Reagan Will Raise Medvid Issue During Geneva Talks

During his summit meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, President Reagan will seek assurances that a Ukrainian sailor returned to his ship in New Orleans by U.S. officials will not be harmed when he gets back to the Soviet Union, he told congressional leaders Tuesday.

Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), who led the fight to try to get Miroslav Medvid off the ship, meantime charged that the Reagan Administration has handled the case callously without regard for either Medvid or the wishes of Congress.

Helms, at a hearing of the Senate Agriculture Committee which he chairs, suggested that the Administration had cut a secret deal with the Soviets to keep Medvid from obtaining political asylum here on the eve of the Geneva summit meeting.

Helms said the State Department “thumbed its nose” at Congress last weekend by allowing the Soviet grain ship to leave American waters with Medvid, even though attorneys for Helms’ committee had served the ship’s captain with a congressional subpoena requiring Medvid to appear before the panel Tuesday. Although the Customs Service was willing to hold the ship, the agency was overruled by higher Administration officials, including Secretary of State George P. Shultz, Helms said.

At the White House, Rep. Mary Rose Oakar (D-Ohio) told reporters that she raised the Medvid case with Reagan during a meeting with congressional leaders. She said the President “affirmed that he would privately raise (with Gorbachev) the issue of this sailor and his human rights and his personal safety.”

White House spokesman Edward P. Djerejian, briefing reporters later, said, “it is possible that that case might be raised” at Geneva but that “I just can’t predict that at this point.”

Meanwhile, Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III was reported by Justice Department officials to be studying an internal report that criticizes Border Patrol officers for returning Medvid to his ship after he twice leaped into the Mississippi River on Oct. 24.

Return Defended

Immigration Commissioner Alan C. Nelson, who supervises the Border Patrol, told a House hearing last week that his officers had acted too hastily even though the State Department defended the ultimate return of Medvid to his vessel after he had been interviewed onshore through an interpreter.

Although Nelson has said that the two Border Patrol officers involved may be disciplined, Meese’s concurrence would be necessary for any such action, Justice Department officials said.

Helms, conducting a committee hearing to learn how the congressional subpoena was delivered, said that “the State Department has clearly decided it’s more important to appease the Soviet Union than to allow a young man an unfettered chance for freedom.”

He said the State Department apparently agreed to let the Soviets invoke the doctrine of “extra-territoriality,” meaning that the Soviets could claim that their ship was Soviet territory and thus was immune from service of a U.S. subpoena.

At the State Department, deputy spokesman Charles Redman said that in cases where political asylum may be sought, “we are guided not only by the law but with a very strong moral conviction that every chance should be (offered) to give these people a chance to remain in this country if they so desire.”

Shultz has said that the sailor clearly wanted to return to his ship, perhaps out of concern for the safety of relatives at home.

Terrance J. Wear, an Agriculture Committee attorney, testified that he served the subpoena on the ship’s captain by secreting it in a carton of American cigarettes he gave the captain as a gift. Wear said the captain had told him he was “under orders from the Soviet Embassy not to allow any outside contact with Medvid” by congressional investigators or others.