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

DATE: MONDAY, March 30, 1992                   TAG: 9203300214
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

RUSHDIE

Yet it seems the most official Washington could manage for the visiting British subject was a small Capitol Hill luncheon attended by a handful of senators. The Bush administration snubbed him completely.

Rushdie has been in hiding since 1989, when the late Ayatollah Khomeini took offense from his book "The Satanic Verses," which many Moslems consider blasphemous. Khomeini's verdict: Rushdie must die. Iran even placed a $1 million bounty on his head.

Incredibly, that bounty remains. Which leads us to wonder whether the Bush administration has done everything in its power to get the sentence lifted. Iran is said to be desperate to improve ties with the West.

And now, when Rushdie bravely visits the U.S. capital, Bush can find not a minute to meet with the author, but treats him like a literary leper?

Official contact with him, said a State Department type, might be "misinterpreted."

Right. It might lead some people to think this president was a courageous champion of freedom of expression who would show no tolerance of Iran's abominable behavior.

As it is, there's no misinterpreting the fact that Iranian terrorists have, in effect, dictated the chief executive's guest list.