The World - News from July 18, 1985

A top Soviet scientist, employing a novel rationale, says it would violate the nuclear non-proliferation treaty to allow Andrei D. Sakharov to emigrate to the West, according to Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.). Simon, who recently returned from a trip to Moscow, said Anatoly P. Alexandrov, president of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, gave this explanation for holding the celebrated dissident and one-time nuclear physicist in internal exile: “Part of the treaty is you’re not supposed to spread information about nuclear bombs and how to release them. If we were to let him go, he could spread information.”