WASHINGTON: Senator Dan iel P. Moynihan, Democrat of New York, today denounced charges printed in an Indian newspaper that the leader of the Indian political opposition had accepted support from the Central Intelligence Agency and a private American foundation.

The Hindustan Times on Friday published an article on the charges against the opposition leader, Vish wanath Pratap Singh, and accompanied it with what were described as photocopies of supporting documents, Mr. Singh leads the Janata Dal.

The documents included a letter supposedly written to a C.LA. operative by an official of the Committee for a Free World, a New York based organization of conservative writers and academics, The letter spoke of a $1 million grant from the organization for Mr. Singh.

The letter “is a painful dare I say, pathetic forgery,” Mr. Moynihan, a former Ambassador to India, said in the Senate.

Called Obvious Forgery

The executive director of the Committee for a Free World, Midge Deter, also said that the letter was an obvious forgery, adding that she “burst out laughing” when she heard about the allegations.

In India’s charged political atmosphere, accusations of involvement with American intelligence agencies can be extremely damaging, regardless of their veracity.

The politician who made the charges and provided the newspaper with the documents, Subramanian Swami, is nominally in the opposition but has apparently been assisting supporters of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.

Mr. Moynihan, who held up a copy of the letter, said the letter head was “obviously” 9 or 10 years old because it listed as members of the committee for the Free World people who are now dead or hold different titles.

In addition, he said, the handwriting and terminology used in the letter did not match that of the ostensible author, Irving Kristol, the conservative commentator, whom Mr. Moynihan described as a close friend.

The American Embassy in India has rejected all of the charges and denied using secret cables of

the type described by the newspaper. European diplomats in India have also dismissed the accusations against Mr. Singh as unbelievable.

Article extracted from this publication >>  December 1, 1989