U.K. stops at 31-31

Press, 20 September 1985, Page 6

U.K. stops at 31-31

NZPA-Reuter London Britain has halted a week-long expulsions row with the Soviet Union and cautiously set its sights on restoring more cordial diplomatic relations between the two countries.

Moscow had the last word in the series of retaliatory expulsions when it ordered out six more Britons, including five embassy staff and a Reuter journalist, to equal

the number of Russians expelled from Britain at 31.

The Prime Minister, Mrs Margaret Thatcher, said that Britain would not retaliate, but insisted that she had not backed down.

Although Moscow’s action had been "totally unjustified,” all 31 Russians ousted from London had been named as spies by a Soviet defector, Oleg Gordievsky, who Britain last week said

had headed the K.G.B. Intelligence agency’s London operation. Mrs Thatcher said that Britain had broken the back of the Soviet Union’s Intelligence activity so had no need to respond further. “They (the Russians) were caught red-handed and the fact is they are now redfaced,” she said in Luxor, during a four-day visit to the Middle East.