U.S. Aid Sought in Retrieving Chemical Weapons From Baltic

Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin on Tuesday asked President Bush for urgent U.S. help to recover giant containers of chemical weapons that German troops dropped in the Baltic Sea at the end of World War II, a Russian spokesman said.

Vyacheslav Kostikov, Yeltsin’s press secretary, told reporters the containers have rusted out, and “unless we take joint quick action we might face an ecological catastrophe in the Baltic Sea.”

Yeltsin suggested a joint U.S.-Russian program to bring up the containers and destroy them, Kostikov said. He said he did not know exactly where the containers are located.