Row over Soviet sub.

Press, 30 October 1981, Page 6

Row over Soviet sub.

NZPA-Reuter Stockholm A diplomatic row has flared between Stockholm and Moscow over a Soviet submarine which ran aground in restricted waters near Sweden's main naval base at Karlskrona.

The Swedish Foreign Minister (Mr Ola Ullsten) summoned the Soviet Ambassador (Mr Mikhail Jakovlev) to the Foreign Ministry and handed him a sharply worded protest. “The Swedish Government views with extreme seriousness this flagrant violation of Swedish territorial waters,” said the Note released by the Foreign Ministry.

Mr Ullsten later said that the incident had soured relations between the two countries.

The submarine, identified by the Swiss defenee staff as a conventional vessel of the “Whisky” class, became stranded on Tuesday night (local time) and was spotted the next day by a fishing boat.

Damaged and leaking oil, the elderly vessel, believed to have a crew of 56. was surrounded by a cordon of Swedish naval vessels and Swedish Navy men boarded it. Helicopters circled overhead. No casualties were reported. The stranded vessel’s presence in a restricted military zone just 13km south-east of the Karlskrona naval base was likely to embarrass Moscow because of suspicions that Warsaw Pact submarines were spying in Swedish waters, diplomatic sources said.

The Swedish Foreign Ministry refused a request by the ambassador to allow four Soviet vessels to salvage the

submarine, a spokesman said.

“The vessel will have to be salvaged by Swedish authorities and not by the Soviets,” Mr Ullsten said on Swedish television.

The grey submarine was shown lying partially submerged in still waters, its prow riding slightly higher than its stern, near outcrops of jagged rock. It was flanked by two blue-and-white coastguard vessels, while a Navy minesweeper patrolled off its stern. Swedish officers said the Soviet crew had been throwing the submarine’s engines into reverse to try to dislodge it. It is stuck in shallow waters about 10m deep.

A defence staff spokesman said no plans had been made to evacuate the crew of the submarine, which was one of 240 built in the 1950 s and modelled on German "World War Two U-boats. The Soviet Union maintained a strict silence on the grounding.

Neither the official Tass news- agency nor State television made any mention of the submarine’ or of the diplomatic protest lodged by the Stockholm Government. Soviet officials refused comment.

Diplomats said Moscow’s embarrassment over the affair would be all the more painful because it was trying to woo Sweden and other Scandinavian States into agreeing to the establishment of a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the region. The main Soviet argument, that Moscow poses no threat to the Scandinavian States, would lose much of its credibility in the face of what

appeared to be evidence of military espionage on Swedish defence installations, the diplomats said. Earlier this week, the Soviet Union said the United States posed a threat to Sweden’s security because it was allegedly trying to draw Sweden towards the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. The accusation followed a visit to Stockholm by the American Defence Secretary (Mr Caspar Weinberger). Diplomats said the affair could also wreck a planned visit to the Soviet Union by the commander-in-chief of the Swedish armed forces,

Lennart Ljung, due next month. The visit has been seen as symbolising an improvement in relations between Stockholm and Moscow in recent years. Warsaw Pact submarines have often been spotted by Swedish radar and helicopters in territorial waters off Sweden’s long Baltic coast. A year ago, the Swedish Navy dropped depth charges near an unidentified vessel to warn it off. Defence sources said there had been 13 infringements of Swedish territorial waters in 1980, two involving unidentified submarines.