Russia, U.S. agree 'friendly fire' did not sink Kursk

MOSCOW (CNN) -- Russian and U.S. officials are discounting a German newspaper report alleging "friendly fire" sank the Kursk submarine.

Russian Vice-Premier Ilya Khlebanov, who heads a government committee investigating the disaster, said no firing was taking place when the submarine went down on August 18 with the loss of 118 lives.

MESSAGE BOARD The Kursk

"The ships that were in the war zone were supposed to keep an eye on the torpedo attack that was carried out by the Kursk. There was no firing," said the minister.

"In addition, any firing that was carried out (during the war games) was done without any live fire ammunition."

The article in the German newspaper Berliner Zeitung maintained that the Kursk was sunk by an anti-submarine missile fired from the Russian cruiser Peter the Great.

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It reported that the missile was equipped with a new target-seeking warhead but did not explain why the missile struck the Kursk.

Khlebanov said there were now three possible reasons for the accident: "Collision with an object, a mine from the time of the Second World War, or an emergency in the first (torpedo) section of the Kursk."

U.S. officials also were skeptical of the German newspaper report.

"That is not consistent with what we know about the disaster," a senior Pentagon official told CNN Friday. U.S. officials suspect a malfunction is the likely culprit.

"We would have seen or heard a weapon if it had been fired at the time of the sinking," said a senior Pentagon official familiar with the analysis of acoustical data gathered by U.S. submarines and underwater sensors.

"Everything is consistent with an internal event," the official said, discounting the report.

The United States on Wednesday told the Russians it monitored two explosions, the first at 7:28:26 am GMT and the second much larger explosion at 7:30:42 GMT.

A letter from the chief of naval operations, Adm. Vern Clark, to his Russian counterpart included an estimate that the second explosion was "45 to 50 times greater" than the first and equivalent to one to five tons of TNT, depending on the depth at which the Russian submarine was operating.

If the Kursk was at shallow depth, say 30-40 meters, the blast would be equal to one or two tons of TNT. If it were at a greater depth, say 100 meters, it would be equal to four to five tons.

Russian President Vladimir Putin told CNN in an interview that the submarine was operating at a shallow depth.

"It's clear that in result of this tragedy, we can talk about certain explosions, but we don't know what triggered those explosions. All the rest, you know," Putin said on CNN's "Larry King Live."

"There was a large hole in the pressure hull around one-and-a-half meters to two meters," Putin said. "And now we know for sure that in result of the powerful blast, 75 or 80 percent of the crew died within 90 seconds since the submarine was at a so-called periscope depth at the moment, which implies that all the crew were at battle stations in the first two or three watertight compartments, and they were destroyed within 90 seconds of the blast."

Pentagon officials said the United States does not know the cause of the blast, but speculation has centered on a problem with a new type of torpedo powered by liquid fuel.

The theory is the torpedoes' liquid fuel system could explode in the torpedo tube, causing a chain reaction.

The Russian Red Star military newspaper reported the day after the accident that the Kursk had been carrying the liquid-fuel propelled torpedoes. It reported the Kursk captain had complained the new torpedoes were more dangerous than the compressed air ones they replaced.

A senior Pentagon official said the United States believes the new weapon was deployed on the Kursk and that a malfunction is the most plausible explanation, given the known facts.

CNN Moscow Bureau Chief Jill Dougherty and CNN Military Affairs Correspondent Jamie McIntyre contributed to this report.

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