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LONDON 20.Sep (AP)- The KGB's role in getting
Marxist Salvador Allende elected Chile's president
was among the biggest successes in what the Soviet
Union long believed was a winning battle against the
United States for influence in developing nations,
according to a new book.
"The Mitrokhin Archive II: The KGB and the World,"
published Monday, is the second volume based on
reams of handwritten notes that British intelligence
agents helped former Soviet spy agency archivist
Vasili Mitrokhin smuggle out of Moscow when he fled
to Britain in 1992.
Agents funneled campaign money to Allende through
the Chilean Communist Party, took partial credit for
his election in memos home and arranged meetings
with the president through his mistress after he
took office, the book said.
"Allende is very attentive to ladies, and tries to
surround himself with charming women," wrote KGB
agent Svyatoslav Kuznetsov, according to the book.
"His relationship with his wife has more than once
been harmed as a result."
But Soviet spies flopped in Iraq, where they failed
to win the sympathy of Saddam Hussein or
sufficiently bolster his opponents - including Jalal
Talabani, now Iraq's president.
Mitrokhin, who died last year at age 82, copied
thousands of top-secret documents while supervising
the 10-year-long move of the KGB's foreign
intelligence archives to a new site, said his
co-author Christopher Andrew, a Cambridge University
history professor. He did it by hand because
photocopying was too dangerous.
The title of the book's U.S. edition is "The World
Was Going Our Way," a phrase taken from the archives
that summed up the KGB's belief from the 1960s
through the early '80s that it was winning the Cold
War fight for power in poor nations around the
world, Andrew said in an interview.
Soviet intelligence leaders realized by the 1950s
that they would never succeed in turning America
communist but came up with an alternate goal, he
said.
"They did have an actual belief ... that they could
beat the U.S. in the Third World, because they could
achieve greater influence and blacken the reputation
of the U.S.," Andrew said. "And they had a series of
tactical victories in doing that."
Of those victories, Allende's 1970 election was
among the proudest, seen by the Soviets as a major
blow to U.S. influence in Latin America. Cuban
President Fidel Castro was another KGB ally - though
the spy agency's Havana office thought his ego was a
problem.
"F. Castro's vanity is becoming more and more
noticeable," a 1979 report said. "Castro's approval
is needed on every issue, even insignificant ones."
The KGB believed in the 1970s that Iraq was the
Soviet Union's best potential foothold in the Middle
East and sought to woo Saddam - known to be an
admirer of Josef Stalin - before he took power.
After Saddam made his dislike of Soviet policy
clear, the KGB offered training and other help to
his opponents, working closely with a group headed
by Talabani, an ethnic Kurd, the book said.
But Moscow backed away from its support for the
Kurds, fearing that strengthening them might help
Iran win its war with Iraq.
AP
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