U.S. Stands Firm on Expelling 25 Soviets : State Department Says Last 5 U.N. Staffers Must Leave by Sunday

Brushing aside Soviet protests, the United States plans to expel on Sunday the last of 25 Soviet U.N. mission employees identified by U.S. intelligence as Kremlin spies, the State Department and other sources said Tuesday.

All 25 were ordered out of the country on Sept. 20, apparently in retaliation for the arrest in Moscow of American reporter Nicholas Daniloff, who has since been released. State Department spokesman Peter Martinez said that 20 of the alleged spies had left the United States as of Tuesday.

The remaining five originally were to leave the country today, but were given a four-day extension as “a gesture of good will,” Martinez said. He said the Soviet Mission asked for the extension so that the five could take a scheduled flight on Aeroflot, the Soviet airline, from New York.

In New York, however, Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir F. Petrovsky insisted Tuesday that the expulsion issue is “not yet closed,” in part because it was not taken up at the Iceland summit.

Settlement Is Denied

Asked at a news conference whether U.S. authorities had agreed to postpone the expulsion only until Sunday, Petrovsky would say only that “there is no agreement.”

Tuesday’s public announcement of the expulsion of the last five came at the direction of President Reagan, who, two weeks ago, ordered a halt to high-level bargaining that would have allowed some of the 25 to remain in this country indefinitely, a government source said Tuesday.

The Soviets were said to have understood that they could retain two and perhaps more employees named in the original expulsion order, perhaps including those identified as the New York station chief of the KGB secret police and the two top New York station officials of the GRU, the Soviet military intelligence agency.

Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze agreed in September to put the expulsion issue on the agenda of the Reykjavik summit. According to an official source who asked not to be named, Reagan later “overrode that and said there would be no backtracking” on the expulsions.

‘An Unlawful Decision’

In his news conference, Petrovsky refused to concede that the matter is decided.

“For the time being, this question is not yet closed,” he said. “We consider this an unlawful decision, a decision which goes contrary to the (U.N. headquarters) agreement.”

A 1949 agreement between the United States and the United Nations provides that member states’ diplomats should have access to the world organization headquarters “without hindrance.” The United States maintains, however, that it has the power to prohibit excessive numbers of diplomats in a member state’s mission.

A Soviet official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the remaining delegates did not leave by Tuesday, the original deadline, because it would have amounted to yielding to what is considered an illegal order. He added that they would probably go “voluntarily” later in the week.

State Department Comments

U.S. officials said Tuesday that they hope the expulsions will not further strain relations with the Soviet Union. The State Department’s Martinez emphasized that the exit order is based on “a genuine desire to protect national security.” He added that the reduction in the size of the Soviet Mission staff should not impede its normal operations.

The State Department has officially maintained that the 25 employees were ordered out of the United States as part of a long-standing plan to require reduction of the Soviet Mission staff, from more than 200 persons to 170 by Oct. 1, 1988.