U.S. Says KGB Defector Describes Soviet, PLO Activities in N. Africa

A ranking Soviet KGB official in North Africa defected to the United States about one month ago with information on Soviet operations in that region as well as aid being given to Palestinian forces training there, U.S. intelligence sources confirmed Friday.

The Soviet official, Oleg Agraniants, was assigned to the Soviet Embassy in Tunis, Tunisia, a country that has been host to the Palestine Liberation Organization and its chief, Yasser Arafat, these sources said.

Agraniants defected by walking into the U.S. Embassy in Tunis with his family last month, these sources said. He and the family are now in this country where he is undergoing interrogation. The size and composition of his family were not known.

NBC News, which first reported the defection Thursday night, said Agraniants was a KGB liaison officer to the Palestinians, who set up headquarters in Tunisia after their ouster from Lebanon in 1982. Two years ago Israel bombed Palestinian camps near Tunis, contending they were terrorist bases.

NBC also said Agraniants was responsible for all KGB intelligence and covert operations in North Africa and had supplied U.S. interrogators with the names of Soviet agents in Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Libya. The television network, citing intelligence sources, said Agraniants had been a double agent for the Central Intelligence Agency for three years before his defection.

CIA spokeswoman Kathy Pherson refused to comment on the case.