Britain Continues Crackdown, Expels 3 Czech Embassy Aides for Spying

Britain on Thursday ordered three Czechoslovak diplomats to leave the country within two weeks for “engaging in activities incompatible with their status,” a diplomatic euphemism for spying.

The order was the latest in a series of diplomatic expulsions over the past month in an apparent government crackdown following increased scrutiny of foreign missions.

A Foreign Office spokesman said Czechoslovak Ambassador Jan Fidler was summoned to the Foreign Office and told that an air attache, Maj. Bedrich Kramar, and envoys Vlastimil Netolicky and Pavel Moudry had 14 days to leave the country.

A spokesman for the Czechoslovak Embassy in London said he had no immediate comment on the expulsions.

Relations between Britain and Czechoslovakia, one of the more hard-line Soviet Bloc countries, have been generally cool in recent months, and the British government has been outspoken in its criticism of Czechoslovakia’s human rights record.

In what appeared a conciliatory gesture by Prague, Czechoslovak authorities agreed last month to help stem the flow of Czech-made explosives to the Irish Republican Army, which is fighting to oust Britain from Northern Ireland.

Britain had protested to Prague earlier this year after security police broke up a religious gathering in Bratislava with batons, slightly injuring a British journalist. The Foreign Office described the police action as an echo of the “brutalities of a bygone age.”

Britain has expelled three diplomats--two Cubans and one Vietnamese--in the last month as part of a clampdown on the abuse of diplomatic status.