Norway drags feet over spy plane’s recorder

Press, 12 October 1978, Page 3

Norway drags feet over spy plane’s recorder

By

COLIN NARBOROUGH,

of the “Observer,” London Oslo. Norway appears to be dragging its feet over the opening of a commission of inquiry into the Soviet spy plane crash on its demilitarised Arctic territory of Spitzbergen (Svalbard) last month. What worries the Government is that an analysis of the aircraft’s black box could inflame already irritated Norwe-gian-Soviet relations.

The Foreign Ministry in Oslo has informed the Russians that Norway has the box containing the flight recorder of the Tupolev Tu-16 Badger which crashed into a mountainside on remote Hopen Island, 200 km south-west of the main Spitzbergen group, killing al! seven crew. The Soviet Union has been invited to send a technical expert to participate in the commission’s work and the Official reason for not starting the inquiry has been Moscow’s failure to react. And if the black box shows blatant Soviet violation of Norwegian air space, what then? Original plans were to send the recording device to Britain for decoding, but it was decided diplomatically that the job should be done in Norway, Any Western Power would probably be delighted to obtain the black box of one of the giant Soviet spy planes — the alba-trdss-like aricraft that monitor at sea level the vital approaches to the Russian naval and military complexes of the Kola Peninsula.

But Oslo is far from delighted. The Badger affair threatens to pour salt on the wounds of recent clashes with Moscow over Barents Sea fishing rights, Soviet reluctance to acknowledge Norwegian sovereignty on Spitzbergen, and more 'recently a mysterious swarming of Soviet merchant ships inside Norwegian territorial waters.

The Social Democratic Government of the Prime Minister (Mr Odvar Nordli) has tried to steer a cautious path through the growing numbers of disputes with the Russians, recognising the reality that this North Atlantic Treaty Organisation country shares a long, strategically important frontier with the Soviet Union.

Norwegian-Soviet rela« tions have been complicated by the existence of a de facto condominium on Spitzbergen. Under the terms of the 1920 international treaty, Norway has sovereignty over the island group but all signatory States have the right to exploit mineral wealth. The Russians in fact maintain a colony twice as large as Ndrway’s 1000strong mining community on Spitzbergen. The Norwegians are also sensitive to Soviet wishes in metropolitan Norway and keep foreign troops well clear Of the Russian frontier.

A convenient way of avoiding embarrassment over the spy plane crash was suggested in statements by inquiry commission chairman (Captain Hallvard Vikholt) last week. He drew the Government’s attention to damage in the black box casing that would allow corrosion of the flight record if decoding was not started urgently.