Kidnaped Soviet Attache Slain, Embassy Threatened

Kidnapers of four Soviet Embassy employees killed one of them and said Wednesday that the others will die unless Syrian-backed forces halt an offensive against Muslim fundamentalists in the northern Lebanon port of Tripoli.

An anonymous telephone caller claimed that a second captive has been killed, and another said Muslim extremists plan to blow up the Soviet Embassy.

In Moscow, the Soviet government called the killing an unpardonable atrocity, demanded the immediate release of the remaining three hostages and claimed that Israel bears ultimate responsibility for the civil strife that led to the kidnaping.

The battle raged on for control of Tripoli, where more than 500 people have been killed and 1,100 wounded since Sept. 15. The forces backed by Syria, Moscow’s main ally in the Mideast, have the fundamentalists cornered with their backs to the sea, and Syrian artillery has joined the battle.

In Beirut, the body of Soviet cultural attache Arkady Katkov, 32, was found Wednesday, shot once in the head at close range. It was sprawled on blood-stained rocks near the Cite Sportive, a stadium wrecked by shellfire in Lebanon’s decade-long civil war.

An anonymous caller claiming to speak for the Islamic Liberation Organization gave the location of the body in a telephone call to a Western news agency.

“We have carried out God’s sentence against one of the hostages, and we shall execute the others one after the other if the atheistic campaign against Islamic Tripoli does not stop,” he said. The four Soviets were abducted Monday in two separate incidents in West Beirut, the capital’s Muslim sector.

The Islamic Liberation Organization, a Sunni Muslim fundamentalist group, is allied with Tawhid, the Islamic Unification Movement’s militia, whose black-scarfed warriors are fighting for their lives in Tripoli.

Another caller, also purporting to speak for the kidnapers, telephoned Beirut’s Muslim radio station, Voice of the Nation, and said another Soviet captive has been killed. But police said they had not found a second body.

Embassy Threatened

In a third call, to a Western news agency, a man who said he represented the Islamic Liberation Organization said the extremists will blow up the Soviet Embassy unless it was evacuated within 48 hours.

“After carrying out previous warnings to wipe out members of the Soviet diplomatic corps and members of the KGB (secret police) . . . these people have 48 hours in which to evacuate the compound,” he said. “Otherwise it shall be brought down on their heads; that is, at 4 p.m. Friday. It (the deadline) will not be extended.”

There was no way to authenticate the calls.

The Islamic Liberation Organization’s statements about the kidnapings have been accompanied by the Lebanese identity cards of two of the hostages and photographs of all four with pistols held to their heads.

The three remaining abducted Soviets are commercial attache Valery Mirikov, press attache Oleg Spirin and Nikolai Sversky, an embassy doctor. Police earlier had identified Mirikov as Valery Kornev.

Soviet Statement

The Soviet government, in a formal statement issued in Moscow by the Tass news agency, said, “The prime cause of internal Lebanese strife, of which Soviet citizens became innocent victims, is Israel, which deliberately incited that strife. And it should bear responsibility for the consequences of its policy.”

The statement, which was also read on the evening television news in Moscow, said this does not, however, absolve the “immediate organizers and perpetrators of the atrocity.” It noted that blame is also shared by unnamed authorities who allegedly failed to do all they could to prevent the kidnaping.

“The Soviet government strongly demands the immediate and unconditional release of the Soviet personnel,” the statement said, warning that “procrastination in this matter, let alone violence against the (remaining) Soviet citizens, will further aggravate the guilt of all those connected with this matter.”

An earlier Tass report noted that President Reagan, along with U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar, have condemned the kidnaping.

Caught in its first Middle East hostage crisis, Moscow has reacted with icy formality while refraining thus far from threatening retaliatory action.

In contrast to the American news media’s saturation coverage of last summer’s hostage incident in Beirut, Soviet media have limited themselves to reporting the government’s brief statements. No relatives of the Soviet hostages have been publicly identified, let alone shown on television.

Identified by Official

Lebanon’s chief coroner, Ahmed Harati, said that Igor Mazourov, the embassy political secretary, identified Katkov’s body in his presence.

Harati examined the body in the American University Hospital morgue. He said the cultural attache was shot in the temple at close range with a 7-millimeter automatic weapon.

The embassy employees were the first Soviets among as many as 35 foreigners kidnaped in Lebanon since January, 1984. Katkov was the first of those hostages known to have been killed. A missing Dutch priest and British teacher were found dead earlier this year, but no group claimed to have kidnaped or killed them.

Fourteen other foreigners--six Americans, four Frenchmen, three Britons and an Italian--still are held.

Sources close to the embassy said Soviets not on the staff have moved into the compound, which has been guarded since Monday by Druze militiamen. There are about 150 Soviet citizens in Lebanon.

“Everyone’s taking extra precautions,” a Soviet source said. “It’s been the Americans and the French who have been hit until now. Now it seems to be our turn. But we’re not panicking.”