U.S. protest over ‘link’ to slaying

Press, 3 November 1984, Page 1

U.S. protest over ‘link’ to slaying

NZPA-Reuter Washington

The United States, which fears that American lives could be in jeopardy, has told the Soviet Union to stop linking the assassination of the Prime Minister of India, Mrs Gandhi, to the Central Intelligence Agency. As Hindu-Sikh violence swept India, ■ the United States protested ; to the Soviet Union about broadcast and official suggestions froip Moscow that th? CIA. was implicated. in the assassination by Mrs Gandhi’s Sikh bodyguards. A State Department official said yesterday that the United States feared that linking the C.I.A. with the assassination “feeds into a situation where there is a K- tial for violence that tens to endanger American lives.” A similar broadcast inflaming anti-American passions occurred on November 21, 1979, when Iran radio sprea'd rumdurs of United States complicity in the attack by fundamentalists on the Grand Mosque in Mecca. A mob stormed and burned the United States Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, and killed two Americans and forced others to flee. Of Moscow’s latest claims, a State Department spokesman, Mr Alan Romberg, said yesterday, “We stropgly resent Soviet alle-

gations that the United States — specifically the C.I.A. — was involved in or inspired this act of political terrorism.” He said that strong protests had been delivered both in Washington and. in Moscow. _ „ After the assassination of Mrs Gandhi; a Soviet Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mr Vladimir Lomeiko, said that it underlined the importance of Soviet concern about what he called a United States policy of “State terrorism. Moscow radio went further, saying that Mrs Gandhi's assassins got their ideological inspiration from the C.I.A. •:

A dispatch from the Soviet news agency, Tass, alleged that Sikh extremists had close ties to Western Intelligence services. Tass also charged that the C.I.A. had been behind the murders of a string of leaders, Including the Prime Minister of the, Congo, Patrice Lumumba, in 1961 and the President of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, in 1975. ■;...< In a broadcast to Latin American countries, Moscow radio said that Mrs Gandhi’s assassination was part of a chain of conspiracies aimed at eliminating Third World leaders who opposed American interference in their countries.