Sailors' kin grill Putin

By Vladimir Radyuhin

MOSCOW, AUG. 23. Angry relatives of the crew of the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk which sank in the Barents Sea rebelled against the Kremlin's decision to hold a day of mourning on Wednesday for the 118 sailors declared dead and demanded that the rescue operation be resumed.

Hundreds of the sailors' families who gathered in the northern naval base of Vidyayevo poured their wrath on the Russian President, Mr. Vladimir Putin, when he met them on Tuesday night. They demanded that mourning be postponed until all sections of the sunken submarine had been thoroughly searched for possible survivors and the dead bodies had been retrieved.

``When will we get them back, dead or alive? Answer as the President,'' shouted a woman in the crowd, referring to the bodies of the sailors, in short clips on state-owned RTR television.

Mr. Putin, dressed in black and looking sombre, confronted the sailors' relatives in an unprecedented six-hour meeting closed to all media except state-owned television. Witnesses said the meeting was extremely heated and emotional, with the families voicing their indignation at what they called was a botched rescue operation. ``We do not believe our children are dead and we do not want any mourning until new efforts have been made to rescue them,'' a crying woman told NTV television after meeting the President.

The Interfax news agency said Mr. Putin had answered all of the relatives' questions and promised them all bodies from the Kursk would be recovered once Norwegian divers readied necessary equipment. He acknowledged the North Sea Fleet's rescue service was in a poor state but added that no commanders would be punished unless their guilt had been proved.

Mr. Putin decreed official mourning after Norwegian divers had opened an escape hatch on the Kursk on Sunday and found the entire submarine was flooded. Bowing to the families' demands, he cancelled a planned ceremony of paying last respects to the Kursk crew at the site of the catastrophe and returned to Moscow.

Wives and mothers of the sailors feared mourning would mean no further efforts would be made to recover the bodies. Mourning ceremonies were called off in Vedyayevo, but elsewhere in Russia flags flew at half-staff on Wednesday, candles were lit in Churches and entertainment programmes were cancelled.

NTV television said the sailors' families were going to sue the Government for failing to provide full and truthful information about the disaster during the 10-day rescue ordeal.

NTV on Wednesday reported that radiation levels on the coast near the site where the Kursk went down had doubled overnight. But later the channel cited the joint Russian- Norwegian environmental group, Bellona, as saying such variations are normal and harmless. The group said there were absolutely no signs of any radiation from the sunken submarine.

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