Spy-swap venue remains a secret

Press, 6 February 1986, Page 8

Spy-swap venue remains a secret

NZPA-Retuer East Berlin East and West Germany have confirmed reports of an East-West spy swap next week also including a jailed Soviet Jewish activist, Anatoly Shcharansky. But both , sides are keeping the venue for the hand-over secret. East Germany yesterday gave the only official Soviet bloc confirmation that the swap, first predicted in a West German newspaper report last week-end, “will take place at the beginning of next week.” West German Government sources said the scale of the exchange, by Washington and Moscow, as well as Bonn and East Berlin, meant the handover would probably be at several points.

There has been no official word from the

Soviet Union. ;; ■ - Initial American reports said the swap, negotiated by an East German lawyer, Wolfgang Vogel, was set for the Glienicke Bridge which links Communist East Germany with West Berlin. The West German Chancellor, Dr Helmut Kohl, said in Bonn yesterday that the American President, Mr Ronald Reagan, and the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, had paved the way for the agreement at their summit meeting in Geneva in November. Western diplomats said Mr Gorbachev clearly wanted to improve the Soviet Union’s image on human rights to reinforce his arguments on nuclear arms control. But there has been no indication of any deal for the release of a dissident physicist,

Andrei Sakharov. Dr Sakharov, suffering from heart disease, has been banished to the Volga city of Gorky since 1980 for his criticism of Soviet Government policy on Afghanistan and human rights. Moscow has insisted he had access to State secrets as a physicist and could not be freed to the West. Bonn Government sources said there was no link between the forthcoming swap and a South African offer to free the jailed black nationalist, Nelson Mandela, if Moscow agreed to release Dr Sakharov. But they said the South African proposal, outlined by the President, Mr Pieter Botha, last week, should be taken seriously. “There is a real background to this. There is interest on both sides,”