London, Oct. 29: Extremist action by an assortment of political crusaders has in the past decade transformed the lifestyles of hundreds of foreign diplomats accredited to the Court of St. James’s in London. In the wake of murders, kidnappings and bomb attacks around the world, most envoys, and especially those with sensitive missions, live in peril even in London.
Some, like the Israelis, work in buildings fortified by barbed-wire entanglements behind electronically controlled sets of steel doors, floodlit at night, guarded round-the-clock by a posse of armed police. Others, including the Russians, Arabs and Israelis, have installed special alarm circuits which link them with the nearest police station in case of sudden attack. Certain key ambassadors, notably Mr. Elliot Richardson of the U.S., never move out of their offices or homes without an armed bodyguard or secret serviceman on hand. And virtually, every sizable foreign diplomatic mission here reinforces the protection given to it by the British authorities with its own internal security officers who invariably are armed.
The overworked British security services in the past few years have suspected that one terrorist group may sometimes link up with another. There is said to be some evidences in police dossiers, for example, that the militant provisional wing of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) has at times worked with the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).
A consequence of the ever-rising peril for foreign envoys was a British police decision last year to form a ‘diplomatic protection unit’ within its special branch. The unit consists mainly of uniformed men in flying motorcycle or automobile squads who rush to the scene upon receipt of an alarm signal from any given embassy.