Daniloff Returns to Work, Hopes Case Is Settled Before Friday’s Pre-Summit Talks

American journalist Nicholas Daniloff, who faces a Soviet trial on spy charges, returned to work Monday and said he hopes his case will be resolved before Friday’s U.S.-Soviet planning session for a second superpower summit.

“They have many more important things to discuss and prepare,” he said of the scheduled meeting Friday and Saturday in Washington between Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze.

“I hope my case can be settled quickly before they meet,” he said. “If this is not resolved before then, my case becomes a subject of these negotiations, and who wants that?”

Daniloff, a U.S. News & World Report magazine correspondent, was released last Friday from Moscow’s Lefortovo prison after 13 days and transferred to the custody of the U.S. Embassy. Daniloff’s move was made at the same time that Gennady F. Zakharov, an accused Soviet spy arrested Aug. 23 in New York, was handed over to the Soviet ambassador there.

Daniloff, 51, was arrested Aug. 30 on espionage charges after accepting a packet from a longtime acquaintance that he thought contained newspaper clippings. The KGB said the package contained secret Soviet military information.