Spy Trade Plan Confirmed by German Sources

West German sources confirmed Monday that a major spy exchange will take place soon involving imprisoned Soviet dissident Anatoly Shcharansky.

In Washington, sources in the Reagan Administration confirmed that a swap of some sort is in the works but were unable to confirm that Shcharansky would be included.

U.S. officials refused to comment on the record concerning the reports. Secretary of State George P. Shultz, interviewed on ABC-TV’s “Good Morning, America,” said, “There is no subject that we have worked on harder or that I think makes more difference to people in the West . . . than release of dissidents in the Soviet Union.”

But when asked about the reported trade, he said, “I have no comment at all.”

White House and State Department spokesmen also declined comment, and West German government spokesman Friedhelm Ost said, “We don’t want to say anything at the moment.” But other West German officials admitted privately that a deal is in the making.

The first report of such an exchange appeared in Monday morning’s issue of the daily Bild, which said it would take place within the next few days. Reagan Administration sources are reported to have indicated that a swap would take place Feb. 11 in West Berlin.

But according to sources here, the date may be moved forward, now that the news has been leaked by what Bild called “high Soviet sources.”

In Tel Aviv, Israel radio said the United States has informed Israel that Shcharansky will be freed in three days as part of the prisoner swap, the Associated Press reported. It said Washington informed Prime Minister Shimon Peres and Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir of the plan.

The West German sources who confirmed plans for the exchange did not say how many people are involved, but they said Shcharansky will be among them.

Bild reported that 12 East Bloc spies would be traded for an unspecified number of agents held in the East. In Jerusalem, Avi Moaz, a leader of the Israeli Assn. for the Release of Anatoly Shcharansky, speaking privately, also said that the exchange would involve 12 held in the West. He said they would be traded for Shcharansky and perhaps one other person.

Shcharansky, 37, a computer expert and human rights activist, was sentenced in 1978 to 13 years in prison for allegedly working with the CIA.

Sakharov Not Included

Bild said the Western governments sought to include in the exchange physicist Andrei D. Sakharov, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, who was sentenced in 1980 to internal exile at Gorky. But the Soviet authorities, Bild said, flatly refused to allow him to leave the country.

In East Berlin, the office of Wolfgang Vogel, a lawyer who has been a key figure in earlier exchanges, said he was “unavailable this week” for comment on the reported exchange.

Among the East Bloc agents said to be involved in the exchange are Yevgeny Zemlyakov, a Russian sentenced to three years in Cologne last year, and Lothar-Erwin Lutze, a former Defense Ministry clerk imprisoned for 12 years in 1976 for spying for East Germany.

In Washington, the Administration sources said a Czech couple, Karl and Hana Koecher, accused of supplying CIA secrets to Czechoslovak intelligence, also might be among the East Bloc spies to be freed.

Times staff writer Norman Kempster contributed to this article from Washington.