Soviets Help U.S. TV to Air Sakharov Views

Soviet authorities made an unprecedented concession by allowing American television networks to interview dissident Andrei D. Sakharov at the state TV headquarters and transmit his critical comments to U.S. audiences.

Sakharov, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning physicist who returned to Moscow from seven years of exile last Tuesday, viewed the Friday and Saturday interviews as a test of glasnost, the public openness policy of Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

It was apparently the first time that Gosteleradioa, the state television monopoly, has assisted in airing the views of a celebrated dissident.

Normally, U.S. television networks must send their taped interviews by courier to the West for broadcast, since Soviet authorities refuse to transmit material that is not officially approved.

Changes in Status

Sakharov, however, has broken precedent by speaking freely to Western correspondents ever since he set foot in Moscow last Tuesday after spending almost seven years--beginning Jan. 22, 1980--in Gorky, a city off limits to foreigners where he was kept in virtual isolation.

In the past, foreign correspondents were barred from visiting his apartment in mid-town Moscow by police who were obviously acting under instructions of the KGB security police.

But since Gorbachev personally telephoned Sakharov to inform him that he and his wife, Yelena Bonner, were free to return to Moscow, it has been a different story.

American television crews said they had no problems arranging for a TV studio to interview Sakharov on Friday night or for a satellite channel to transmit the story to their New York headquarters.

Sakharov, who has been rebuffing would-be interviewers on grounds that he is tired and wants a respite from questioners, leaped at the chance to test the Soviet response to the networks’ request.

Interviews on 3 Networks

Answering questions relayed from news anchors Charles Kuralt of CBS News and Garrick Utley of NBC News, Sakharov again called for a swift withdrawal of the estimated 115,000 Soviet troops in Afghanistan.

ABC Television interviewed Sakharov on Saturday for broadcast today on “This Week With David Brinkley” and also received Soviet cooperation in transmitting the interview.

Sakharov spoke freely in the Friday night interviews.

“The tragedy in Afghanistan continues,” he said. “The number of (Afghan) refugees, who I think are primarily the result of Soviet forces, continues to increase. What we need is a fast withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan.”

Sakharov was exiled after he criticized the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan. Since then, however, Gorbachev has described the seven-year war there as a “bleeding wound” and said he supported the withdrawal of all Soviet forces as soon as a political settlement can be arranged to halt “outside interference”--a reference to U.S., Pakistani, Iranian, Chinese and other foreign support for the Afghan rebels seeking to topple the Moscow-backed regime in Kabul.

Credits Gorbachev

Even Sakharov said he was “amazed and shocked” at his own treatment, following the close KGB surveillance and harassment he endured during his Gorky exile.

He said he felt it was a result of the changes occurring in the country under Gorbachev but said he needed more time to analyze the situation.

Despite his criticisms, however, Sakharov made it clear he does not intend to become the leading force behind a newly revived Soviet human rights movement.

Instead, he has told Western correspondents, his role will be a limited one, confined to appeals on behalf of a relatively few individuals he knows personally. In the 1970s, Sakharov put his prestige on the line behind many people he had never met, appearing at their trials in cities far from Moscow to express his solidarity.

‘Not a General’

A severe crackdown on human rights activists who mobilized around Sakharov and his wife, however, has scattered his supporters. Some have emigrated, others are in prison and a few are in exile, a long way from Moscow.

“I am not a general of an army,” Sakharov said, indicating that his future role would be different from before and more acceptable to the regime.

At 65, Sakharov has said he wants to return to his scientific pursuits at the Physics Institute of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. He suffers from heart problems that his wife has said may require surgery and the installation of a pacemaker.

The longtime dissident, who began his public protests nearly 20 years ago, also may have other priorities.

Sakharov has said his “fondest desire” is to travel abroad to “see the world” and to visit the United States to see members of his family--children of his wife’s first marriage, who live in Massachusetts.

Gorbachev has said that the physicist, sometimes known as the father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb, cannot be allowed to leave the Soviet Union because he still knows too many secrets.