MEMORIAL TO FLIGHT 007 VICTIMS STILL LACKING

The first Russian monument to the 269 people killed on Korean Air Lines Flight 007 was to have been finished by now.

But 10 years after the plane strayed into Soviet airspace and a fighter jet shot it down, work has yet to begin.Old tires, rusting cables and a stack of metal poles litter the memorial site, a roadside lot in this fishing village overlooking mud flats and the Sea of Japan, 35 miles from the spot where the Boeing 747 slammed into the water.

The failure to memorialize such a tragic Cold War event reflects the uncertainty here on remote Sakhalin Island, where many residents are only now starting to question the discredited Soviet version of what happened Sept. 1, 1983.

Was the attack a justified response to Western provocation, a panicked overreaction or the final mistake in a tragic series that ended with the destruction of a jumbo jet packed with passengers about to eat breakfast?

Kim Den Khi, a Sakhalin official who serves as a liaison with the island's ethnic Korean minority, insists the monument be built.

"It's not something only the families of the victims need," he said. "All our future generations need it to prevent such tragedies in the future."

U.S.-Soviet relations were plunged to a new low by the destruction of Flight 007. President Ronald Reagan denounced the Kremlin. The Soviet government claimed the civilian jetliner was on a spy mission, "used by American special services for their dirty aims."

Over the past year, President Boris Yeltsin of Russia has released evidence that leaves little serious doubt about what happened high above Russia's far east. Some of it is from the flight data recorders, or "black boxes," which the Soviet government had said were never recovered.

After the jumbo jet left Anchorage, Alaska, for Seoul, South Korea, it veered hundreds of miles off course over the Bering Sea.

After straying for more than two hours over sensitive military bases on the Kamchatka Peninsula and Sea of Okhotsk, tracked by Soviet fighters, the plane flew over Sakhalin, a verdant island turned fortress. Authorities below debated what to do.

Finally, the order came and a Soviet officer shouted, "Get Osipovich to fire, and soon!," cursing that the intruder was approaching international waters near Japan.

Pilot Gennady Osipovich fired two air-to-air missiles from his Su-15 fighter and sent Flight 007 crashing into the sea.

Inside the Korean airliner, the cockpit crew had been laughing and sharing cigarettes when an alarm went off and the plane rapidly lost altitude, according to recently released transcripts of conversations on the data recorders.

"Get up!" one pilot shouted to another as they struggled with the controls.

"I can't!" came the reply.

Startled passengers, told only minutes before to prepare for breakfast, heard the announcement: "Urgent cabin descent. Fasten seat belts. Put on oxygen masks."

Osipovich radioed to his controllers: "The target is destroyed."

He returned to base a hero. Soon afterward, when authorities learned the identity of the mysterious intruder, he became simply a man who had followed orders.

Even now, Osipovich insists the Boeing was a ghost vessel on a spy mission and carried no passengers.

Those who know the retired air force colonel say the the experience ruined his life.

"He killed a lot of people. Their ghosts are in his kitchen and in his garden, and he's trying to find a way to live with it," said Andrei Illesh, an editor of the newspaper Izvestia who wrote a book on the disaster.

Many Sakhalin islanders share Osipovich's view of the flight's purpose, noting the apparent failure to find human remains.

"I don't believe there were any passengers aboard," said Ivan Biriukh, captain of the fishing trawler Uvarovsk, the first vessel to reach the crash site. Biriukh said his crew found wreckage and personal belongings from the water, but no bodies.

Experts believe the jet hit the water with such force that it would be difficult to find any bodies intact.

Some people think Soviet searchers did retrieve bodies and secretly buried them in a mass grave on Sakhalin, then a closed military region. In early September, Russia will let victims' families excavate a remote site south of Nevelsk in hopes of clearing up the mystery.

Most of the dead were South Koreans and Japanese, but 61 Americans were aboard, including Rep. Larry McDonald of Georgia.

Aided by the newly released material, the International Civil Aviation Organization in June blamed the KAL crew for letting the plane stray into Soviet airspace. It criticized Soviet authorities for shooting the jet down without attempting to contact the crew.

The ICAO report concluded that Soviet authorities mistook the jetliner for a U.S. spy plane that had been in the region earlier.

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