Soviets Offer Apologies for Errant Missile

The Soviet Union acknowledged Friday that an old, unarmed Soviet cruise missile strayed during a firing exercise a week ago and may have flown over Finland and Norway, the Oslo government said. The Soviets expressed their regrets.

Moscow’s statement and apology, made by its ambassadors to Norway and Finland, came two days after Norway said a low-flying projectile passed over Norwegian territory and disappeared in Finland on Dec. 28. No trace of the missile has been found.

The Soviet envoy to Oslo, the Norwegian capital, was quoted as saying that an unarmed target drone launched from a Soviet ship during firing exercises in the Barents Sea had malfunctioned and might have violated Finnish and Norwegian airspace.

Expresses Regrets

Norwegian Foreign Minister Svenn Stray said Soviet Ambassador Dmitri Polyanski expressed his government’s regrets over the incident, and told him the intruding missile was “an old Soviet cruise missile” used as a target drone.

Stray said that Norway now considers the case closed. “This apology on the Soviet ambassador’s part improved relations between Norway and the Soviet Union and also between East and West,” he said in Oslo.

In its announcement, the Finnish Foreign Ministry did not specify the type of projectile discussed by V. M. Sobolev, the Soviet ambassador to Finland.

“While having firing exercises, a firing target had, because of a technical fault, strayed from its given course,” the ministry statement quoted Sobolev as reporting.

“He said it might have been possible that the target might at that point have violated Finnish airspace. Sobolev expressed his government’s regrets because of what happened.”

The ministry’s chief political officer, Klaus Toernudd, said: “The type of the flying target is not important, because we have obtained a diplomatic solution to the case.”

A Finnish government source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Sobolev used “flying target” several times in his report to Finnish Foreign Minister Paavo Vayrynen.

The source said the Finns considered the issue so touchy that the decision was made not to call the object a “drone” because that might imply that it was a rocket.

Finland shares Northern Europe’s longest land frontier with the Soviet Union. Its policy of maintaining Western social, political and economic systems concurrently with strong trade and official friendship with Moscow has come to be known abroad as “Finlandization.”

The Finnish government source said the Foreign Ministry will issue a final statement on the case after receiving a full report from the border guard, which has been searching for traces of the projectile in Finnish Lapland.

The search had been centered near Lake Inari, about 10 miles from the Soviet border. Finnish Radio said before the Soviet apology was announced that the search area had been moved toward the Norwegian border.

The radio said the search was shifted largely because of a report from a Norwegian bear hunter, Herman Sotkajaervi, who lives between extreme northern Finland and the Barents Sea.

Sotkajaervi told the Helsinki newspaper Iltalehti that he saw the missile and reported it to authorities. The missile, he told the newspaper, “vanished toward Finland,” and he then heard an explosion.

Before the Soviet ambassadors met with Foreign Ministry officials in Oslo and Helsinki, Norway on Friday lodged a protest in Moscow over the violation of its airspace, and the Finnish Foreign Ministry called in a representative of the Soviet Embassy to ask about the reported intrusion.

Norway’s Defense Ministry had said Wednesday that the intruding missile appeared to have been a cruise missile of a type fired from Soviet submarines, but Danish defense intelligence sources said the missile was more likely a target drone used for firing exercises.

One Danish source said the Soviet navy conducted firing exercises in the Barents Sea a week ago, 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 or nuclear warheads but is used by the Soviets mostly for drones, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.