Allies Bar 34 Syrians From West Berlin

Police searched trains that link this divided city Friday for 34 Syrians and an Iraqi employed by Syria who were banned from West Berlin by the Allied Command after a trial that linked the Syrian government to a terrorist bombing.

On Thursday, the Allied Command in West Berlin issued the order expelling “certain Syrian nationals located in the Soviet sector of the city”--Communist East Berlin.

The Soviets, one of the city’s four occupying powers, have not attended meetings of the command in nearly 40 years. Since they are not expected to comply with the expulsion order in East Berlin, its effect is to bar the Syrians from the Western sector.

Wilhelm Kewenig, the West Berlin interior minister, said in a radio interview that police had started looking for the Syrians and “will conduct checks on subways and commuter trains” that connect East and West Berlin. No detentions or expulsions were reported by Friday night.

Diplomats said the Western occupying powers--the United States, Britain and France--gave West Berlin police a list of Syrians who were not to be allowed in the Western zone. They said all worked at the Syrian Embassy in East Berlin. The command revealed neither the number of those banned nor their identities.

In Washington, an official at the State Department said Friday that 34 Syrians and one Iraqi employed by Syria were on the list.

According to the Allied Command, the step was taken to “preserve law and order” after Syria was implicated in the March 29 bombing of the German-Arab Friendship Society in West Berlin that wounded nine people. Two Palestinians with Jordanian passports, Ahmed Nawaf Mansour Hasi and Farouk Salameh were convicted Wednesday.

West Berlin authorities have issued an arrest warrant for a Syrian intelligence officer, Col. Haytham Saed, who is alleged to have provided Hasi and Salameh with the explosives at the embassy in East Berlin.

On Thursday, the West German government ordered four Syrian diplomats to leave the country and withheld appointment of a new ambassador to Damascus. Syria retaliated Friday by calling home its ambassador and ordering three West German diplomats out of the country.