200 Soviets on U.N. Staff Are Spies, Report to Say

A report to be issued by the Senate Intelligence Committee next week will contend that 200 of the 800 Soviet employees of the United Nations are spies, Sen. William V. Roth Jr. (R-Del.) said Thursday.

Already, Roth has introduced legislation to impose the same U.S. travel restrictions on Soviet international civil servants as those currently applied to diplomats from Moscow.

“The Soviets are using employment at the United Nations as a front for their spies, and we must do what we can to prevent it,” he declared in a statement.

Seen as Violation

But the world organization would regard such a restriction as a violation of a 1947 agreement that has been extended to permit Soviet staff members to move freely about the United States, Ralph Zacklin, a senior U.N. legal officer, said in a telephone interview in New York.

Unlike staff employees, Soviet diplomats must inform the State Department where they are and of any travel plans.

“There are roughly 800 Soviet employees (of the United Nations), and 25% of them are considered intelligence agents,” said Roth, who attributed the report’s figures to U.S. intelligence sources.

However, Joseph Sills, a spokesman for U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar, said that only 427 Soviets were employed last September, although he added that Roth’s figures might be correct if employees of related agencies such as UNESCO were included.

Temporary Assignment

Roth said the Soviet Union and other communist states typically assign their citizens to the U.N. staff only on a temporary basis, while the United States and other Western nations generally give permanent assignments.

“When you become a permanent member of the United Nations staff, you take an oath of office,” the senator told a news conference. “The Soviet Union and other Iron Curtain countries assign their citizens temporarily, so there’s divided loyalty.”

Roth said the report, part of the intelligence committee’s continuing probe into espionage activities, will show that Soviet and other East Bloc employees of the United Nations have used their positions to gather intelligence and promote the foreign policy of their governments.

In fact, the Soviet policy has never been concealed. The late Russian leader Nikita S. Khrushchev, on a visit to the United Nations, scoffed at the idea of an international civil service, calling it a contradiction in terms.