Russian officials have denied that a government investigation found that the Kursk nuclear submarine was sunk by a torpedo fired from a Russian warship.
The German Berliner Zeitung claimed yesterday that a report by the FSB, the successor organisation to the KGB, concluded that the submarine was hit by a rocket fired by the nuclear warship Peter the Great during a naval exercise in the Barents sea on August 12th.
All 118 men on board the submarine died. An international rescue effort failed amid widespread criticism of the Russian government and President Putin for their handling of the disaster.
The FSB declined to comment on the Berliner Zeitung report but a spokeswoman for the special commission investigating the disaster adamantly denied it.
"This is nonsense. Cruisers never carry real warheads, only training weapons, during military exercises," said Ms Oksana Onishenko, spokeswoman for the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Ilya Klebanov, who is leading the commission.
Russian officials have suggested that the Kursk collided with another vessel, although they admit that two powerful explosions that ripped through the submarine's hull could have been caused by an internal problem. US experts believe that the misfiring of one of the Kursk's torpedoes is the most likely explanation for the sinking.
However, the Berliner Zeitung said that the Peter the Great fired a Granit rocket armed with a target-seeking warhead and that the missile travelled 12 miles underwater. It claimed that crew on board the warship heard two underwater explosions and the Kursk was later found to have been within 400 metres of the rocket.
In New York this week for the UN Millennium Summit, Mr Putin said that technical data provided by the US could help to determine the cause of the disaster.
"It refers to explosions registered in the area and will help us to analyse the situation and make conclusions on what caused the catastrophe," Mr Putin said.
