Sakharov hunger strike over K.G.B. says

Press, 11 December 1981, Page 6

Sakharov hunger strike over K.G.B. says

NZPA-Reuter Moscow The Soviet K.G.B. security police have told Andrei Sakharov’s daughter-in-law that she will be given an emigration visa and that the dissident scientist and his wife have ended their 19-day hunger strike. .;•) ;. ;_ Liza Alexeyeva, aged 26, was told during a 20 .minute, interview at K.G.B. headquarters yesterday that 'she would be allowed to join Dr Sakharov’s stepson, Andrei Semyenov, in the United States. Mr Semyenov married Miss Alexeyeva-by proxy earlier this year. Miss Alexeyeva told Western reporters that she had telephoned the emigration authorities immediately after the K.G.B. interview and had been told that they had heard of no such decision.

“It seems strange to me, but I don’t think they (the K.G.8.) would deceive me,” she said.

Miss Alexeyeva, who appeared nervous and on edge after her visit to the K.G.8., said she was told by the K.G.B' that the time of her departure from the Soviet Union depended on whether she showed “re-

straint” in her dealings with Western correspondents. They said her comments could provoke anti-Soviet feelings in the west. >, She added: “If the hunger strike has ended then I am glad. That is. the most important thing.” In Washington, Mr Semyenov told reporters that he doubted very much that his parents would accept the word of the K.G.B. and end their hunger strike, which they began in protest against the authorities’, refusal to give Miss Alexeyeva an exit visa.

Mr Semyenov, who appeared sombre and cautious, said: “Of course I welcome it as a positive development ... But the protest is not over.” The K.G.B. did’ not always fulfil its promises, he added. No friends or relatives had been allowed to visit his parents in hospital during the last six days. “They disappeared a week ago and they are still ‘disappeared,’” he said.

President Reagan, who last week expressed personal concern for the health of the Sakharovs, said he warmly welcomed the reports that

Miss Alexeyeva would be allowed to leave the Soviet Union and that the hunger strike had ended.

Western diplomats monitoring the affair in Moscow expressed surprise at’ the authorities' accession to the Sakharovs’ demand to allow Miss Alexeyeva to leave the country.

They said it seemed strange that the K.G.B. and not the emigration authorities should inform her of the decision.

Miss Alexeyeva said the K.G.B. told her it would be decided later whether she would be allowed to visit the Sakharovs in Gorky, almost 400 km east of Moscow. Last Saturday she was detained by K.G.B. officers when she tried to board a train for the city.

Dr Sakharov, a Nobel Peace prize winner, was exiled to Gorky, a city closed to Westerners, almost two years ago because of his support for human-rights movements in the Soviet Union. No charges have been levelled against him but he has been stripped of all his State honours.