Chernenko Reported Ill, Cancels Trip

President Konstantin U. Chernenko has fallen ill and canceled a trip to attend a Warsaw Pact summit meeting, high-level Soviet sources said today. The trip had been his first planned trip abroad since he became Soviet leader less than a year ago.

The official sources did not disclose the nature of the illness, but the 73-year-old Chernenko is known to suffer from respiratory problems thought to be caused by the lung disease emphysema.

The sources said Chernenko’s illness forced him to cancel the trip to Sofia, Bulgaria, to attend a Warsaw Pact summit meeting Wednesday. The summit has now been indefinitely postponed.

Chernenko, who succeeded the late President Yuri V. Andropov last February, last appeared in public Dec. 27 and seemed in good health as he presented awards to Soviet writers.

Three days earlier, he had missed the Red Square funeral of Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov, which was held outdoors in temperatures of minus 4 degrees that caused members of the Politburo, military leaders, officials, diplomats and journalists to shiver and stamp their feet to keep warm.

Diplomats at the time said Chernenko’s doctors probably had warned the Soviet leader to stay away because the bitter temperatures could endanger his health.

But other aging military officials and members of the Politburo braved the freezing weather to pay their last respects to Ustinov, who died at the age of 76 of complications following pneumonia.

In the spring of 1983, Chernenko, then a member of the ruling Politburo, was absent from his office for nearly three months. A member of his staff said at the time that he was suffering from a bout of pneumonia.

He was absent from public view for two months last summer on what was described as his annual holiday and appeared thinner, although rested, on returning to his office in September.

During that period rumors circulated in Moscow that he had been treated for a heart ailment.

Andropov took office after the death of President Leonid I. Brezhnev in November, 1982, but disappeared from sight the following summer.

The only official explanation given during the seven-month absence before his death was finally announced in February, 1983, was that Andropov was suffering from a cold. He was buried Feb. 14, 1983.