Finland Returns Missile Remains

This country has returned to the Soviet Union the wreckage of an errant missile together with a bill for $83,600 for recovery costs, which the Helsinki government said the Kremlin has agreed to pay.

A brief Foreign Ministry statement said that remnants of the missile, which landed in a lake near the Soviet border on Dec. 28, were handed over Friday at the Finnish frontier railroad station at Vainikkala.

Air force experts had been analyzing the debris since it was raised piece by piece from the bed of Lake Inari, but an air force statement said that no decision is expected yet on whether to publish the results of the investigation.

A senior air force source has described the missile as a reconstructed vehicle apparently dating from the early 1970s.

Finnish experts believe that it was a guided missile used as an aerial target. It apparently went astray during Soviet exercises in the Barents Sea before flying over Norway and crashing in Finland. The experts have not yet suggested why it crashed, beyond speculating it might have run out of fuel.