Soviets Being Expelled Are All Spies, U.S. Says

Reagan Administration officials said Thursday that the 25 Soviet U.N. Mission members they have ordered to leave the country are all intelligence officers, and one said the effect on KGB operations in New York “is like ripping their heart out.”

Soviet officials denied the charge and argued that the United States has no right to expel the members of Moscow’s delegation to the United Nations.

At the United Nations, the chief Soviet delegate, Alexander M. Belonogov, asserted that the size of his mission several months ago fell below the ceiling requested by Washington and charged that the Reagan Administration was aware of that.

‘A Bad Decision’

“This is an illegal decision, and since it is illegal it is a bad decision,” Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze said as he arrived in Washington for two days of talks with Secretary of State George P. Shultz. “I could, of course, use a stronger expression, but that may be after the meeting.”

The showdown over the Soviet Mission cast an additional shadow over the Shultz-Shevardnadze meeting, which was originally scheduled to discuss the possible timing and agenda of a summit meeting between President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

But a senior State Department official said the Administration is not prepared to agree to a date or other arrangements for the proposed summit at this week’s meetings.

Daniloff Case

Instead, officials said, much of the meeting will probably be devoted to discussing the two superpowers’ escalating confrontation over espionage and the Soviet prosecution of American reporter Nicholas Daniloff.

Daniloff, Moscow correspondent for U.S. News & World Report, was arrested by Soviet secret police Aug. 30, a week after a Soviet U.N. employee in New York was arrested by the FBI on espionage charges.

U.S. officials said that Shultz will make the Daniloff case his first order of business in the meeting, the first between the two foreign ministers since the November, 1985, Reagan-Gorbachev summit in Geneva.

Rumor Denied

Several officials said the Administration will find it difficult to fix a date for the summit until the Daniloff case is resolved. But the senior State Department official denied rumors that Shultz will walk out of his meeting with Shevardnadze if the Soviet foreign minister does not produce an immediate solution.

Shevardnadze, speaking to reporters on his arrival at Andrews Air Force Base east of Washington, called the Daniloff case an “undesirable” irritant to superpower relations but added: “We believe solutions are possible.”

In a written statement, the Soviet foreign minister warned that the growing disputes “could, for many years to come, leave our two countries in positions of confrontation and dangerous contention.”

Oct. 1 Deadline

The State Department told the Soviet Mission on Wednesday that 25 of its staff members named in a secret list must leave the United States by Oct. 1.

“The 25 who have been asked to leave are all Soviet intelligence officers,” an Administration official familiar with espionage issues said.

When asked whether they included the KGB “resident,” the chief of the Soviet intelligence agency’s office in New York, he said: “You can assume that.”

Administration spokesmen, in announcing the expulsion order Wednesday, said the action was taken solely to enforce a U.S. demand made in March that the Soviet Union reduce the size of its missions in Manhattan.

Satisfaction Voiced

But several officials who spoke with reporters Thursday noted--with considerable satisfaction--that the action could severely damage Soviet espionage efforts in the United States. “It’s like ripping their heart out,” one said.

“In the short term, it’s certainly a problem for them,” another official said. “They are faced with the problem of having to replace those assets. . . . It could completely sever some relationships (with prospective agents) that are in the developmental stage.”

The Administration has long complained that the Soviet Union uses its U.N. staff members--including those of the Soviet republics of the Ukraine and Byelorussia--for spying on the United States and that, together, the three missions in New York--with a total of 275 members--are more than twice as large as any other country’s and out of proportion to Soviet needs.

Last March, the Administration ordered the Soviets to reduce their staff by 40%, or 105 members by 1988, beginning with a cut of 25 at the Soviet mission by Oct. 1.

Requests Ignored

But the Soviets publicly rejected the order as illegal and ignored U.S. requests for specific assurances that it would be obeyed, officials said.

Those rebuffs--and the confrontation over the Soviet arrest of Daniloff--prompted the Administration to issue its expulsion list Wednesday, officials said. If the Soviet government had obeyed the order, they noted, it could have chosen which 25 staff members to send home.

At the United Nations, Belonogov condemned the order as “blatantly provocative” and asserted that his staff had already been cut below the level demanded by the United States.

Belonogov said the Soviet Mission had already shrunk from 243 members to 205--far below the 218 total the Administration had ordered--and that the Ukrainian and Byelorussian missions each had reduced their staffs to 12.

No Names Provided

Several U.S. officials conceded that the Soviet staff may have dropped below the ceiling of 218, but they said Belonogov has refused to provide any names of diplomats who may have departed or provide any other means for the United States to verify the cuts.

Irene Payne, deputy press spokesman for the U.S. Mission in New York, said the Administration is unable to determine the number of Soviet diplomats actually present at the United Nations.

Belonogov scoffed at the claim that the United States does not know the strength of the Soviet mission, “One would think that it is not U.S. officials but somebody else who issues visas, registers arrivals and departures of staff members of foreign missions to the United Nations, that it is not the U.S. Secret Service which keeps them under daily surveillance,” he complained.

Doyle McManus reported from Washington and Don Shannon from the United Nations.