Ussr Embassies

A red flag still flutters above its beaux-arts facade, its exterior walls still bristle with video cameras, and unblinking guards in olive drab still watch the comings and goings of visitors to ensure order. But the flag of the October Revolution is scheduled to come down by Jan. 1, and these days, the stately Soviet Embassy on 16th Street is anything but orderly inside.

A red flag still flutters above its beaux-arts facade, its exterior walls still bristle with video cameras, and unblinking guards in olive drab still watch the comings and goings of visitors to ensure order. But the flag of the October Revolution is scheduled to come down by Jan. 1, and these days, the stately Soviet Embassy on 16th Street is anything but orderly inside.

About 200 Soviet citizens, still living at the fortified embassy in Kabul, are virtually cut off from the outside world, left with an independent power supply, bakery and only rare ventures into the Afghan capital. The living conditions of the reduced embassy staff were described in the weekly Moscow News. It said all non-essential staff members as well as women and children had left by the Feb. 15 deadline set for the withdrawal of Soviet troops.

Soviet Foreign Minister Boris D. Pankin promised Wednesday that he will reduce KGB staffs in embassies and investigate submarine intrusions into Swedish territory. The number of agents working abroad for the secret agency will be cut "to the lowest minimum required by our security interests," Pankin told a news conference. Swedish security police have estimated that a third of the diplomats at the Soviet Embassy in Stockholm have been linked to the KGB.

The United States and the Soviet Union have agreed to increases in their embassy staffs, reversing a cutback forced by the Reagan Administration after reporter Nicholas Daniloff was accused in Moscow of spying. Charles Redman, the State Department spokesman, said Friday that 18 positions were added last month to both the U.S. Embassy in the Soviet capital and to the Soviet Embassy here, along with two additional slots at the U.S. and Soviet consulates in Leningrad and San Francisco. On Aug.

The House voted Tuesday to bar the Soviet Union from using its new embassy in Washington until the United States is assured of adequate security at its new embassy in Moscow. The amendment, added to the State Department authorization bill on a 414-0 vote, calls also for stepped-up efforts to improve security at diplomatic posts abroad. U.S. officials have determined that the nearly completed embassy in Moscow is riddled with Soviet spy devices.

The Soviet Consulate in San Francisco held a reception for 17 students of Sacramento's C. K. McClatchy High School who had written a plea for peace to President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The students dined on a buffet of piroshki, caviar, salami, chocolate and tea.

Congressional restrictions on the State Department budget will force the department to abandon programs, close some embassies and consulates around the world and lay off about 8% of its staff, leaving the agency without "the resources to do our job," department spokesman Charles Redman said Friday. Redman said not all details of the cuts have been decided but they will fall heavily on personnel reductions because "the great bulk of our expenditures (is for) salaries and expenses for people."

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved a bill Friday that would bar the Soviet Union from occupying its new Washington embassy or using the facility's electronic communication and surveillance equipment until Secretary of State George P. Shultz certifies completion of a "secure and suitable" U.S. Embassy in Moscow. The provision was contained in a $2.12-billion authorization bill for State Department spending for fiscal 1988, which begins Oct. 1.

Foreign Minister Boris D. Pankin said the KGB secret police will be barred from selecting personnel for diplomatic posts. In a weekend interview with the independent news agency Interfax, Pankin said the KGB "must not be engaged in forming the personnel" and that he wants to put a stop to the deployment of spies in diplomatic guise. That would put him on a collision course with the new KGB chief, Vadim V.

For the first time in 20 years, no one stood outside the Soviet Embassy on Monday demonstrating on behalf of Jews trying to emigrate from the Soviet Union. The Kremlin's relaxed policies led the Jewish Community Council of Greater Washington to suspend, as of Sunday, the daily 15-minute protests that began in December, 1970, a year when only 28 Jews were given permission to emigrate to the United States.

With the hoisting of the blue and white Star of David in the frigid Russian wind, Israeli diplomats officially opened their own consulate in the Soviet capital Thursday and announced themselves ready to handle the monumental numbers of Jews leaving for their biblical homeland.

The clusters of onlookers are thickening on the streets leading to the White House, now that almost everyone knows Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev likes to stop his limousine now and then to shake the hands of a few Americans. Police halted traffic and pushed one group of tourists and office workers back on the northeast corner of 17th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue at 1 p.m. Friday just before Gorbachev and his motorcade left the White House after a morning meeting with President Bush.

Los Angeles might have overtaken San Francisco as the West Coast's reigning powerhouse, but it didn't have a prayer of being the host city for the visit of Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev. Logistics dictated that a stopover in San Francisco, site of the state's only Soviet consulate, would be easier to pull off. San Franciscans, who pride themselves on their city's cosmopolitan flavor, couldn't resist the chance to lord it over what many here love to call "Smogville."

Three Armenian natives from the Los Angeles area are entering the 11th day of a hunger strike outside the Soviet Embassy here, but they have made no apparent progress in persuading Soviet officials to allow an Armenian pro-democracy dissident to return home. The men are camped outside the embassy in support of Parour Hayrikyan, now in Los Angeles, who leads the National Democratic Movement and wants to address a November conference of the Alliance for Self-Determination in Soviet Armenia.

The United States and the Soviet Union have agreed to increases in their embassy staffs, reversing a cutback forced by the Reagan Administration after reporter Nicholas Daniloff was accused in Moscow of spying. Charles Redman, the State Department spokesman, said Friday that 18 positions were added last month to both the U.S. Embassy in the Soviet capital and to the Soviet Embassy here, along with two additional slots at the U.S. and Soviet consulates in Leningrad and San Francisco. On Aug.

About 200 Soviet citizens, still living at the fortified embassy in Kabul, are virtually cut off from the outside world, left with an independent power supply, bakery and only rare ventures into the Afghan capital. The living conditions of the reduced embassy staff were described in the weekly Moscow News. It said all non-essential staff members as well as women and children had left by the Feb. 15 deadline set for the withdrawal of Soviet troops.