Seychelles Guns

The U.S. has a small nonmilitary satellite-tracking station in the Seychelles, an idyllic string of some 90 islands stretching for 600 miles in the Indian Ocean off the east coast of Africa. It also has an interest in seeing that the islands, which in 1976 became an independent nation in the British Commonwealth, do not serve as a base for Soviet nuclear submarines. The islands are so quiet that even the seizure of power in a relatively nonviolent coup by the socialist Seychelles People's United Party last year did not overly worry Washington. Last week, however, Western intelligence agencies were fretting over the meaning of some 45,000 Ibs. of Soviet small arms, including grenades and hundreds of Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifles, that have been shipped to the Seychelles.

Tourism and tuna fishing are two of the islands' main industries. "You don't need a Kalashnikov to shoot tuna," says a U.S. intelligence officer. One State Department theory is that the new President, F. Albert Rene, is simply equipping his nearly 400-man Seychelles Liberation Army. Apparently because the U.S. has curbed its arms sales, he turned to the Soviet Union. Rene now presumably would be protected against a countercoup by deposed President James R.M. Mancham, head of the conservative Seychelles Democratic Party. When Mancham was ousted while visiting Britain, he scoffed: "It is no big heroic deed to take over the Seychelles. Twenty-five people with sticks could seize control." Not any more.

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