TALLINN - Estonia's Prime Minister Andrus Ansip has rejected calls for a new inquiry into the 1994 Baltic sea ferry disaster that claimed 852 lives, as claims of a cover-up continue to circulate, reports news agency LETA. "The government has no plan to launch a new investigation, nor to request a study of the wreck" of the vessel, which went down exactly 15 years ago, Ansip said.
The ferry Estonia sank on the night of Sept. 28, 1994, as it sailed from the Estonian capital Tallinn en route to Stockholm. All but 137 of the 989 passengers - mostly Swedes - and crew on board perished, making it the Baltic's worst peacetime disaster. The wreck, which lies in international waters, is off-limits as a maritime grave.
Estonian prosecutor Margus Kurm, who has been involved in previous probes, called for divers to re-examine the wreckage. "In order to find out the answer there is a very simple method: go down there and shoot a film of the ship, as far as it is possible," Kurm said. Kurm added that he had never worked out why divers were only sent to the wreck on December 1, 1994.
An international inquiry in 1997 blamed faulty bow doors, which broke off in a storm, for the disaster, but Estonia and Sweden opened new investigations in 2005 amid claims from relatives, shipping experts and politicians that the ferry sank after an explosion.
An acknowledgment by Sweden that Soviet military equipment was carried on the ferry on several occasions in 1994 lent credence to the 'bomb' theory. Estonia had broken free from the crumbling Soviet Union in 1991, but the Red Army only left the country on August 31, 1994. "I got the feeling that many people we spoke to were not telling us the truth," remarked Margus Leivo, who several years ago chaired an Estonian parliamentary inquiry into the sinking.
An Estonian report in 2007 ruled out an explosion, at least near the bow doors, but relatives have continued to push for a new probe.
