Finns Search Rugged Terrain for Soviet Missile

On snowmobiles and in helicopters, Finnish border guards searched in Lapland’s winter darkness and rugged, snow-covered terrain Thursday for what Norway said may have been a wayward Soviet cruise missile.

Unlike Norwegian officials, who planned a mild protest, Finnish authorities steadfastly refused to characterize the low-flying projectile as a missile.

“An unidentified object approached the Finnish airspace on Dec. 28 at about 2:30 p.m. from the east over Lake Inari at several kilometers altitude and at high speed,” the border guard command said in a statement.

Danish View

The Norwegian Defense Ministry said Wednesday that the object appeared to have been a cruise missile of a type fired from Soviet submarines and that it flew over Norway’s far northeast on Friday before disappearing over Finland.

However, Danish defense intelligence sources said the missile was more likely a target drone used for firing exercises.

One Danish source said the Soviet navy was carrying out firing exercises in the Barents Sea on Friday, and “our information indicates it (the intruding missile) was an old SN-3 missile that the Soviets are known to use as drones.”

The SN-3 is a 1954-vintage missile capable of carrying conventional and nuclear warheads but used by the Soviets mostly for drones, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

He said that after the missile’s jet engines take over propulsion from its booster rockets, the drone navigates according to its program but can be forced to crash on command.

Low-Altitude Flights

The cruise missile is a medium-range tactical weapon capable of carrying nuclear warheads. It flies at relatively low altitudes and can be launched from the ground or from submarines.

The Finnish border guard statement said that a Lapp couple, reindeer herders named Valle, heard “a strong explosion” when the object disappeared from radar screens. But border guard pilots sent to investigate saw nothing.

Capt. Pertti Koivisto of the border guard headquarters in Rovaniemi, in southernmost Lapland 190 miles south of the search area, said the hunt was being carried out under difficult conditions--including temperatures about minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit.

“There is too little light, and the area is very wide,” he said by telephone. “We are carrying on with the search . . . so far nothing has been found.”

The search area is 10 miles from the Soviet border near Lake Inari, a deep lake considered mystical in Lapp legend. It is the second-largest of the thousands of lakes in Finland, which has northern Europe’s longest land border with the Soviet Union. The lake freezes in winter.

Finland, which for 40 years has maintained a strict Western social, political and economic system and at the same time had good relations with Moscow, treads cautiously on questions involving its Kremlin relations.

Off-Limits Call

Nevertheless, in his New Year’s message on Tuesday, President Mauno Koivisto had called for both the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact to declare the Nordic area off-limits to cruise missiles.

There was no comment from the Finnish government on the apparent missile intrusion.

In Oslo, Norwegian Prime Minister Kaare Willoch indicated that the presence of NATO and Soviet missiles in the European north was one reason his government limited its protest to a note delivered to Soviet officials in Moscow.

“It’s a serious matter that an exercise can develop in such a way that Norwegian territory is being violated,” he told reporters. “What has happened shows how exposed this area is, and how important it is that our own defense is effective.”

Norwegian Foreign Minister Svenn Stray said: “I do not think the episode . . . will have any consequences for the relationship between Norway and the Soviet Union.

“We will deliver a note of protest in Moscow concerning the violation of the border, but I do not think the episode will result in increased tension in the northern areas.

“Everything points to a Soviet exercise missile that went astray, and therefore it is probably an accident.”