MOSCOW, Russia (AP) – A Russian icebreaker carrying more than 100 tourists, scientists and journalists on a cruise around Antarctica was struggling to free itself from sea ice about 5 miles from clear water yesterday, a shipping company said.

But the company said no one was in danger, that some of the tourists were using the unplanned stop to take helicopter tours of the area, and that the biggest problem passengers faced was sunburn.

The Captain Khlebnikov icebreaker was near Snow Hill Island in the Weddell Sea, German Kuzin of the Fareastern Shipping Company told Russia’s Vesti 24 television. He said neither the ship nor the passengers faced any risks.

The ship was trying to move slowly through the ice, but the winds were too light to break up the ice pack, he said. An Argentine official said the ice would delay the ship’s return by three to six days.

“The icebreaker is trying to move and is waiting for more favourable winds,” Kuzin said. “After the winds get stronger, the ice grip will weaken… and it will break free.”

Russian news agencies said a BBC camera crew filming a documentary about the Antarctic was also on board.

“They are implementing the tour programme in full,” Kuzin said. “The captain reported that the situation on board is normal.”

The cruise was advertised as a unique opportunity to watch emperor penguins in their natural habitat. The Finnish-built icebreaker has been used as a cruise ship for several years and carries two helicopters.

Natalie Amos, a spokeswoman for holiday tour operator Exodus Travel, said 51 British tourists were among the ship’s 101 passengers.

Paul Goldstein, a guide and photographer with Exodus on the ship, told BBC News that the ship was trying to move.

“We’re breaking ice,” he said, “Obviously there’s frustration, but we’re going to get back perfectly safe.”

He said some people had sunburns, but there have been no other complaints.

Rene Reibel, operations chief for the Argentine Coast Guard in Ushuaia, told The Associated Press that the icebreaker was moving amid floating ice and no one was in danger.

“This ship was never stuck or run aground,” he said. “It’s floating, it has its engines and control.”

“There is a lot of floating ice, as happens in this time of year, and the boat encountered a large ice mass, which has slowed its return to Ushuaia,” he said yesterday.

The island lies off the northern end of the Antarctic Peninsula, which juts up toward South America from the bulk of the continent.

A Russian travel agency advertises two-week tours to the area aboard the Captain Khlebnikov to see emperor penguins at costs ranging from US$13,890 to US$22,690 per person.

Academics withdraw support for Holocaust centre

VIENNA, Austria (AP) – A renowned group of academics has withdrawn its support for an Austrian Holocaust research centre in the latest fallout from a dispute with the city’s Jewish community.

The Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies began provisional operations in January after being stymied for years by a lack of funding. Its purpose, among other things, is to give researchers access to roughly 8,000 files of the late Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal and to parts of a vast archive belonging to the Jewish Community Vienna, an organisation representing the city’s Jewish Community.

Earlier this month, important officials of the centre – including Anton Pelinka, the former chairman of the executive committee, and business manager Ingo Zechner – announced they were quitting, citing concern that scholars would not be able to do independent research due to archive restrictions imposed by the Jewish community.

In a letter obtained by The Associated Press yesterday, 12 of the institute’s 15-member international academic advisory board said they, too, were dropping out.

“The International Advisory Board of the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute has noted with increasing concern that the conditions under which the institute could carry out its work with the necessary degree of scholarly independence can no longer be met,” the academics wrote in the letter, which was dated Monday.

“On the basis of the information available to us, and in view of the resignations… we conclude that the board no longer serves a useful purpose.”

The letter was co-signed by, among others, Yehuda Bauer, professor of Holocaust Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, David Bankier, head of the International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem and Tom Segev, an Israeli historian, journalist and Wiesenthal biographer.