Concern Raised on Condition of Chernenko

Soviet radio programs switched to somber music early today and a top-level Soviet delegation cut short an American trip to return home, raising deep concern about the condition of 73-year-old Soviet President Konstantin U. Chernenko.

(In Washington, President Reagan was awakened at 4 a.m. EST by Robert C. McFarlane, his national security adviser, who told him that the official Soviet news media were preparing to make a “major announcement about Chernenko, a White House official told Associated Press.

No Official Word

(The official, who declined to be identified, said the U.S. government had received no official announcement from Soviet authorities that Chernenko had died. But the official said McFarlane told the President that foreign news media in Moscow were reporting that the Soviet announcement would be of Chernenko’s death.

(French and Japanese news agencies, quoting unidentified sources in Moscow, said this morning that the Soviet leader was dead. The Japanese agency, Kyodo, said Chernenko had died Sunday. The French service, Agence France-Presse, said its source cited a reported internal Soviet Communist Party Central Committee announcement.)

Chernenko, who has been too ill to appear in public recently, was last seen Feb. 28 on a television news program, looking pale and very short of breath. He apparently suffers from emphysema.

There was no official word on Chernenko, but Western diplomats said the early return to Moscow of a delegation headed by Politburo member Vladimir V. Shcherbitsky was a significant sign.

Special Flight Plan

The delegation, the highest-ranking Soviet group to visit the United States in more than a decade, was to leave San Francisco early this morning for New York and then take a special flight to Moscow.

Another Politburo member, Vitaly I. Vorotnikov, also returned to Moscow a day early from an official trip to Yugoslavia, Eastern European sources said. He flew directly to Moscow from Titograd instead of going back through the capital city, Belgrade, they added.

And in Bonn, a spokesman at the West German Foreign Office said a Soviet delegation led by Central Committee Secretary Mikhail Zimyanin that arrived in Hamburg late Sunday was leaving by special plane this morning, the Associated Press reported.

Shcherbitsky and Vorotnikov are among the 11 members of the Politburo, the ruling body that would choose a successor upon the death of Chernenko or another Politburo member.

Signal in Radio Music

It is customary for authorities to delay announcement of the death of a Soviet leader for 24 hours or more. The playing of classical music on the radio, gradually becoming more somber, has in the past been an indication of the death of an important leader.

Diplomats noted that the 24-hour radio station began playing classical music in the middle of the night and continued the somber strains into the morning in place of regularly scheduled poetry readings and military songs.

News programs, however, made no mention of the ailing Communist Party leader, and red flags over the Kremlin flew at full staff as usual.

At the Foreign Ministry, a press spokesman said: “I have no official information confirming or denying those rumors (about Chernenko’s condition).” A man who answered the telephone at Tass, the official news agency, said, “No comment, sorry.”

Official Cars Seen

Half a dozen large black cars assigned to top officials, however, were parked in front of the headquarters of the Communist Party Central Committee before 8 a.m. local time. In addition, some of the bigger Chaika chauffeured limousines also were cruising in the area.

In many ways, Moscow looked normal for a Monday morning after a three-day holiday weekend in observance of Women’s Day. Older men and women swept sidewalks with long-handled straw brooms, and others chipped away at encrusted ice. Crowds bustled out of subway stations and waited for slow-moving yellow buses.

The change of plans by the Shcherbitsky delegation recalled the early return from Britain of Mikhail S. Gorbachev, Chernenko’s heir apparent, after the death of Defense Minister Dmitry F. Ustinov last December.

In fact, Gorbachev announced the death from Edinburgh several hours before the official word was broadcast on Soviet television.

Meaning of Departure

State Department officials in Washington declined to comment on the reason for the Shcherbitsky group’s sudden decision to leave the United States. However, the Associated Press quoted an unnamed U.S. official as saying, “The speed with which the group is returning indicates that Chernenko is either dead or is expected to die within a matter of hours.”

If dead, Chernenko would be the third Soviet leader to die in less than 2 1/2 years. Chernenko’s predecessor, Yuri V. Andropov, held office for only 15 months before dying in February, 1984, after a long illness that the Kremlin tried to disguise as only a cold. Leonid I. Brezhnev, for 18 years the top Soviet leader, died in November, 1982.

The White House said that national security adviser Robert C. McFarlane briefed President Reagan on the Soviet delegation’s request for U.S. assistance in arranging a quick flight home. That involved allowing a Soviet Aeroflot jetliner to come from Havana to New York to meet the delegation at 3 p.m. today and fly it home to Moscow.

The 30 Soviet leaders led by Shcherbitsky, head of the Communist Party in the Ukrainian Republic, arrived in the United States on March 3 and were to have continued their tour by going to the Silicon Valley and Stanford University today before leaving for New York.

Visit Going Smoothly

The delegation met with Reagan at the White House last week and also with a bipartisan congressional delegation. U.S. officials said that the Soviet visit had gone smoothly and that no incident occurred in the United States to cause the group to leave.

Reports circulated in Geneva--where nuclear arms talks with the Soviets are to open Tuesday--and in Washington that Chernenko was dead. One report quoted a member of the Soviet delegation in San Francisco as saying flatly that Chernenko had died, but U.S. officials would not comment on that report.

Because of Chernenko’s failure to appear in public for long periods, there have been a number of previous reports that he had died. For many months, the Kremlin insisted that the Soviet leader was in good health, even though he dropped out of sight for weeks at a time. However, when he failed to give the traditional campaign speech to the Russian Republic’s parliament on Feb. 22, Moscow admitted that he was ill.