Top Chinese Diplomat Defects To West

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31904, 4 February 1969, Page 15

Top Chinese Diplomat Defects To West

(N.Z. Press Association —Copyrights THE HAGUE, February 3.

The first top Chinese diplomat to defect to the West was on his way to die United States, well-informed Dutch Government officials said yesterday.

Mr Liao Ho-shu, former temporary Charge d’Affaires in The Hague, was transferred to the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency in Bonn to be interrogated over Chinese spying activities in Western Europe, the sources said.

They said the Rumanian Embassy played a part in the defection which came after Mr Liao got confirmation his wife and two children had fled from China to Hong Kong.

The Dutch Justice Minister (Mr C. H. F. Polak) on Thursday indicated to the Parliamentary Committee for Justice and Foreign Affairs that Mr Liao, who defected on January 24, was about to leave the protection of Dutch security officials. Mr Polak reportedly told the committee Mr Liao I “knows an unbelievable loti but as soon as we try to get: secret information from him it could provide Red China with a weapon to say that

Dutch authorities staged an abduction of Liao entailing possible retaliation measures against the Netherlands Charge d’Affaires in Peking." The Dutch radio said after his defection that Mr Liao quit the Peking regime after being ordered home to account for the death in 1966 of a Chinese scientist alleged to have sold a secret nerve gas formula to United States agents. Members of Parliament and high Dutch justice officials claim the Chinese legation in The Hague was an important terminal of one of the Chinese spying networks in Western Europe. They added that Mr Liao’s defection forced them to revamp their European spying set-up. The justice officials said though Mr Liao was involved in the abduction of the Chinese scientist he could not be prosecuted for his part in it because when he did so he enjoyed diplomatic immunity. Mr Polak upheld this stand when two members of Parliament urged a judicial investigation of Mr Liao’s part A Labour member, Mr Frans Goedhart, said the investigai tion should also go into the | question of the large amount i of money Peking last year • pumped into the Netherlands. He told a reporter he wanted to know which group and organisations in the Nether-

lands profited from this money.

After his defection Mr Liao was granted temporary asylum in the Netherlands and immediately left The Hague under the protection of the Netherlands Home Security Service. Mr Liao was second secretary in The Hague for three years before taking over from the Charge d’Affaires, Mr Li En-chu, in July, 1966. The Dutch Government expelled Mr Li after the Chinese abducted the scientist, Hsu Tsu-tsai, from a hospital where he lay critically injured, and took him to their legation, where he died.

The death of Mr Hsu, a rocket expert visiting the Netherlands for a congress on welJing techniques, touched off an international barrage of spy charges and countercharges. He was found on a footpath outside the Peking legation on July 16, 1966. He was taken to hospital with a skull fracture and spinal injuries. Some reports said he had been run down by a Chinese car; others said he had been thrown out of a window.

A book by three Dutch reporters claimed that Mr Hsu gave a C.I.A. agent a microfilmed formula for a fatal nerve gas developed and spirited to the Netherlands by a Chinese double agent.