Kursk Lifting Unlikely Before Mid-2001

Any operation to lift Russia's sunken Kursk submarine will take months of planning and so is unlikely until summer 2001, Stolt Offshore officials said.

Stolt's Norwegian and British divers earlier this week managed to open the Kursk's escape hatch, but and found the sub flooded with all 118 crew dead. Stolt, which specializes in North Sea diving and salvage work, agreed to look at ways of raising the wreck or recovering the corpses.

With the approach of the winter, months of planning mean that any operation would have to wait until light and calmer seas returned to the Arctic Barents Sea in 2001.