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Torpedo, not mystery vessel, sank Kursk says Russia
June 19, 2002
By Jon Boyle
MOSCOW (Reuters) - A senior minister cleared NATO and other foreign vessels Wednesday of sinking Russia's Kursk nuclear submarine two years ago, saying a faulty torpedo was to blame.
The softer line came as senior Russian navy officers and a top NATO admiral discussed joint work on submarine rescue, the first tangible fruits of Russia's closer relationship with the Atlantic alliance after the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the United States.
"There remains only one version -- a torpedo blast," Ilya Klebanov, who chairs an official investigation into the disaster in which all 118 crew died, said in comments on Russian television.
"The commission has discounted a collision and a mine," said the trade, science and technology minister, drawing a line under a disaster that traumatized Russia and shook the nascent presidency of Vladimir Putin.
Klebanov's commission is expected to report later this year into Russia's worst peacetime naval catastrophe. The nuclear submarine sank in the Barents Sea in August 2000 after an explosion triggered a raging inferno aboard the vessel.
In the wake of the calamity, many senior navy officers suggested that one of Russia's most modern vessels could have sunk after a collision with a NATO submarine -- always denied by the Western alliance -- or a World War II-era mine.
But navy chief Admiral Vladimir Kuroyedov pointed the finger at a torpedo fault in February, saying the model used by the Kursk was being withdrawn. Suspicions have focused on the weapon's unstable propeller.
Klebanov said the commission had told navy chiefs to stop trying to raise more of the Kursk's front section, which was left on the seabed last year when the bulk of the shattered vessel was raised.
He said there was no need to raise anything else from the seabed for the investigation. Most of the 500-foot, 18,000 ton nuclear-powered boat was raised in an unprecedented recovery operation last year.
MASSIVE BILL
Dismantling the vessel, which was armed with nuclear-capable cruise missiles, will take the final bill of the operation to some $130 million, a significant sum for Russia's tiny budget.
The loss of the Kursk stunned Russia, leading to national soul-searching and an outpouring of grief.
Stung by accusations he had failed to grasp the seriousness of the tragedy, Putin made it a point of honor to raise the Kursk and give the ill-fated crew a decent burial.
In total, 115 bodies have been identified and buried in two recovery operations. The remaining three are believed to be mutilated beyond recognition.
The Russian navy was heavily criticized for failing to promptly take up foreign offers of help during efforts to rescue sailors who survived the initial blast aboard the Kursk.
But after a two-day seminar in St Petersburg, Russian and NATO admirals Wednesday signed a protocol to set up an international sea-rescue service. Experts will work out a program of cooperation on submarine rescue by the year's end.
"The tragedy of the Kursk nuclear submarine was at the center of our discussions," said Russian Admiral Anatoly Komaritsyn, head of the ministry of defense department for navigation and oceanography.
"We have to make sure this never happens again," he told a press conference.
U.S. Vice-Admiral Malcolm Fages, deputy chairman of NATO's military committee, said the accord followed the May summit at which a new NATO-Russia Council was formed to advance military cooperation between the former Cold War foes.
"At the Rome summit last month, the heads of state and government from NATO and from Russia mentioned specifically a desire to see closer cooperation in the field of...search and rescue, and the seminar today is a manifestation of that."
(Additional reporting by Kostya Trifonov in St Petersburg)
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