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

DATE: THURSDAY, March 29, 1990                   TAG: 9003290753
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: MOSCOW                                LENGTH: Short

KGB FOILED KREMLIN ATTACKS

Special KGB guards who protect President Mikhail Gorbachev and other leaders have stopped would-be assassins who tried to enter government buildings with sawed-off shotguns and knives, a news report said today.

"Every month our men in the Kremlin, on Red Square and other places expose and detain about a dozen people with criminal intentions," a KGB general, Yuri Plekhanov, told the Communist Party daily Pravda.

Even in the period of Gorbachev's policy of greater openness, officials previously have not discussed planned attacks on top leaders.

Security for Gorbachev, compared to that for leaders of other major countries, is erratic.

When the Soviet leader traveled to Washington in 1987 to meet President Reagan, U.S. security officers said Gorbachev's security operated in nearly an identical way.

But Gorbachev's security details have appeared ragged on other foreign trips, and at times in Moscow security for Gorbachev and his wife, Raisa, appears to be lax.

The KGB general said recently a man waiting in the reception room of the Communist Party Central Committee pulled out a sawed-off shotgun, but he was disarmed by KGB Maj. V. Frolov.

Gorbachev is said to do most of his day-to-day work in the Central Committee headquarters, although a person visiting the reception area would be unlikely to get anywhere close to the Soviet leader.

Others with bombs, knives and guns have been arrested on Red Square and in the Kremlin, he said.

by CNB