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Soviet warships being watched in Gulf
Houston Chronicle News Services
TUE 11/05/1985 HOUSTON CHRONICLE
A U.S. Navy vessel is closely monitoring the movements of two Soviet warships that entered the Gulf of Mexico and came within 40 miles of the Texas coast, the U.S. Navy said.
The USS Taylor, American guidedmissile frigate, has been tracking the Soviet ships - a guided-missile destroyer and a guided-missile frigate - since they left Havana Thursday, said Lt. Cmdr. Craig Quigley, a Navy spokesman in Norfolk, Va.
The Taylor is always "within visual range" of the Soviet vessels that were last reported about 100 miles southwest of Tampa, Fla., and moving in a southeasterly direction, possibly toward Cuba, said Quigley.
However, there was no way to determine whether the Soviet warships were preparing to leave the Gulf and return to Havana. "They can always change rudder at a moment's notice," he said.
The destroyer and frigate - part of a larger group of four Soviet ships that entered the Caribbean in September - entered the Gulf Thursday, Quigley said. The vessels always remained within international waters, he said.
The Navy took pictures of the two Soviet ships Saturday when a P-3 maritime patrol and anti-submarine warfare aircraft flew over the ships about 40 miles southeast of the Houston-Galveston area.
"That's international waters," Quigley said. "They've never come closer than 20 miles to our shore."
Quigley, noting it was not unique for Soviet vessels visiting the Caribbean to enter the Gulf, said it was the 25th such deployment of Soviet warships to the Caribbean since 1969.
Meanwhile, a nuclear-powered cruiser and two other Soviet warships steamed into the South China Sea on Monday, trailed by an Australian frigate and observed by Western journalists from a U.S. Navy plane.
A Navy officer on the P-3 Orion anti-submarine patrol plane told a pool of reporters that the 28,000-ton cruiser Frunze and the 7,900-ton guided-missile destroyer Osmotritelny were among three classes of warships the Soviets were bringing into the region for the first time to expand and modernize their Pacific fleet.
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chron Houston Chronicle Archives
Soviet warships to pay visit to Mexico port for first time
Washington Post
FRI 09/13/1985 HOUSTON CHRONICLE
WASHINGTON - Two Soviet warships are expected to pay a port visit to Mexico for the first time next month, U.S. officials said Thursday. The State Department expressed "concern" about the visit in a message to the Mexican government.
The planned visit is "significant," one official said, because until now Soviet naval deployments to the Caribbean Sea have included port calls only in Cuba.
"Obviously, we're concerned about the Soviet ability to move their ships in and out of the Caribbean," a State Department official said. "Mexico is an independent country and they can do what they want, but we have made our concerns known."
A Kashin guided missile destroyer and a Krivak guided missile frigate are expected to visit the eastern Mexican port of Veracruz Oct. 4, U.S. officials said. The vessels are now in the North Atlantic Ocean heading toward the Caribbean.
A spokesman for the Mexican Embassy here, Ricardo Ramirez, said he had no information about such a visit and that the naval attache here also had not been informed.
"I don't know what the big concern is about," Ramirez said. "I know that American ships have been in Mexico, and European ships, many times."
The Reagan administration has expressed concern in the past about what it calls Soviet efforts to increase the U.S.S.R.'s influence in Central America and the Caribbean region.
"This is a brand-new thing we haven't seen before," the official said. "They have a blue-water navy now, and they're using it as you'd expect, for political presence."
Defense Department officials said that the Soviet navy has visited the Caribbean 24 times since it began conducting exercises there in 1969. Last year five vessels - three warships, an oiler and a submarine - conducted exercises in the area, and the year before that, the Soviets sent a helicopter carrier to the area for the first time.
The Soviet ships ordinarily exercise with Cuban vessels and then travel to the Gulf of Mexico, not far from Texas or Louisiana, on what Navy officials call a "presence mission."
