No Asylum for Merab

As the six dour Russian diplomats hustled their charge through Kennedy Airport, they were met by a determined contingent of U.S. State Department and immigration officials. Their friend, the Russians assured the Americans, did not want asylum and had chosen to return home; but, no, he could not confirm this personally. Merab Kurashvili, 36, an engineering teacher doing postgraduate work at the University of California at Berkeley, stood nervously watching, his throat and wrists bandaged. Without an interview, the Americans replied, Kurashvili would not be permitted to board a waiting Aeroflot jet. The Soviets yielded--perhaps in part because the U.S., by coincidence, had just announced a long-overdue streamlining and broadening of procedures for handling defectors and those seeking political asylum.

Like many Americans, Richard Nixon was abashed and angered last year when a Lithuanian sailor, Simas Kudirka, was forced to return to his Russian ship after he had defected to a U.S. Coast Guard cutter anchored off Martha's Vineyard. The President raged against the "bureaucratic bungling" responsible for the incident, and demanded new guidelines to ensure against a similar occurrence. The resultant recodification authorizes, among other things, "the use of force against attempts at forcible repatriation," and provides for quicker communication between the State Department and various federal, state and local agencies likely to encounter defectors. The mystery surrounding Kurashvili allowed for the immediate practical application of the new guidelines.

Kurashvili came to the State Department's attention two weeks ago, when he and a fellow Soviet student, Grigory Smelyi, were arrested for allegedly shoplifting from a Berkeley market. After the State Department intervened, the charges were dropped and the men were allowed to remain at Berkeley. Soviet authorities apparently felt that the incident reflected poorly on their country. The two students were flown to the Soviet embassy in Washington, then taken to Kennedy Airport in a minibus by several embassy staffers. During the drive, Kurashvili slashed his neck and wrists with a razor blade; he was bleeding heavily when his escorts attempted to drag him through the airport to board an Aeroflot flight to Moscow. Port of New York Authority police intervened and rushed Kurashvili to a nearby hospital. Smelyi, after indicating to the police that he wanted to return home, was allowed to board the waiting Russian jet.

Confrontation. Airport authorities meanwhile relayed the details to the State Department's Operations Center, now the clearinghouse for handling any such incident. A department official was dispatched to the hospital. When he arrived, Kurashvili had already been moved to the Soviet Mission to the U.N. in Manhattan. U.S. officials scheduled a hearing for Kurashvili to make sure that he actually wanted to return to the U.S.S.R. He failed to appear, supposedly because he was too ill. The airport confrontation ensued.

The Russians were at first adamant in their refusals to allow Kurashvili to talk to the Americans. Eventually they relented and permitted Kurashvili, in the presence of two of his companions, to speak to Immigration and Naturalization Service Investigator Sam Zutty. Said Zutty later: "Merab did indeed wish to return to the Soviet Union. It was my judgment that this was a free and voluntarily expressed wish." Only after this was determined was he allowed to board the airplane.

On the day following Kurashvili's return, the Soviet Union ordered the expulsion of New York Congressman James Scheuer for allegedly inciting Soviet Jews to leave Russia. Scheuer is believed to be the first elected American official to be expelled by the Soviets. He was briefly detained by the Moscow police while visiting a Jewish professor who had been denied permission to emigrate to Israel. The police entered the professor's home, saying they were looking for a criminal posing as a foreigner.

The Congressman later told newsmen that he had visited a number of Soviet Jews whose addresses had been given to him in New York, but he denied the Soviet accusations. As a Jewish Congressman from a heavily Jewish district, he said, he had naturally wanted to inform himself about the treatment of Jews in the Soviet Union.

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