Syrian envoy must leave U.K.

Press, 29 June 1985, Page 10

Syrian envoy must leave U.K.

NZPA-AP London The Syrian diplomat at the centre of a long dispute over a rented apartment he refused to vacate was told yesterday he must leave Britain within two weeks. A Foreign Office Undersecretary, Richard Luce, summoned the Syrian ambassador, Loutof Allah Haydar, to the Foreign Office to tell him that Ahmed Walid Rajab, who had claimed diplomatic immunity to avoid a court order to vacate the apartment, must go. Mr Rajab and his family left the apartment in London’s exclusive South Kensington district last week, three years after he was first asked to vacate the

property. He had rented it in 1982 for six months from an English family. * - The Foreign Office had asked that in view of the dispute, Rajab be transferred to an assignment in some other country. But Syria has resisted, implying that the controversy — and accounts in the British press — are part of an anti-Syrian conspiracy. A Foreign Office spokesman, emphasised that in the British view, relations with Syria remained cordial. “This is not a dispute between Governments. It is Mr Rajab’s behaviour in ignoring a court order which was unacceptable. That is why we have asked for him to be withdrawn.”