Bonn Officials Meet With Pilot Who Flew to Moscow

West German diplomats were permitted on Monday to talk with Mathias Rust, the 19-year-old pilot whose daring flight to Moscow last Thurdsay led to the removal of the Soviet defense minister and the officer in charge of the nation’s air defenses.

It was the first time that West German government representatives had been allowed to see Rust, whose home is in Hamburg. The young man was taken into custody for questioning shortly after he landed near the Kremlin walls on a flight of more than 500 miles from Helsinki.

A statement issued by the West German Embassy said that “details of the conversation cannot be disclosed.” The head of the embassy’s consular section, Gerhard Schroembgens, and two aides spent half an hour with Rust at Lefortovo prison, a KGB facility where U.S. journalist Nicholas Daniloff was held briefly last year on spy charges.

Rust “made a quite calm impression,” an embassy spokesman said.

A spokesman for the Soviet Foreign Ministry, Gennady I. Gerasimov, suggested Monday that more dismissals are possible in connection with Rust’s flight, in addition to the removal on Saturday of Defense Minister Sergei L. Sokolov and Chief Marshal Alexander I. Koldunov, head of air defenses.

“I believe that those who did not live up to their military responsibilities will be punished accordingly,” Gerasimov told the press.

10-Year Sentence Possible

Gerasimov, citing Article 84 of the Russian Federation Criminal Code, said that violating the country’s frontiers is an offense that can bring up to 10 years’ imprisonment. But Rust’s fate, he added, is still uncertain, pending the outcome of an investigation by the public prosecutor’s office.

Gerasimov said there were many unanswered questions about Rust’s flight. He said that according to press reports from Hamburg, Rust had “discussed with other pilots the best options of crossing the border undetected,” he said.

“According to the West German press, he pored over the route both on a map and on a mock-up (of the Soviet terrain) and studied the peculiarities of flying at low altitudes,” Gerasimov said. “The plane was specially adapted, lightened and fitted with extra fuel tanks, among other things.”

Gerasimov noted that the feat was “not an easy flight.”

“We cannot conclude for sure if he was acting alone, or if it was something else,” Gerasimov said. “Was it an act of hooliganism or something more serious?”

‘Can’t Rely on Technology’

Meanwhile, Georgi A. Arbatov, an authority on American affairs and a director of the Institute for U.S.A.-Canada Studies, said that the flight “shows that you can’t always rely on technology” and underscores the importance of nuclear disarmament.

“Technology and people may make mistakes,” Arbatov said, talking with reporters at the closing session of the 7th Annual Congress of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear Warfare.

“We blame the military leaders because they did not stop the flight by military methods,” he said.

Deputy Foreign Minister Vadim P. Longinov, in response to questions at a news conference about the efficiency of the Soviet air defenses, said: “Did you want us to shoot down the plane? Our air defense is strong enough, and if it wasn’t a small private plane . . . we could witness a quite different result.”

He said the incident showed that “there are limits to the human mind, and that is a very serious matter when it comes to defense.”

Criticized as a Stunt

Newspapers in West Germany have tended to treat Rust’s flight as something of a circus performance, but a spokesman for the West German Civil Airline Pilots Assn. criticized it Monday as silly and dangerous, a stunt that could have drastic repercussions.

The spokesman, Horst Gehlen, said in a radio interview, “The life of (the next pilot who violates Soviet airspace) is now in serious danger, even if he flies only a few kilometers over the Russian frontier.”

The West German government, making its first comment on the incident, also expressed disapproval.

A spokesman for the West German Foreign Ministry said: “The government disapproves of Rust’s violation of Soviet territory. Despite his skill as a pilot, his foolhardy action could have had extremely unfortunate consequences, personally and politically.”

But in private, government officials, like West Germans generally, took delight in Rust’s feat.

“I laughed my head off,” the Bild newspaper quoted Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher as saying when he learned of the flight.