At the Pentagon on Friday, Defense Secretary William Cohen said the United States was assembling a small team of technical experts just in case Russia sought the help. Cohen said U.S., Russian and NATO officials were to talk Saturday morning about whether Moscow wants to go ahead with some form of NATO help on top of assistance already sent by Britain and Norway. Cohen said he had no insight into how likely the Russians believe it is that some members of the stricken sub's crew are still alive. Russia resisted offers of help from countries with sophisticated equipment for days, but relented Wednesday and accepted an offer of a British rescue mini-submarine and a Norwegian diving team. The navy has given wildly contradictory estimates of how long the Kursk's emergency oxygen supplies could last, ranging from a few hours to two weeks.
Officials admit they have no idea of conditions inside the submarine.
Popov, the Russian admiral, said the Kursk was crippled by a huge internal explosion when it went down Aug. 12. Officials said Thursday the Kursk had been in a collision, but Popov said the explosion could have been triggered from inside. There have been no reports of other vessels in the area at the time with which the Kursk might have collided. A likely scenario was that a torpedo in the Kursk's forward torpedo compartment exploded, setting off a much bigger explosion in the compartment, which is packed with torpedoes. U.S. submarines monitoring Russian Navy exercises when the Kursk was lost last Saturday detected two explosions at the time, the second much larger than the first, U.S. officials said.