Yurchenko interviewed

Press, 22 September 1987, Page 8

Yurchenko interviewed

NZPA-Reuter Moscow A former Soviet diplomat, who defected to the United States but later reappeared in Moscow to charges that he had been kidnapped, was interviewed in a Soviet newspaper on Sunday and said, he was writing a book. Vitaly Yurchenko was interviewed in the Government daily “Izvestia” which published a photograph of him in Moscow’s Pushkin Square with a child identified as his grandson. “As before, Vitaly Sergeyevich is living in Moscow and working at his former job,” “Izvestia” said. The newspaper did not specify the nature of Yurchenko’s job. “In the evenings after work, he spends time with his two-year-old grandson. On his days off, he goes to his dacha (country home),” the newspaper said.

Yurchenko disappeared from the Soviet Embassy in Rome in July 1985. In September, the United States State Department named him as the head of the KGB’s operations in North America. In November 1985, he reappeared in Moscow and said he had been kidnapped to the United States, drugged and interrogated. Yurchenko poured scorn on what he called rumours in the American press that he had been executed. “I have something to write about in the

book that I am working on now,” he said. In a Russian press interview in August, 1986, Yurchenko alleged that United States intelligence agents had tried to make him testify in court that 1

Moscow had inspired the 1981 murder attempt on Pope John Paul. In March 1986, the Communist Party news-* paper “Pravda” said Yurchenko would publish his memoirs.