Curbs on Travel by Soviet Bloc Envoys Urged

The chairman of the Senate permanent investigations subcommittee Thursday proposed placing travel restrictions on Soviet Bloc diplomats and other nationals who he said act as Moscow’s surrogates in spying on the United States.

Sen. William V. Roth Jr. (R-Del.), whose panel has been conducting hearings on espionage, charged that the United States is threatened by an “invasion” of Soviet operatives “who cloak their work in the banners of Eastern Europe and Cuba.”

For too long, Soviet Bloc diplomats “have been mistakenly treated as less of a threat than the Kremlin puppeteers who control their action,” Roth said in a statement accompanying a bill he introduced in the Senate.

25-Mile Limit

The details of the restrictions were not spelled out, but it is expected they would be similar to the rules on the movements of Soviet diplomats, who are prohibited from traveling more than 25 miles beyond their duty station without State Department approval.

In addition to the proposal to extend controls over diplomats’ movements, the legislation also for the first time would require the registration with the Justice Department of both Soviet and Warsaw Pact trade representatives in the United States. Trade representatives from some of these nations have been named in subcommittee hearings as most active in military and industrial espionage.

But Rozanne Ridgway, assistant secretary of state for European affairs, warned at a hearing of the panel Thursday that the legislation could backfire by prompting limits on the movement of U.S. diplomats behind the Iron Curtain.

She said that U.S. diplomats currently are free to travel in Soviet Bloc states, unlike their colleagues in the Soviet Union, who are barred from certain parts of the country--a ban that has been reciprocated by the United States.

Easy to Watch

“We feel this is of some value,” Ridgway said in reply to a question from Roth, although she conceded that U.S. diplomats are easily kept under watch in a Communist society. Recalling her own experience as ambassador to East Germany, she noted “that even on the highway, people were well aware of where you were going.”