UCLA Doctor Operating on A-Plant Victims

An American medical expert on bone marrow transplants said Sunday that he has started performing surgery on Soviet victims of the Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster.

Dr. Robert P. Gale, who was invited by the Soviet Union to provide expert medical advice, told about his role in a telephone interview.

He said that people suffering from exposure to radiation that attacks bone marrow have been brought to a Moscow hospital for treatment.

‘Actually at Work’

“I am actually at work,” he said, confirming that he performed surgery on Saturday and is scheduled to continue doing so. Gale, an associate professor of medicine at UCLA and head of an international registry of bone marrow centers, declined to provide details.

He said he expects that additional information about medical care of the victims will be disclosed soon by Soviet authorities.

“It would be in everyone’s best interests to do so,” he said.

Gale was mentioned by name Sunday night in a formal expression of gratitude by the Soviet government that was transmitted by the official news agency Tass and broadcast on the main evening television news.

Nuclear Experts Invited

The Kremlin also invited Hans Blix, director general of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, to come to Moscow with two IAEA nuclear safety experts in connection with the Chernobyl accident. They are expected to arrive today for an indefinite stay.

Meanwhile, the nightly television news program, Vremya, for the first time since the accident occurred more than a week ago, showed film of the Chernobyl area, taken from a helicopter hovering over the damaged plant.

A narrator said the film--which showed the roof blown off one part of the building but other parts still intact--indicated that Western news media were exaggerating the extent of the disaster.

The film also showed apartments of workers in a small town nearby, but the area appeared to be deserted except for some truck traffic.

Special teams have been formed to decontaminate the area, the announcer said, and the level of radioactivity there has dropped by up to two times. He did not give any radiation readings, however.

Unreported Disclosures

Soviet news media, however, have not reported several disclosures about the Chernobyl accident made in Hamburg, West Germany, by Moscow’s Communist Party chief, Boris N. Yeltsin.

Yeltsin said that 49,000 people were evacuated from their homes around the nuclear power plant, that 20 to 25 people from among about 40 who received serious doses of radiation were still critically ill but that life goes on “normally” beyond a 19-mile exclusion zone around the stricken plant.

The Soviet media continue to list 18 people in serious condition out of 197 originally hospitalized. The state-run media have also continued their attacks on news reports that are being published and broadcast in the West about the tragedy.

In a strongly worded commentary, Tass said that United States and Britain are exploiting the accident for “sordid political aims” and trying to divert world attention from the April 15 U.S. bombing raid of terrorist targets in Libya.

Secretary of State George P. Shultz denied that the United States is attempting to milk the disaster for political purposes. “We haven’t been trying to beat them over the head,” he said on ABC’s “This Week With David Brinkley” in comments from Tokyo, where Shultz is participating in the economic summit.

Levels, Heat Intense

Shultz said that U.S. intelligence data showed that “radiation levels and the heat in the vicinity of the plant are still, for that matter, intense.”

Some of the details that have emerged in the Soviet Union were specifically aimed at foreign audiences. Georgy A. Arbatov, a specialist on Soviet-American relations, said in a British Broadcasting Corp. interview that Kremlin officials were aware of the accident on April 27. This is a day after authorities here say it occurred.

Arbatov said, however, that neighboring countries were not informed because the Kremlin felt sure there was no danger of contamination spreading beyond the boundaries of the Soviet Union.

The Soviet government on Sunday acknowledged offers of assistance from other nations, private companies and individual citizens in coping with the aftermath of the Chernobyl accident.

It said, however, that it could manage with its own resources for most of the emergency work required to deal with the problem.

“Certainly, when assistance offered with good intentions can prove useful, it will be accepted with gratitude,” a Tass statement said.

“Thus, in particular, Robert Gale, a well-known U.S. expert in radiology, has already arrived in the Soviet Union for consultations,” it added.

The arrival of Blix, head of the IAEA, also was mentioned with gratitude in the Tass account.