US retaliates in rejecting envoy assigned by India

The State Department rejected an Indian diplomat assigned to Washington in retaliation for the New Delhi government's rejection of an American diplomat accused of being a CIA agent, officials said.

The Soviet Union has fanned the dispute with broadcasts of reports that George G. B. Griffin has been an intelligence officer in Afghanistan. A US official said Mr. Griffin was reassigned to New Delhi after working at the embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. The Indian government would not accept him in the post and denounced him for briefing the press -- which was a part of his job in Kabul -- on conditions in Afghanistan since its December 1979 occupation by Soviet troops.