U.S. Navy begins inquiry into Stark incident

Press, 21 May 1987, Page 10

U.S. Navy begins inquiry into Stark incident

By

JAMES FOLEY

of Reuters

NZPA Bahrain The agony of the U.S.S. Stark has ended. Now the explaining begins. The battered warship anchored five miles off Bahrain more than 50 hours after two Iraqi-fired Exocet missiles hit its port side, killing 37, almost a fifth of its crew.

A United States Navy Board will arrive today to begin an investigation of the incident, including why the frigate failed to activate its anti-missile defences when it knew Iraqi warplanes were approaching. Not only did the ship, captained by Commander Glenn Brindel, identify itself as American to the Iraqi jet fighters but also it detected that it had become "illuminated” by their tar-

get acquisition radars. Military experts in the Gulf, as well as in the United States, remained baffled as to why the ship in the circumstances did not prepare for a possible attack. The United States Defence Secretary, Caspar Weinberger, said in Washington he did not know why the Stark did not try to protect itself.

"That will be one of the first orders of business of the inquiry,” he told a Senate committee. Rear-Admiral Harold Bernsen, commander of United States ships in the region, told reporters that the ship had been on alert state 3, meaning all weapons were manned and ready for use.

The admiral said there had been no reason to believe that the approach-

ing Iraqi airc-aft were hostile.

“We don’t recognise that Iraq is hostile,” said. Admiral Bernsen also said that the missiles might have been laserguided which means they would not have been detected on their flight to the Stark. As the board arrives for the inquiry, American officials will send home 24 bodies which have been identified and the remains of 11 others recovered after the missile explosions and subsequent fires.

The Pentagon said the death toll was 37 with several missing. A warship remained in the area of the attack yesterday searching for the two other bodies. The SUS2OO million ship, one of seven vessels

the United States currently has in the Gulf, had a crew of more than 220 when it was hit. The bodies have been taken to the La Salle, command ship of American forces in the Gulf, and were to leave later yesterday for West Germany on their way to the United States.

The Stark, anchored near the La Salle, had to be towed almost 135 km to Bahrain from, where it was hit.

Iraq acknowledged that its warplanes mistakenly attacked the ship. The Iraqi Foreign Minister, Tareq Aziz, referred to the incident as a “painful accident.”

President Reagan said there must never be a repeat of the attack on the Stark and said that the order of battle for

United States warships now was “defend yourselves.” Admiral Bernsen said that while his ships were on heightened alert the rules of engagement remained unchanged.

“We are not out here to shoot down aircraft indiscriminately,” he said. Iran, Iraq’s foe in the Gulf War, said that the Stark incident showed that the United States navy was a “paper tiger” not worthy of fear. The Parliamentary Speaker, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, told Parliament in Teheran that the Iraqi attack on the Stark was proof of divine assistance for Islam.

He said the Stark sailors had become “prey for the whales of the Persian Gulf.”