KGB Charges Gunman With Terrorist Act

A man who opened fire on Red Square a short distance from President Mikhail S. Gorbachev during the Revolution Day parade has been charged with committing a terrorist act, a spokesman for the KGB secret police said Thursday.

Alexander A. Shmonov, 38, of Leningrad, will undergo psychiatric tests to determine whether he was sane at the time of the shooting Wednesday, said Alexei Kandaurov, deputy director of the KGB public relations office. He gave no other details on the case.

No one was hurt in the incident, in which the man pulled out a hunting rifle in the heavily guarded square about 80 yards from Gorbachev. The shooting came during a Communist Party march that followed the military parade.

A plainclothes officer knocked the weapon away as the man fired once into the air and again into the ground, newspapers said. He then was subdued by about 20 plainclothes officers and carried into the GUM department store across the square from Gorbachev.

Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze played down what may have been an assassination attempt, denying that it indicated a loss of public support for Gorbachev’s perestroika reform policies.

“I don’t think this incident should be taken very seriously,” Shevardnadze told reporters before meeting with visiting Secretary of State James A. Baker III. “This is a huge country where something is always happening somewhere.”