Bush sends regrets to Japan

Bush sends regrets to Japan
Reuters

Washington, Feb 11: US President Bush sent ‘‘regrets and condolences’’ to Japan on Saturday amid an intensifying search in choppy seas for four Japanese high school students and five others missing after a nuclear-powered US Navy submarine struck and sank their trawler off Hawaii.

Secretary of State Colin Powell telephoned Japanese Foreign Minister Yohei Kono on Saturday morning ‘‘to convey his regrets and apology and also the President’s regrets and condolences,’’ David Denny, a State Department spokesman, said.

The Greeneville, a 360-foot, 6,900-ton attack submarine based at nearby Pearl Harbor, surfaced on Friday afternoon, crashing into the 499-ton trawler carrying 35 people, including fisheries students who were learning commercial trawling.Within 10 minutes, the trawler Ehime Maru sank into 18,000 feet of water 14 kms south of Waikiki Beach, off the island of Oahu. US Coast Guard rescue boats, backed by Navy Seahawk helicopters and P-3 Aircraft equipped with night-vision gear, quickly pulled 26 survivors from fluorescent orange canvas life rafts, some of them lashed together, the Coast Guard said. Two more aircraft were joining the search at first light, adding to the two Coast Guard cutters and two Navy ships that scoured the seas overnight.

Still missing were four 17-year-old students, two teachers and three crew members. ‘‘We remain hopeful,’’ said Chief Petty Officer Gary Openshaw, a Coast Guard spokesman in Honolulu. ‘‘It’s certainly not unheard of for people to survive much longer than this’’ in relatively mild, three-foot seas.

Openshaw said the weather off Oahu was ‘‘fair to poor,’’ slightly overcast with intermittent rains. The average water temperature was 77 deg C, he said, posing a risk of hypothermia for anyone awaiting rescue. In Tokyo, Japanese Coast Guard officials said the trawler was being used to train the second-year fisheries students and was observing tuna stocks. It left Japan on January 10 and had been scheduled to return on March 23.

The US Navy said it would conduct a thorough investigation. Bush, who was spending the weekend at the Camp David presidential retreat in the Maryland mountains, was briefed on the mishap on Friday night by his national security advisor, Condoleezza Rice, a White House official said. During the campaign, he played up a desire to strengthen security ties with Japan. ‘‘Alliances are not just for crises,’’ Bush declared repeatedly.

Meanwhile, Japan’s gaffe-prone Prime Minister, Yoshiro Mori, came under fire on Sunday from politicians and press for continuing with a game of golf after hearing that a US nuclear submarine had struck and sunk a Japanese trawler packed with students.”I don’t know how the Prime Minister first heard of it, butI think he should have stopped playing golf immediately and returned to his office," Takenori Kanzaki, leader of the New Komeito party and the key partner in Mori’s ruling coalition, told a television talkshow.