Soviets amass evidence against U.S. renorter

Press, 11 September 1986, Page 8

Soviets amass evidence against U.S. renorter

NZPA-Reuter Moscow Nicholas Daniloff, the American magazine correspondent held for espionage in a Moscow jail since August 30, appears to be facing a long period in detention, Western diplomats say. Daniloffs British-born wife, Ruth, said after visiting him in Lefortovo prison yesterday that the K.G.B. security police seemed to be building up a spy case against him going back several years. In Washington, a Soviet United Nations employee, Gennady Zakharov, aged 39, was formally indicted by a grand jury on espionage charges, a development which, the diplomats said, was likely to reduce prospects for Daniloff’s quick release. After the Kremlin ignored an American offer of a deal that would have freed Daniloff and given bail to Zakharov, Washington said it woul&~not accept an equal exclwige and warned Moscowrihat

bilateral relations would suffer if the “United States News and World Report” correspondent was not unconditionally released. The official Soviet news media have made it clear the Kremlin is treating Daniloff, aged 52, as an ordinary spy who could not expect any special consideration and whose case should not be allowed to affect broader United States-Soviet relations. Tass news agency repeated accusations yesterday that Washington was using the Daniloff case to divert attention from the more important problem of curbing the arms race. On Tuesday in a press interview the Kremlin leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, signalled that he was growing increasingly impatient with the United States over arms control and beginning to doubt whether there was sufficient progress to justify a

new summit conference with Ronald Reagan this year.

Daniloff has said he was seized by about eight K.G.B. agents on August 30 after receiving a package from a Soviet friend, which turned out to contain maps marked secret.

Zakharov, a physicist who, like Daniloff, has no diplomatic immunity, was detained a few days earlier by F. 8.1. agents on a subway platform. They accused him of receiving jet engine designs from a student and he has been denied bail. Mrs Daniloff, who was visiting her husband for the first time since he was charged with spying on Sunday, said he had told her the K.G.B. was going back over all his journalistic activities since he went to Moscow for the weekly in 1981. He had an earlier posting there as a correspondent for the news agency. Press ;Ipternaoonal, in the 19605.

An article apparently based on K.G.B. material in the Government daily, “Izvestia,” on Tuesday said that Daniloff had “disappeared” after leaving Moscow in 1965 and “put on journalistic cover again” to return.

His colleague, Jeff Trimble, who had just arrived to replace him at the end of his 5 -year assignment for “United States News- and World Report,” said Daniloff had worked for U.P.I. in Washington between Moscow postings.

By a 93 to 0 vote, the United States Senate approved a resolution yesterday that denounced the Soviet Union for seizing Daniloff on “trumped up charges.” The Senate Democratic Leader, Robert Byrd (Virginia), raised the possibility that Congress might action, such as eWiomic sanctions? if Danilbff was not freed. *