Posted on 04/26/2006 3:06:13 PM PDT by naturalman1975
THE grieving family of the Australian soldier accidentally killed in Iraq will have to wait until at least Saturday to claim his body, after the wrong casket was flown to Australia.
Defence Minister Brendan Nelson today expressed his regret that Private Jacob Kovco's body failed to arrive in Melbourne this morning as scheduled, but stopped short of apologising for the bungle that resulted in someone else's body flown from Kuwait.
Dr Nelson said a private mortuary in Kuwait appeared to be responsible for the mistake.
He refused to apologise on behalf of the Government until an investigation identified who was to blame.
"I am not in a position at the moment to express sorrow, if you like, on behalf of the Australian government, and let's just find out what the cause of it was first," Dr Nelson told reporters at Melbourne Airport.
"Let's get him back and then let's find out what happened before we start assigning blame."
Dr Nelson and Chief of Army Lieutenant-General Peter Leahy flew to Sale near the Kovco family hometown in south-eastern Victoria to tell Mr Kovco's family of the mixup.
He said Pte Kovco's wife Shelley was upset by the news and spoke to Prime Minister John Howard overnight.
"Needless to say the Kovco family were quite distressed," Dr Nelson said.
"(The prime minister) had a conversation with Mrs Kovco in which she expressed her disappointment and distress that her husband's casket had not been dispatched to Australia."
The 25-year-old private accidentally shot himself while cleaning his weapon in Baghdad on Friday.
He was a member of the 110-strong security detachment in Iraq's capital to protect Australian officials.
While I'm sorry for the family, mistakes do happen.
This is a very odd story, and getting odder.
The tale that he was cleaning the gun and shot himself by accident is now being revised, but they say they cannot tell us exactly what happened.
A trained soldier would not shoot himself in the head by accident so I never believed that.
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