The operation to bring the vessel into dry dock at Rosliakovo near the north-west Russian port of Murmansk began Sunday, involving six tugs, a Dutch barge (Giant-4), and a trip across the bay of Belokamennaya.

The wreck is to be raised seven metres above sea level following the operation to refloat it on October 8.

Russian public prosecutor Vladimir Ustinov said on Saturday he would examine the wreck personally as chief of the investigating team.

Putting the Kursk into dry dock should take five days, but Ustinov is expected at Rosliakovo on Monday following President Vladimir Putin's decision that the legal investigators should see the wreck before the military.

Ustinov has confirmed that the team is working on three hypotheses as to why the Kursk should have sank in the Barents Sea killing all 118 crewmen on board.

According to the Russians, it could have been a collision with a foreign vessel -- perhaps a NATO submarine -- or an accidental torpedo explosion, or a collision with a mine dating from World War II. None of the three hypotheses is favoured over any other, said Ustinov.

He did not mention the theory aired in the weeks following the tragedy and revived by the German weekly Der Spiegel, that the submarine was hit by a missile fired in error by the Russian cruiser Pierre-Le-Grand.

Der Spiegel cites a new document initialled by Putin and dated September 10, 2001 which makes reference to the firing of a missile by the vessel in the area at the time.

This version of events was rejected categorically by the Kremlin at the beginning of September 2000 and is dismissed as fantastic by experts in Murmansk.

The examination of the wreck should provide some clues to the disaster, but Ustinov has not excluded the theory that the key to the mystery lies in the submarine's front compartment, left on the sea bed for security reasons.

Ustinov confirmed that Deputy Prime Minister Ilia Klebanov had told him that the front compartment would be raised next year. "There is no alternative," he said.

Situated in the prow of the vessel, the compartment concerned is the one that holds the torpedoes and also the one which was most damaged in the disaster.

Ustinov promised that if it was proved that high-ranking officers were to blame, then "they will bear the responsibility despite their years of service".

A major priority once the wreck is out of water will be to recover the bodies of the crewmen. Only 12 have been located so far.

Equally, it will be necessary to dismantle the two nuclear reactors, an operation particularly dreaded by ecologists, and retrieve the 22 missiles still on board.

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Salvage workers took the first step towards placing the wreck of the Kursk submarine in dry dock Saturday as they began attaching a pontoon under the Giant-4 barge which five days earlie

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