Cable briefs

Press, 12 July 1985, Page 6

Cable briefs

Diplomat defects A senior Soviet diplomat who had been stationed in Greece has defected to the United States. A State Department spokesman said Sergei Bokhane, who had been first secretary at the Soviet Embassy in Athens, was voluntarily in the United States. He would not comment on a report that Bokhane was a member of the Soviet Intelligence Service.—Washington. Whale-hunting ban Conservationists from 16 organisations have launched a campaign to stop Japan, Norway, the Soviet Union, Iceland and South Korea from breaking a ban on whale hunting planned to start at the end of this year. Under International Whal-

ing Commission statutes, they will be allowed to continue catching about 14,000 whales a year among them if the rest of the Commission doesn’t take a tough stand against them.— London. Union Carbide closed Union Carbide formally closed its pesticide plant in Bhopal which leaked gas and killed more than 2500 people last December, state officials said. Other than a brief period when the factory was put in operation to dispose of remaining methyl isocyanate gas — which caused the deaths in the world’s worst industrial accident — the facility had not functioned since the December 3 leak. The management announced they would close the plant after the Madhya Pradesh State Government, run by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s Congress (I) party, refused to renew the factory’s licence.—Bhopal.