Government Closes Independent Soviet News Service

An independent Soviet news agency that had established itself as one of the fastest and surest sources of news in Moscow and from around the country was shut down Friday by the State Committee for Television and Radio in what the agency charged was an attempt to re-establish a state monopoly on information.

Interfax, whose clients included the liberal government newspaper Izvestia and Radio Moscow as well as many Western news organizations, embassies and businesses, was locked out of its offices at Radio Moscow, its equipment was seized by committee officials and its telephone lines were cut.

“The main problems are political,” Interfax Director Mikhail V. Komissar said, accusing the television and radio committee, known as Gosteleradio, of trying to “liquidate independent information structures.”

On Thursday, the committee took the country’s most controversial program, “Vzglyad,” or “Viewpoint,” off the air indefinitely--although it was the most popular show on Soviet television. The program had sought to broadcast interviews the last two weeks with aides to Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze explaining why he resigned.

Committee officials said they wanted a contract with the program’s staff that would give them more authority over its “creative work” before they agreed to put “Vzglyad,” which has been widely criticized by conservatives, back on the air.

Gosteleradio officials had no comment on either action, which puts in question President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s continued commitment to glasnost, his policy of openness, as the country’s political and economic crisis deepens.

“The leadership of Gosteleradio does not hide the fact that the information provided by Interfax does not match his political conceptions,” Komissar said, referring to Leonid Kravchenko, the new Gosteleradio chairman and the former director of the official news agency Tass. He accused Kravchenko of attempting to close his agency.

“Interfax is convinced that its current conflict with Gosteleradio does not stem from any financial or property claims. The equipment that has been seized is the property of Interfax, which has full legal title to it.”

Komissar told subscribers that Interfax would try to resume operation next week with borrowed equipment in temporary quarters, and he appealed to them to press the issue with Gorbachev.

“The only authority to stop this action is the one that put Kravchenko into his post, namely Mikhail Gorbachev,” Komissar said.

Interfax was formed in 1989 as a joint venture between Radio Moscow and an Italian-French consortium, but the scoops of its reporters were such that even long-established Soviet newspapers had begun to use its material regularly.

Interfax recently became an independent news organization under the new Soviet press law. It had rented new offices from the Moscow city government but remained in its state-owned premises while the new offices were being remodeled.