(Archived document, may contain errors)
3/12/86 108
P-L357 CAN CURB NICARAGUAN SPYING IN THE U.S.
W ashington at last is taking steps to curb Moscow's use of its
U.N.-based diplomats for espionage against the U.S. The Reagan
Administration last week ordered that the Soviet mission to the
U.N. cut its diplomats from 275 to 170 by 1988, a slash of 38
percent. It is now time, therefore, to curb the espionage
activities in the U.S. of Soviet client states. This means
Nicaragua. The members of its mission to the U.N. should face the
same travel restrictions as members of missions of the Soviet
Union, Afg h anistan, Iran, Cuba, North Korea, and Vietnam. They
are limited to travel within a 25-mile radius of New York City.
Libyan U.N. delegates, meanwhile, must remain within New York
City's five boroughs. There is no reason that Nicaragua, whose
regime Ronald R eagan calls "not a government" at all but rather
"one faction of the revolution that has taken over at the point of
a gun," should be allowed to send "diplomats" to the U.S. who can
go anywhere in the U.S. and conduct subversion and espionage. The
U.S. ha s a legal right to impose such restrictions. Section 6 of
P.L. 357, enacted in 1947 by the Both Congress, states that
"nothing in the Agreement shall be construed as in any way
diminishing, abridging or weakening the right of the U.S. to
safeguard its own s ecurity." The Agreement to which this refers is
the so-called Headquarters Agreement between the U.S. and the U.N.
which governs U.N. activities in the U.S. Section 6 furthe'r states
that the Headquarters Agreement in no way denies the U.S. the right
"com p letely to control the entrance of aliens into any territory
of the U.S. other than the headquarters district and its immediate
vicinity." According to a confidential memorandum of February 6,
1952 (made public in 1979), by the Assistant Secretary of State for
U.N. Affairs, the legislative history of section 6, when read in
conjunction with other sections of the Headquarters Agreement,
indicates that 1) the U.S. may deny access to the headquarters to
aliens for security reasons, and 2) the U.S. controls the entrance
of aliens into the U.S. at large "completely."
This means that the U.S. may bar aliens in the U.S. from
travelling beyond the U.N.'s Manhattan headquarters and its
immediate vicinity. This should be made to apply to members of the
Nicaraguan mi ssion, now headed by Nora Astorga. She had been
Nicaragua's nominee for Ambassador to the U.S. last spring, but was
rejected by the Reagan Administration because of near certainty of
her role in the murder of General Reynaldo Perez Vega in Managua on
Marc h 8, 1978.
If the Reagan Administration is serious when it talks about the
Sandinista regime's threat to this hemisphere, then it should move
immediately to curb that threat by limiting Nicaraguan diplomats'
access to the U.S.
Juliana Geran Pilon, Ph.D. Senior Policy Analyst
F or further information:
Forcipan Relations of the United States 1952-1954, Volume III,
United Nations Affairs (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing
Office, 1979).
Juliana Geran Pilon, "It's Time to Curb U.N.-Based Spies," Heritage
Foundation Executive Memorandum No. 54, June 7, 1984.
Timothy Ashby, "Nicaragua's Terrorist Connection," Heritage
Foundation Backgrounder No. 495, March 14, 1986.
Uri Ra'anan, et al. Hydra of Carnage (Lexington, Mdssachusetts:
Lexington Books, 1986).
2
}}