Political row over gun-wielding diplomat

Press, 15 September 1988, Page 6

Political row over gun-wielding diplomat

NZPA-Reuter London The British Government is under pressure to explain an undercover security operation against a Cuban diplomat who shot at a secret agent in a fashionable London street.

A political row built up as Opposition politicians charged yesterday that the gun-wielding diplomat, expelled from the country along with his Ambassador, was apparently being trailed by security services. A commercial attache, Carlos Manuel Medina Perez, and the Cuban Ambassador, Oscar Fernan-dez-Mell, flew out yesterday. The Foreign Office gave them 24 hours to leave Britain following the shooting incident outside Medina’s London home on Monday. Police sources identified a man seen running from the scene with blood on his head as a security agent who, with three others, had trailed Medina to his home. The diplomat, aged 30, was arrested minutes after he opened fire on the four, who escaped at high speed in a saloon car. He told police he

thought they were about to attack him and was freed after claiming diplomatic immunity. The Cuban Government issued a statement accusing British and United States intelligence services of involvement in the incident. It said Medina was accosted by a former Cuban intelligence officer who defected to the West last year and who tried to press Medina into defecting. It said the agent, named as Florentino Azpillaga Lombard, now working for the United States Central Intelligence Agency and that British agents were colluding with him. . Britain’s Labour Party called the affair a “monumental mess” and called on the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, to state whether British and American intelligence agents were involved and whether Medina was being shadowed.

“The Foreign Office remains mute in the face of allegations and counterallegations about a cloak-and-dagger intrigue which makes James Bond read like a railway timetable,” Labour’s foreign affairs spokesman, George Foulkes, said. “Unless the Prime Minister is prepared to make a statement and answer questions on this secret spider’s web of intrigue, espionage, treachery and deceit, then suspicions will grow that the scale of this whole affair is much greater than the Government dare admit,” he said. Scotland Yard’s anti-ter-rorist squad refused to identify Medina’s victim, who was only slightly hurt, but said they had determined he was not a threat to the diplomat. Independent television’s "Channel Four News” quoted senior Government

sources as saying Medina had been under surveillance for some time. Channel Four said a British officer would be present in any operation by a foreign secret service in Britain. The Foreign Office made no further comment on the affair. The expulsion of the Cubans came just three days after a Vietnamese envoy was ordered out for threatening protesters outside the Embassy with a firearm. The British Government has taken a firm line against the arming of diplomats and last March circulated a notice to all foreign missions that the possession of guns by diplomats or embassies would not be tolerated. Four years ago, it expelled 50 Libyans and broke ties with their Government after a woman police officer was killed by shots fired from the Libyan Embassy.