
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, February 23, 1995                   TAG: 9502230077
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: PARIS                                LENGTH: Medium

FRANCE ACCUSES 5 AMERICANS OF SPYING FOR CIA

France is claiming that five Americans, including the CIA station chief, have engaged in economic and political spying and has asked them to leave the country, a rare move that put the allies on a diplomatic collision course Wednesday.

In Washington, White House spokesman Mike McCurry said ``it remains to be seen'' whether the Americans would leave. He suggested that disclosure of the affair was linked to France's presidential campaign, in which a wiretapping scandal has embarrassed Premier Edouard Balladur, the front-runner.

France is seeking the ``very rapid'' departure of the five, four of them diplomats. A fifth was a nondiplomat who was said to have worked under cover.

Two other U.S. Embassy employees implicated in espionage had been sent home earlier, officials said.

The U.S. Embassy refused all comment. But in a demonstration of the sensitive nature of the affair, Ambassador Pamela Harriman held an unusual half-hour meeting Wednesday with Balladur.

She was informed of the matter Jan. 26 and was summoned two weeks later by the Interior Ministry when the embassy failed to take action, the daily newspaper Le Monde said.

The U.S. Embassy has been notified ``numerous times over numerous weeks'' that the Americans ``were engaged in activities incompatible with the status under which they reside in France,'' said a joint statement by the Foreign and Interior ministries.

The clandestine efforts went beyond the usual domain of industrial spying, often centered on the defense and aerospace industries, to target the audiovisual and telecommunications industries, Le Monde said. The Americans made their way into Cabinet circles and paid officials to obtain information, according to the paper, which quoted extensively from Interior Minister and counterintelligence documents.

The episode threatened to sour relations between the French and Americans, who could invoke the practice of reciprocity to expel France's top agent in the United States - an unprecedented move among allies.

by CNB