U.S. prepared to retaliate—paper

Press, 2 September 1986, Page 10

U.S. prepared to retaliate —paper

NZPA-Reuter New York

The United States is prepared to retaliate against the Soviet Union if an American reporter is not freed promptly from a Moscow prison, the "New York Times” reported yesterday. Retaliation against the Soviets for the imprisonment of “U.S. News and World Report” correspondent, Nicholas Daniloff, could include a range of political, economic and cultural pressures on the Kremlin, the newspaper said, quoting unnamed senior officials in the Reagan Administration. The newspaper quoted Washington officials as saying the Administration was prepared for a long standoff.

“There are many ways for them to feel the pinch,” an official said.

“The longer this goes on, the greater impact this will have on ties” between the two countries.

Mr Daniloff’s wife, Ruth, who visited him in detention, said no formal charges had been laid against him and prison officials would say only that an investigation against him was proceeding.

Mr Daniloff, aged 52, the Moscow correspondent of the weekly, “U.S. News and World Report,” was detained on Saturday after meeting a Soviet friend who handed him a package and said it contained newspaper clippings.

The package, opened in Mr Daniloff’s presence at the prison, contained two maps marked “secret” and photographs of Soviet military facilities. “They are treating him

well in that he is not being beaten up or verbally abused, but I consider the detention totally barbaric,” she said. “He seems to be very, very calm but isolated.” Mrs Daniloff was accompanied by two United States embassy consular officials when she visited her husband at the prison on Energeticheskaya Street, a squat brick building with barred windows in eastern Moscow. She said Mr Daniloff was being held in a 2.5 metre by 3 metre cell with another man, who had identified himself as a Soviet physicist and said he was in detention on the same accusations as those against her husband. Soviet law permits authorities to hold a foreigner in detention un-

til the investigation into the case is over.