Norway had Informed Russia About Rocket Launch
by Yuriy Kozlov and Aleksandr StepanenkoMoscow ITAR-TASS, 27 January 1995
[FBIS Transcribed Text] Moscow January 27 TASS -- Norway has timely informed Russia on the exact day and place of the launch of its meteorological rocket which caused much ado in the world after Russian media quoted air defence sources as saying they had downed a combat missile flying from Norway. A spokesman of the Norwegian Embassy in Moscow told TASS on Friday that Russia had been informed in advance about the launch scheduled for the end of January in the framework of the arctic scientific research programme. The rocket landed as envisaged on Spitzbergen, over 1,000 km away from the Russian mainland. The official spokesman of the russian Foreign Ministry, Mikhail Demurin, confirmed to TASS on Friday that, "according to international practice, the Norwegian side has nearly a month ago informed the Russian Foreign Ministry through its embassy in Oslo about the launch with a special note in which the time and the place of the experiment were mentioned". "In its turn, the Foreign Ministry extended the information to the Defence Ministry of Russia", Demurin said. However, according to the Russian military, the rocket which never reached the Russian territory sent the air defence on alert. President Boris Yeltsin said on Thursday that he did not rule out a possibility that the launch might be a check of the "vigilance" of the national armed forces and praised the military for good work in timely detecting and tracing the rocket. TASS learned from sources in the Russian Foreign Ministry, that the rocket story made Norwegian Ambassasdor in Russia Per Tresselt visit the Foreign Ministry on Thursday to clear up the situation. He met there with Yuriy Fokin, the director of the second European department; however, the source refused to disclose the results of the meeting.
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