Soviets Accuse U.S. Diplomat of Espionage, Order Him Out

The Soviet Union on Friday accused an American diplomat of spying and ordered him to leave the country.

The incident occurred exactly a week after the United States ordered the Soviet Union, on security grounds, to reduce the size of its missions at the United Nations from 275 to 170 people over the next two years.

The official news agency Tass said that Michael Sellers, a second secretary at the U.S. Embassy, was detained last Monday “as he was having a clandestine meeting with a Soviet citizen recruited by U.S. intelligence.” It said the Soviet citizen, who was not named, was arrested.

Tass said that an investigation by the KGB, the security police, produced evidence that implicated Sellers in “intelligence-gathering activities incompatible with his official status.”

A spokesman at the embassy confirmed that Sellers, who was assigned to the embassy’s political section as a specialist on Moscow’s relations with its East European allies, had been declared persona non grata by the Foreign Ministry.

No Comment on Charges

The spokesman declined to comment on the charge of espionage, pointing out that the embassy never comments on such matters. No date was disclosed for Sellers’ departure.

In Washington, a State Department spokesman refused to give any information on Sellers beyond confirming that he was second secretary at the embassy in Moscow and had arrived there in September, 1984. The spokesman would not even say whether the United States would protest the expulsion.

Sellers is the first American ordered out since last June, when the Foreign Ministry accused another second secretary at the U.S. Embassy, Paul M. Stombaugh, of being involved in a widespread espionage operation and ordered him to leave. Stombaugh is an expert on the Soviet Baltic republics.