U.S., charging intimidation, cuts Libya link

Press, 6 May 1980, Page 8

U.S., charging intimidation, cuts Libya link

NZPA-Reuter Washington

The United States has expelled four Libyan diplomats in Washington and recalled all American diplomats from Tripoli, the State Department has said.

The four Libyans were declared persona non grata on Friday (local time) and given 72 hours to leave the country for taking part in an intimidation campaign against Libyan exiles, the department said. Two other Libyan diplomats were expelled last month. “We have made it clear an intimidation campaign will not be acceptable,” a State Department spokesman, Anita Stockman, said.

“The United States continues to desire good relations with Tripoli but there are certain standards of international conduct which can not be ignored,” she said, without giving details of the unacceptable activities.

The United States cut its embassy staff in Tripoli to six people last December

after the embassj’ was sacked and burned by a mob. There were about 25 Libyan diplomats in Washington before the expulsion order. The State Department said the Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Gadaffi, had! recently warned dissident: exiles to return to Libya or face liquidation. In London last month a Libyan journalist and a lawyer were shot dead in the street in separate incidents in shootings blamed on Lib-yan-backed hit men. The journalist, Muhammad Ramadan, the editor of a Middle Eastern journal and an opponent of the Gadaffi regime had asked for police protection because of his fears that he -would be killed. He was murdered outside a mosque after Friday prayers. Three weeks later, on April 25, the lawyer, Hahmoud Abbu Nafa, was shot dead in the street a few hundred yards from the Iranian Embassy. He was said not to be an opponent of Colonel Gadaffi.