Samantha set for trip

Press, 7 May 1983, Page 11

Samantha set for trip

NZPA Manchester Samantha Smith, the 10-year-old American girl who wrote to the Soviet leader, ' Yuri Andropov, about her fears of war, has been offered a tour from Leningrad to the Crimea, says ; her father. i When Mr Andropov wrote . back to the girl last month he invited her to visit a Soviet children’s camp, and her first reaction was: “I don’t really like camps that

much.” But Mr Anatoly Dobrynin, the Soviet Ambassador to the United - States, has now written to offer an allexpenses paid, two-week tour for Samantha and her parents to Moscow, Leningrad and the Crimea — the area that includes the Artek youngsters’ camp. Arthur Smith said that he has written back to thank Mr Dobrynin and ask whether • they might meet

Mr Andropov. The Ambassador wrote that he would be in touch by telephone with more details of the trip. Samantha’s letter asked the Soviet leader whether he would “vote to have a war or not.” The Communist Party chief, aged 68, wrote back that he was “doing everything so that there will be no war between our two countries, so that there will be no war at all on Earth.”