THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, October 19, 1996 TAG: 9610190273
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A6 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: SEVERODVINSK, RUSSIA LENGTH: 36 lines
Defense Secretary William Perry on Friday visited this once-top secret Little Star submarine shipyard to observe Cold War ballistic missile submarines being cut up, smashed and turned into scrap metal.
Perry praised the Russians' ``skill and hard work,'' which has combined with U.S. machinery to destroy submarines under the Start I arms treaty.
``You can be very proud of that. We faced the danger of a nuclear holocaust that hung over our heads like a dark cloud. Now with the end of the Cold War, that cloud is drifting away,'' Perry said.
Perry watched as crews with blowtorches cut up a 400-foot Yankee Class submarine that was rusting in dry dock.
The submarine had once patrolled off U.S. shores, said Sen. Sam Nunn, D-Ga., who traveled with Perry to the site 180 miles south of the Arctic Circle.
``That sub had its missiles trained on U.S. cities,'' Nunn said. U.S. equipment has been provided to the workers at the base to help in their efforts to destroy two subs a year.
Perry and his entourage heard the clank and crash of scrap metal as it was smashed in a guillotine-like machine made by a company from Georgia.
Elsewhere on the base, Perry observed a copper shredder from Texas that turned copper wire from the subs into copper pellets for reuse in industry.
Perry's visit marked the first time that foreign journalists and photographers were allowed at the base, a major production facility for the former Soviet Union's strategic ballistic missile submarines.
The United States is destroying its subs at a site in Puget Sound in Washington state. by CNB