CRIPPLED GIRL PROVOKES U.S.- SOVIET DISPUTE

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22729, 30 August 1948, Page 5

CRIPPLED GIRL PROVOKES U.S.SOVIET DISPUTE

(10 a.m.) LONDON, Aug. 29. A 14-year-old orphan girl, Helena Korelenko, lying in an American sector hospital crippled by infantile paralysis, has become the subject of the latest American-Russlan dls-

pute, says Ihe Associated Press correspondent iq Berlin.

The Americans applied to the Russians for permission to operate, believing the girl, who is a Ukrainian, was a Russian subject.. The Russians immediately demanded custody of the girl and sent an ambulance and doctor to collect her.

American public safety officials refused to hand over the girl without the International Refugee Organisation's approval. Reuter’s correspondent in Berlin says the Soviet news bureau accused the Americans of holding the girl "as a hostage for new provocations?’ and that they were “trying to provoke another Kasenkina case.” "Anti-Soviet Provocation”

The Soviet statement said that when the Soviet ambulance arrived at the hospital following the American agreement to hand over die girl, there were photographers, correspondents, and two jeep-loads of military police waiting outside. The Soviet representative protested at this “cynical attempt to use a sick girl for anti-Soviet provocation.” . , , The Russians said the girl as she lay on a stretcher declared that she wanted to see her home again as soon as possible. The Russians said that just as the girl was being placed in an ambulance an American officer suddenly said she could not go. The statement commented: It is obvious that this comedy was staged by the Americans in the hope that the girl would say in front of correspondents that she did not want to go back to the Soviet Union.”