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From Nuclear Arms & Military News

We are a little worried about this," Haavard Holm, head of the State Pollution Control Authority, told Reuters. He said Arctic seas off Norway were stormiest in winter and noted that a Soviet warship ran aground off Norway while under tow in 1994.

A Russian-American firm is planning to start towing the giant 274-metre long Kiev aircraft carrier, built in 1976 and weighing 40,500 tons, from Russia's Kola peninsula at the end of November.

A spokesman for the Moscow-based firm in charge of the operation, Marine Trade International Inc, told the Norwegian daily Aftenposten the trip to a Bombay scrapyard was expected to take about 120 days.

The Kiev, formerly armed with nuclear weapons, was the first big aircraft carrier built by the former Soviet Union, with a crew of more than 1,200. It was taken out of service in 1993.

Holm said Russia had the right to tow the vessel through international waters but that Norway would closely monitor its progress. It would go west of Britain, Ireland and Spain and then around Africa.

Norway's concerns are partly tied to the grounding off Norway in 1993 of the Soviet cruiser, the Murmansk, while it was under tow from Russia to a scrapyard. It is still on the rocks off northern Norway near Hasvik. Holm said that "the Murmansk had at least been cleaned -- there was no oil pollution and we expect the same to be the case with the Kiev...Our advice is to let (the Murmansk) lie there because it would be so expensive to salvage."

In the most serious Soviet military accident off Norway, 42 sailors died when the nuclear-armed Komsomolets submarine sank in 1989 after a fire.