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US Says Ready to Help Rescue Russian Submarine
The U.S. military is assembling a team of divers, engineers and medical experts to be ready this weekend to rescue the crew of a sunken Russian submarine, Defense Secretary William Cohen said on Friday.
Cohen said he got a letter from his Russian counterpart Igor Sergeyev on Thursday night thanking him for U.S. offer of assistance but asking that any U.S. help be coordinated through the NATO. Still no final request for U.S. help had yet been received from Russia.
"I would like to make it clear that the Defense Department remains ready, willing and able to provide whatever assistance we can to the Russian authorities that they would find helpful," Cohen told reporters at the Pentagon.
He said the Pentagon had already begun putting together a team of sea rescue experts -- divers, engineers and medical experts -- that could move to the site -- where the Russian Submarine Kursk was trapped at the bottom of the Barents Sea -- within 24 hours if requested by Moscow.
Cohen said U.S. offers of help were being coordinated in television conferences between Washington and Moscow and NATO officials at the alliance's headquarters in Brussels.
"They (the rescue team) will remain here until such time as there is a request made for their assistance," Cohen said. "They will be on the ready."
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