EchoVibe

Mikhail Gorbachev is actively courting Western Europe, but the relationship is not all sweetness and glasnost.

Soviet mini-submarines and combat frogmen continue to violate the waters of neutral Sweden more than 30 times a year, making U.S. intelligence agencies wonder what Gorbachev is up to.

During the Cold War, a certain amount of Soviet skulduggery was tolerated. The Swedish Navy detected a number of Soviet incursions in the 1970s but kept them secret and was powerless to prevent them. But in 1981, with the ''Whiskey on the rocks'' episode, the strange forays could no longer be ignored.

The Soviets accidentally grounded a ''Whiskey'' class submarine near the sensitive Swedish naval complex at Karlskrona. The Soviets claimed the sub was on a training cruise and had navigational problems. The captain said he thought he was near Poland, not Sweden.

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Then shallow waters raised the sub's bow, exposing nuclear weapon bays. The Swedes boarded the ship and found a log that had been clumsily altered to conform to the captain's ridiculous story.

The Soviets continued arrogantly to deny that they had been up to any hanky-panky. But according to highly classified U.S. intelligence reports, the incursions were common and have continued.

In 1982, the Soviet naval spetsnaz, (special forces), conducted operations near Sweden's largest naval base at Musko. One of the Soviet mini-subs penetrated deep enough into Swedish waters to lay just off Stockholm.

The Swedes used depth charges throughout the month-long operations but failed to bring up any boats.

Another huge operation occurred in 1984, when the Swedes recorded more than 600 detections of foreign intruders in the water near the Karlskrona naval base. There were conventional submarines, small diver vehicles, frogmen and mini-subs. The Swedish army brought out grenades and machine guns to repel what they suspected were Soviet frogmen coming onto the island of Almoe near Karlskrona. Swedish officials uncovered caches of food hidden in the woods.

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U.S. intelligence officials expected that the strange forays would taper off when Gorbachev came to power in 1985, but they didn't. The incidents have continued at a rate of 30 or more a year, and they have become even more daring.

In 1985 three Swedish fishermen pulled in a net and found a drowned foreign frogman in it.

In 1986 Soviet military intelligence people posed as Polish art dealers and visited the homes of more than 100 Swedish pilots. They asked enough questions to get a profile of each pilot in the Swedish Air Force.

The Soviets have used their forays to perfect two types of mini-submarines, one of them code-named Argus and the other Zbuk. They use tanklike treads to crawl along the ocean floor or skim through the water by propeller.

Why are the Soviets so aggressively picking on neutral Sweden? The CIA has a theory -- propounded in top secret reports -- that the Soviets expect Sweden would side with the West in a future war, and Moscow wants to be ready to eliminate Sweden as a threat.

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In one highly sensitive report, the CIA said that Soviet commandos had been working on a plan to abduct the Swedish royal family from the palace in Stockholm and hold them as hostages to ensure Swedish neutrality in a war between the superpowers. During the Soviet forays, mini-subs have made it into the Stockholm harbor within a mile of the royal palace.

The Pentagon outlines similar theories in highly classified documents. One persistent notion is that the Soviets need to train their spetsnaz forces, and the Swedes can be picked on with little risk.

The most prevalent theory among American military intelligence analysts was expounded by Gordon McCormick, an analyst with the defense think tank, Rand Corp. In a recent treatise for the Air Force called ''Stranger than Fiction: Soviet Submarine Operations in Swedish Waters,'' McCormick said the Soviets have always been suspicious of Sweden's neutrality.

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According to McCormick, the Soviets want to know what Sweden could and would do in a war. Based on what the Soviets have learned, ''it is likely that Moscow would probably consider the option of striking Sweden at the outset of a future European conflict,'' McCormick wrote. ''The present risks of doing so are low, and the potential military payoffs must be judged to be high.''

One either has to conclude that Gorbachev is not in control of the strange forays, or that he sanctions them in the interest of gathering more information. The latter is more likely.

The operations have been so successful that the Soviets have expanded their mini-sub activity into other parts of the world. In the last several years, tracks of mini-subs have been found off Gibraltar, near Japanese naval bases and in Subic Bay in the Philippines, where the United States has a large base.

Reports of strange frogmen and caches of food have also repeatedly made the rounds in Alaska where proximity fosters the rumors as much as reality.

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