U.S. Cutter Sent to Free Woman

WASHINGTON — A U.S. Coast Guard cutter has been dispatched to free an American woman aboard a Japanese fishing vessel that was seized by a Soviet warship in the Bering Sea off Alaska, the State Department said today.

Department spokesman Bernard Kalb told reporters that the Soviets agreed to release Becky Kruppenbach, a fishery expert from Chickasha, Okla. She is on the Japanese fishing vessel Fukuho Maru that is being escorted to a Soviet port for unspecified reasons. It was not known whether the vessel was in Soviet or U.S. waters when it was stopped.