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Bush Envoy Apologizes for Fatal Sub Crash
Acting as a special envoy for President Bush, the Navy's No. 2 officer apologized Wednesday to the families of the nine people missing and presumed dead after a surfacing U.S. submarine hit and sank a Japanese high school's training ship.
The meeting was intended to calm anger in Japan over the Feb. 9 accident off the Hawaiian island of Oahu and silence critics who have said the United States failed to make appropriate apologies for the accident and was slow to disclose details on why it occurred.
``I'm here to request in the most humble and sincere manner that you accept the apology of the people of the United States and the U.S. Navy as a personal representative of President Bush,'' Adm. William J. Fallon told the family members at a gathering in the U.S. Ambassador's residence.
Washington is particularly keen to ease tensions over the Feb. 9 submarine disaster as security ties were strained even before the accident by a series of sex crimes by U.S. servicemen on Okinawa.
Anger exploded just days before the USS Greeneville rammed into the Ehime Maru off Hawaii over an e-mail in which the top Marine on Okinawa reportedly called local leaders ``nuts'' and a ``bunch of wimps.''
He later apologized, but the uproar has yet to die down and several local assemblies have passed resolutions demanding the U.S. military presence on Okinawa be reduced or withdrawn altogether.
Roughly one-half of the 50,000 U.S. troops stationed in Japan are in Okinawa.
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