Russian Scientist, U.S. Poles Apart Over Rescue

An explorer flies all the way to the South Pole but has to ask someone else to fly him out. Question: What is it called? a) A triumph of aviation? b) An embarrassment? c) A diplomatic snafu?

Answer: All three.

On Jan. 8, Artur Chilingarov, a deputy speaker of Russia’s parliament and a polar scientist, flew with some adventurous buddies to the South Pole. He claimed that their An-3 biplane, which flew about 750 miles over the Antarctic landscape before landing at the Earth’s southernmost point, was the first single-engine aircraft to make the trip. Their derring-do earned them a congratulatory phone call at the South Pole from Russian President Vladimir V. Putin.

But for some reason--some say that the engine wouldn’t restart, others simply that the weather was bad--the plane couldn’t make the trip out. So Chilingarov had to ask the United States, which has a research base at the South Pole, to rescue him.

But the biggest indignity was yet to come--the U.S. Antarctic Program is billing the Russian government $80,000 for his rescue.

“We by law are not permitted to provide assistance to private expeditions,” explained Peter West, spokesman for the U.S. government’s National Science Foundation, which administers the program. “We reserve the right to recover our costs if we have to provide humanitarian assistance to private groups,” he said Wednesday.

Chilingarov says he wasn’t told that the rescue would cost money and that if he’d known he might not have accepted the help. Regardless, he insists, asking for money violates the spirit of cooperation on the continent, which is internationally recognized as nonmilitary territory for scientific exploration.

“It seems some American bureaucrats have forgotten the principle of polar cooperation,” he huffed in an interview with the Komsomolskaya Pravda daily. “I myself have more than once pulled Americans out of very difficult situations, and I did it absolutely for free.”

The U.S. State Department has gotten involved, certifying that, indeed, Chilingarov’s expedition wasn’t officially sponsored by the Russian government and so he is liable for the rescue costs. Chilingarov plans to discuss the matter with the U.S. ambassador in Moscow this week. The Russian government has so far remained mum on the incident.

“It seems some people aren’t happy we made it to the South Pole,” he groused at a news conference Wednesday. He didn’t say who those people might be.

Expedition Defended

The incident appears to have embarrassed Chilingarov, one of Russia’s most accomplished polar scientists, who grew defensive about questions as to the wisdom of his trip. At the news conference, he bristled at suggestions that he was on a high-risk joy ride with fellow travelers rich enough to buy into his Antarctic adventure.

“I don’t deny that there is an element of adventurism in any expedition,” Chilingarov said. “But for a polar explorer, common sense and cowardice are not the same thing.”

Chilingarov, 62, trained as an oceanographer and geographer and has participated in Soviet and Russian Arctic and Antarctic programs steadily since the 1960s, earning a Hero of the Soviet Union award. Since 1993, he has been a member of the lower house of the Russian parliament, the State Duma, where he is now one of eight deputy speakers.

Chilingarov said he set off from Punta Arenas, Chile, near the southern tip of South America, on Jan. 7 in a Russian Il-76 jet with the dismantled An-3 in the cargo bay. He and his party landed at Patriot Hills in western Antarctica, a common staging ground for private expeditions, and reassembled the An-3.

They left for the South Pole the following day, he said--seven Russians and seven other passengers who had contributed to the air fare. Chilingarov refused to identify the other passengers, but news reports said they included citizens of Ukraine, France, Sweden, Switzerland and the United States whose fares helped pay for the estimated $1-million trip.

The flight lasted about 6 1/2 hours, Chilingarov said. When they arrived at the U.S. Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, they were greeted warmly by the U.S. scientists, presented with certificates commemorating their journey and given a tour of the base. The scientists were “stunned,” he said, when Putin phoned to congratulate the group. The Russians planted a Russian flag.

From that point, things began to go wrong. And explanations of what happened next begin to diverge.

At the news conference Wednesday, Chilingarov said the major factor in the decision not to fly the An-3 back was the weather, which had taken a sudden turn for the worse.

“I want to emphasize that the plane was in working order,” he said.

Some news reports, however, have said that the engine wouldn’t restart after it had been shut off for several hours. West, of the U.S. National Science Foundation, said Chilingarov made a request to the State Department asking that his plane be refueled. It wasn’t clear if that request meant that the aircraft was low on fuel.

On Jan. 10, West said, a C-130 Hercules operated by the New York Air National Guard picked up Chilingarov and the other Russians and flew them first to the main U.S. base in Antarctica, McMurdo, from which they were later flown to New Zealand. The foreign travelers flew back to Patriot Hills with a commercial adventure tour company.

The rescue has been left out of most official Russian reports about the trip. “The expedition fully accomplished its program,” the official Itar-Tass news agency quoted Chilingarov as saying. The pro-Kremlin ORT network, which provided Chilingarov with a cameraman, has run a number of reports this week on the trip, not one of which has mentioned the rescue.

Chilingarov said the point of his trip was to raise Russia’s profile in the Antarctic and emphasize the international nature of the continent.

The United States operates three year-round research bases on the continent, including Amundsen-Scott. The Soviet Union once operated five year-round stations, one of which Chilingarov directed in the 1970s. In the last decade, Russia has had to cut back its presence.

‘A Waste of Time’

Valery Lukin, head of the Russian government’s Antarctic Expedition, denounced Chilingarov’s trip as a stunt.

“There is a good English term for it--adventure tourism,” he said by telephone from his office in St. Petersburg. “This is what Chilingarov’s trip to the South Pole can be most likely called. From the scientific point of view, the trip was a waste of time.”

Lukin also said the United States is entirely justified in charging private citizens for rescues. Since the Antarctic Treaty was signed, government expeditions have traditionally extended assistance to each other without regard to cost; the same assistance is not automatically provided to private adventurers.

“All private expeditions are encouraged to be self-sufficient,” West said.

If the bill ever arrives in his mailbox, Chilingarov said, he will pay for the rescue himself: “If we have any financial obligations, we will meet them.” He said he took out insurance for the trip and insisted that the Russian government has not and will not finance the trip in any way.

Meanwhile, the An-3 biplane remains parked near the 3-foot-high striped pole that marks the official bottom of the globe, awaiting rescue.

Chilingarov told Komsomolskaya Pravda that he plans to head south again later this month, this time with two monks in his entourage. They will erect a chapel at the pole and sing an Orthodox liturgy.

“In any case,” he said, “for the honor of Russia, they will try.”

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Alexei V. Kuznetsov of The Times’ Moscow Bureau contributed to this report.