18 February 2004	Wednesday	26 Zilhaj 1424

MOSCOW, Feb 17: Mystery surrounded huge military exercises in Arctic Russia attended by President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday with some navy sources saying a planned missile launch had failed while top brass denied any incident had occurred.

Navy commander Vladimir Kuroyedov said there had been no plans to launch any missiles at all. The initial report, carried by two Russian news agencies, quoted an unnamed source in the Northern Fleet command as saying the launch of two ballistic missiles from a submarine in the Barents Sea had failed.

The source said the incident, which may have been caused by a military satellite blocking the launch signal, did not lead to any serious consequences for the Novomoskovsk nuclear submarine.

"The causes and circumstances of the occurrence are being pinpointed. The Novomoskovsk has returned to base," the source, speaking in the Northern Fleet base of Severomorsk, was quoted as saying by Interfax news agency.

The intercontinental PCM-54 missiles, belonging to the Skiff class under NATO's classification, were part of the old Soviet Union's cold war stock of rockets capable of striking US territory.

The two missiles were to have been fired thousands of kilometres the length of the Russian Federation to a target on the Kamchatka peninsula in the far east, according to the popular Internet Web site www.strana.ru. But within two hours of this report, Kuroyedov, the navy commander, and a spokesman for the Northern Fleet denied any unusual occurrence. "No unforeseen situations appeared in the course of the exercise," the spokesman said, according to Interfax.

MEMORIES OF KURSK: Commander Kuroyedov, quoted by Itar-Tass, said the exercise had required only preparatory work for the missiles' launch. "This work was carried out twice according to plan," he said.

President Putin, who is running for re-election next month, had been due to watch the launches off Russia's Arctic coast from another nuclear submarine, the Arkhangelsk.

His arrival at the Severomorsk naval base was extensively shown on television on Monday and Tuesday morning and news agencies later reported the submarine carrying him had returned to port after he watched the manoeuvres.

Mr Putin has said that the military exercise, designed to check the effectiveness of Russia's nuclear shield, was the first in years on this scale. Billed by Russian media as the largest show of military muscle since Soviet times, the exercise is scheduled to include numerous missiles launches and strategic bomber over flights.

Accidents involving nuclear submarines strike deep in Russia since an Aug 2000 disaster in which the nuclear Kursk submarine sank in the Barents sea, killing 118 people on board. -Reuters