Beach Battles

Hitting back at Glen Cove

It all started when the people of Glen Cove, N.Y. (pop. 25,000), read a news report stating that the local 36-acre weekend estate owned by the Soviet U.N. Mission was being used for electronic eavesdropping on the area's defense and high-technology industries. The town council, led by Mayor Alan Parente, voted to ban the Soviet diplomats from Glen Cove's beaches, tennis courts and golf course. The council members were also upset over the Soviets' diplomatic immunity, since it meant a loss to the town of some $75,000 annually in property taxes on the estate.

Last week the Soviets struck back. They barred American diplomats from bathing at Nikolina Gora beach, an hour's drive west of Moscow on the Moskva River. "It is unfortunate that the Soviet government has taken this position," said Mayor Parente, "but I will have no further comment until I meet with the State Department." Talks between Glen Cove and Foggy Bottom officials were scheduled for next week. Complained State Department Spokesman Alan Romberg, as much to Moscow as to Mayor Parente: "The U.S. Government is making every effort to have the prohibition by the Glen Cove authorities lifted."

The U.S. seems to have got the better of the beach battle. The Soviet beach in question is a fly-ridden, muddy stretch usually avoided by Americans. The Yanks prefer the posher facilities on the Kliasma River near their weekend retreat at Tarasovka, 15 miles north of the capital. Not only that, but Moscow's retaliation failed to include the local tennis courts, where U.S. diplomats are still happily batting away; there is no golf course in Moscow from which U.S. diplomats can be banned.

Still, Glen Cove may not have heard the last of the U.S.S.R. As a State Department official put it: "The Soviets are very thin-skinned about this. They think they are a great power, and they don't like getting pushed around." But neither does the decidedly minor world power of Glen Cove.

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