Soviets step up criticism of US

Soviet criticism of the United States after the Olympic Games is sharp, Moscow correspondent David K. Willis reports, including Pravda condemnation of the US boycott of the games as "absurd" and "senseless."

In addition, Leonid Zamyatin, chief information official of the Kremlin, has attacked US Secretary of State Edmund Muskie for his testimony to the House Foreign Relations Committee that the Soviets must alter their behavior and that Afghanistan is the central issue in US-Soviet ties.

There is also great anger over the case of 12-year-old Vladimir Polovchak in Chicago, who decided not to return to the Ukraine with his parents; they had emigrated to the US in January. The Soviet news agency Tass has denounced the decision by US immigration officials to grant a petition filed by the boy's aunts asking for political asylum as "kidnapping," condoned and orchestrated by the State Department.

As a result of this, it says, the US has lost the right to raise the issue of reunifying families under the Helsinki final act. This is seen as a Soviet threat to end all Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union.

A juvenile court in Chicago has ordered the boy to stay with his aunts for five weeks pending a legal review.