Soviets Grant Asylum to GI--First to Defect Since Vietnam : American Goes to Russia With W. German Wife

A U.S. Army soldier and his wife have been granted asylum by the Kremlin, a Soviet official said today, in the first known defection of an American serviceman to the Soviet Union since the Vietnam War.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Gennady Gerasimov identified the soldier as W. E. Roberts, his West German wife as P. Neumann and said Roberts had been based in West Germany.

Pentagon sources later identified the soldier as Pfc. Wade E. Roberts of Apple City, Calif., a wire repair technician with the 79th Field Artillery. He had been absent without leave since March 2.

Gerasimov told reporters at a news briefing that Roberts and his wife were granted asylum by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet because “they were afraid of being victimized for their progressive views.”

Claim of Persecution

He said Roberts “had been persecuted” while stationed in West Germany in the U.S. Army but gave no details. Gerasimov did not give Roberts’ rank and hometown.

The Soviet official gave no details of when the couple entered the Soviet Union or how they had arrived.

“They have chosen for their honeymoon the Turkmenian S.S.R.,” Gerasimov said, referring to the Central Asian Soviet republic that borders Afghanistan and Iran.

Tass press agency said it will provide on Friday a photograph showing the couple in Turkmenia.

1st Military Defection Since ’68

Although other U.S. citizens have asked for and received asylum in the Soviet Union in recent years, Roberts’ reported defection was the first by a member of the U.S. armed forces since 1968.

The last known American defector was Arnold Lockshin, an American cancer specialist who was granted asylum last year after charging that he had been persecuted and hounded out of his job because of his opposition to U.S. defense policies.

Lockshin, 47, formerly of Houston, arrived in Moscow on Oct. 8 with his wife, Lauren, and their three children.

Edward Lee Howard, a former CIA agent, defected to the Soviet Union in August of last year.

Howard disappeared from his Santa Fe, N.M., home in September, 1985, when the FBI was about to arrest him on suspicion of spying. He surfaced for the first time in public in a Soviet television broadcast last September.