U.S. Envoy to Vatican Scolded for Libya Talks

The U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, William A. Wilson, held an unauthorized secret meeting with Libyan officials in Tripoli in January and was reprimanded for it by Secretary of State George P. Shultz, a senior State Department official said Sunday.

Shultz told Wilson, a longtime California friend of President Reagan, that “he was acting beyond his powers and not to do it again,” this official said. The United States has no diplomatic relations with Libya and accuses its volatile leader, Col. Moammar Kadafi, and his regime of supporting terrorism.

The solo move by Wilson, a controversial director of the Pennzoil Co., which has had business dealings with Libya, neither helped nor hindered U.S.-Libyan relations, the official said in confirming news accounts originally published in the New York Times. Kadafi has asserted that diplomatic contact with a U.S. official he did not identify helped head off a military confrontation.

Meanwhile, as three U.S. aircraft carriers and 27 other warships steamed near the Gulf of Sidra off Libya, Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger said that U.S. military craft have crossed what Kadafi has proclaimed the “line of death” across the gulf’s entrance seven times since 1981 without suffering casualties. He did not specify whether planes or ships or both were involved.

U.S. military aircraft have operated in what is called the Tripoli Flight Information Region 18 times during the same period and have come within 40 to 60 miles of the Libyan coast, Weinberger also said in an interview on NBC’s “Meet The Press.”

The United States has notified Libya that its planes will operate until April 1 in the Tripoli flight zone, which is about 700 miles long and 100 to 200 miles wide--stretching far beyond the gulf itself.

Kadafi has declared that Libyan territorial waters extend 200 miles and include all of the gulf, but the United States recognizes only 12 miles for territorial waters and regards the gulf as international waters. The naval maneuvers, while maintaining the U.S. position, appear to be a thinly veiled provocation to Kadafi to show his resolve.

Followed Airport Attacks

Wilson’s overture to Kadafi closely followed Dec. 27 terrorist attacks on the Rome and Vienna airports in which Libya was accused of having an important role, officials said. At a Jan. 5 news conference, Kadafi said that Libyan officials had met with an unnamed U.S. diplomat “in the past few days” in a bid to reduce tensions.

After denying the validity of Kadafi’s comments and even suggesting that he lied, State Department officials inquired and discovered the unauthorized Wilson trip.

“There have been no contacts authorized between U.S. officials and Kadafi or his regime,” State Department spokesman Pete Martinez said Sunday.

Wilson was a millionaire member of the President’s so-called “Kitchen Cabinet” early in the Reagan Administration, as well as an active supporter of Reagan’s earlier political campaigns.

Pennzoil Director

He remains a director of both Pennzoil and the Earle M. Jorgensen Co. despite State Department guidelines that provide that “as a rule, persons appointed to positions requiring Senate confirmation must resign from directorship positions in for-profit corporations, even where no compensation is received.” No explanation has been offered for Wilson’s being an apparent exception to the rule.

Sources here said that Wilson has also annoyed State Department officials through his alleged use of embassy facilities for his business; for attempting to involve the U.S. attorney general in a Vatican bank case, and for claiming close friendship with the President in his unsuccessful efforts to expand his embassy at the Holy See in competition with the U.S. Embassy in Rome.