Two Cubans in Ethiopia are seeking U.S. asylum

Press, 20 September 1980, Page 8

Two Cubans in Ethiopia are seeking U.S. asylum

NZPA Washington Two Cuban infantry soldiers have been living in the American Embassy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, since May, when they climbed over the compound fence and claimed asylum, a State Department official has said. The soldiers, part of a Cuban force estimated to number between 12,000 to 13,000 hope to be able to live in the United States. But Ethiopian authorities have been unwilling to grant them permission to leave the country. “They will stay there until we find some way of resolving the right to travel,” * explained the high-level State Department official. The incident mirrors in many respects the recent case of a soldier from the Soviet Union who has sought political asylum in

the United States embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. In both cases the persons seeking asylum are not fleeing from the country in which the embassy is located, which makes it more difficult to grant political asylum.

. In an effort to break the deadlock in Ethiopia, the State Department tried to bring the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees into the discussions. However, the Ethiopian Government said that this was a matter for it to resolve and refused the move.

The action by the Cuban soldiers was believed to be the first recorded attempt to defect by any of the estimated 35,000 to 40,000 Cuban troops and advisers in .frica. The Ethiopian government, heavily backed by the Soviet Union and

Cuba, believes it is its decision whether the two soldiers are in fact genuine political refugees. They want to interview them under strict Ethiopian control. It is this attitude, thi State Department officer said, that has led to the deadlock. It is not clear whether this incident bears on Ethiopia’s demand made last July that the United States Ambassador to Ethiopia (Mr Frederick Chapin) be recalled to the United States for allegedly campaigning against the Ethiopian/govemment. Diplomatic sources in Pakistan have said that the Soviet Union has asked the United States to return the Soviet defector in Kabul because he is “a simple soldier” and of no value to the Americans. The Russians have told

the Americans that the soldier had committed a crime, had been criticised by his friends, and gone in confusion to the United States Embassy. Western diplomats said the Afghan Government had charged that the Russian soldier was forcibly abducted by the Americans when he was at the gate of the United States Embassy compound. They said that soon after he entered the embassy, Soviet helicopters flew low over the compound while troops and plain-clothes police ringed the building. They said the soldier was questioned by a Rus-sian-speaking British diplomat because no-one in the United States Embassy could speak Russian. He was also questioned in German by a West German diplomat