Tobacco will have a large ongoing obligation. Operationally, the settlement will result in more difficult business conditions that will require the company to scale back a major production facility and employment and aggressively attack other costs."

Overseas, RJR International said it was cutting 2,900 jobs in Russia and other Commonwealth of Independent States nations, where it has invested more than $400m since 1992.

Mr Goldstone said the international tobacco business had to "meet the challenge of unprecedented economic upheaval in Russia and other CIS economies, just as other Western companies are being forced to do."

He said the region continued to have enormous potential and the steps being taken would enable the businesses to begin to get these problems behind them, stabilise earnings and resume growth next year.

At the company's snack food opertaion Nabisco Holdings, which embarked on a massive restructuring in June, the company plans to improve its international operating structure.

The company said job cuts and facilities closures were likely to result from the moves, but it offered no details.