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Russia May Give Up Salvage of Sunken Sub Crew Bodies: Official
Russian Deputy Premier Ilya Klebanov said Thursday that retrieving the crew bodies in the nuclear submarine "Kursk" sinking in the Barents Sea on August 12 will be "a very difficult and dangerous technical job" and the government may abandon the salvage plan.
Klebanov, also head of a governmental commission in charge of investigating the sub tragedy, told reporters that the feasibility of evacuating the sailors' remains must be discussed with their families. "As far as we understand, we cannot find anyone in the front four sections of the Kursk (which were torn open by explosions in the accident), and most of the submarine crew was there at the moment of the catastrophe," he said.
Just getting at the dead crew members will be very difficult in technical viewpoint and be very dangerous, Klebanov noted. It was initially planned that Norwegian divers who helped Russia make sure the death of the crew would do the retrieval themselves, but they had to abandon the idea later and ask Russian divers to join them, thinking of the high danger of this task.
It is also very hard to determine where the dead sailors are, so the issue whether the bodies should be recovered or not is needed to be discussed with the kin of the dead, said Klebanov.
He suggested an international maritime tradition of viewing a ship-sinking site as a common grave for the sailors. "It is a generally accepted norm.... But these issues are very important and any decision must be taken in full coordination with the families of the deceased," he stressed.
Klebanov rejected the views of some experts who say that silt will get into the submarine through the holes to be cut in its hull, making it impossible to raise the sub to the surface in the future.
"A project worked out by the Rubin design bureau and the Norwegian specialists will ensure the holes to be sealed after the operation," he said.
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