RFE/RL NEWSLINE Vol. 4, No. 203, Part I, 19 October 2000

IS GOVERNMENT STALLING OVER 'KURSK' RESCUE OPERATION? Colonel
General Valerii Manilov, first deputy chief of the Russian
General Staff, was quoted by Interfax on 18 October as
suggesting the government may reverse its decision to recover
the bodies of at least some of the 118 crew members of the
"Kursk" nuclear submarine, which sank in the Barents Sea in
August during maneuvers. Manilov commented that a final
decision will be taken after "an additional examination of
the disaster site." Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov, who
heads a government commission investigating the causes of the
"Kursk" disaster, refuted Manilov's comments, stressing that
the operation to recover the bodies will be carried out. He
said that because of gale force winds at the scene of the
disaster, the operation had been postponed until next week.
However, Western agencies quoted a spokesman for the
Norwegian subsidiary of the U.S. company Halliburton, which
is to oversee the recovery operation, as saying the weather
in the region was "fine" and that the operation will go ahead
as planned later this week. JC

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RFE/RL NEWSLINE Vol. 4, No. 203, Part I, 19 October 2000