Russians bar U.S. envoys

Press, 3 February 1982, Page 8

Russians bar U.S. envoys

NZPA Moscow Soviet doctors said a hunger striker, Lydia Vashchenko, was in a satisfactory condition and eating yesterday but refused to let American Embassy officials see her. There was no word on whether the Russians will allow her to rejoin her family,, including her fasting mother, at the United States Embassy where they have been for 43 months.

The family said it feared that the K.G.8., the Soviet secret police, now had custody of her. Soviet Foreign Ministry officials said earlier that they could not say what her status would be once she left the embassy.

Staff at Moscow’s Botkin Hospital said the young Pentecostalist was taking solid food and that her condition had improved from serious to satisfactory. Her relatives said they doubted she had ended the fast, which she started with her mother over the Christmas holidays to protest alleged American reluctance to press for their emigration. Miss Vashchenko, who is 30, was taken to the,hospital at the week-end aitter the Russians refused to allow her to be sent to a Western hospital for treatment. A nurse said she took some tea and ’ broth shortly after she

was admitted and the Soviet doctor in charge of her treatment said she was eating solids yesterday. A United "States Embassy spokesman said a hospital medical authorities had promised Dr John Schadler and a consular officer. Curt Strubble, that they could see her,, but for the second straight day. the pair were refused permission to see Miss Vashchenko. The five Vashchenkos and two members of the Chmykhalov family took refuge in the American compound in central Moscow, saying they were fleeing religious persecution in their Siberian home town of Chernogorsk. The Americans have allowed the Pentecostalists to live in a basement room of the compound. Augustina Vashchenko, aged 52, is taking only fruit juice and water, but unlike her daughter, has not fallen seriously ill. She was overweight when the fast started.

Embassy Officials deny the Pentecostalists’ accusation that the United States Embassy is dragging its feet on the issue. The Pentecostalists claim the United States Government fears that if they are allowed to emigrate, American Embassies in other countries would be flooded with people seeking to emigrate.