Experts who have examined the wreck of the vessel raised last October have found no proof of a collision, Klebanov said, quoted by the Interfax news agency.

Specialists from Rubin, the company that built the sub, have looked at fragments of the external hull from the place where it suffered the most damage.

"It is a catastrophe that happened because of objective reasons which accumulated during the 1990s," said Klebanov, referring to a lack of financing which has led to a deterioration of the Russian navy.

"The state must pay more attention to its armed forces" so that such catastrophes do not happen again, he said.

Klebanov gave no further details but said an official statement on the cause of the Kursk trategy could be made in mid-2002, after the raising of the bow where missiles and torpedoes were stored.

All 118 crew perished when a series of explosions caused the vessel, the pride of the Northern fleet, to sink to the bottom of the Barents Sea during naval exercises on August 12, 2000.

The submarine apart from the bow was raised from the seabed in October and towed to dry dock in the Roslyakovo ship-building factory not far from Russia's northwestern port of Murmansk.

Theories abound as to the cause of the sinking, with investigations so far favouring three: a collision with another possibly NATO vessel; a torpedo exploding in a firing chamber; and the possibility that the sub hit a World War II mine.

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