Soviet Charges of ‘Ethnic Warfare’ Anger U.S. Aide

Charles Z. Wick, director of the U.S. Information Agency, abruptly ended a meeting with a Soviet official Friday when the conversation became acrimonious over charges of U.S. “ethnic warfare” against African blacks.

At a news conference Friday, Wick said he had complained to Valentin M. Falin, head of Novosti, the official Soviet press agency, about a Novosti report that Americans were using “war gases” in developing countries.

Wick said Falin told him that the United States developed a gas used in Africa that was deadly to blacks but not harmful to whites.

He said Falin read off a list of alleged American atrocities, including experiments on Japanese in World War II camps. He quoted Falin as saying the United States was responsible for “epidemics now sweeping Nicaragua and Cuba.”

According to Wick, the Soviet official cited the treatment of North American Indians as an example of the United States’ historical use of ethnic warfare.

Wick came to Moscow to open an exhibit called “Information USA” and to see government officials. He said his meeting with Falin was intended to explore ways to reduce friction between the two countries in the information field. He told Falin, he said, that such a purpose “cannot be served by your non-responsive, polemical, Cold-War, Stalinist response.”

“You are a historian,” he said he told Falin, “and my background is music and law.”

‘Didn’t Want to Scramble’

Wick, a close friend of President Reagan, said he “didn’t want to scramble” through history books and data banks to show Falin how wrong he was. He said that to do so would be “counterproductive, and with that we ended the meeting.”

Asked whether he walked out on Falin, Wick said: “We had a truncated meeting. It was an orderly termination.”

The meeting, which took place in a Novosti office, was scheduled to last for an hour and a half, but Wick estimated that it ended after 50 minutes.

“My particular participation was about 15 minutes,” he said, indicating that he had spent most of the time listening to Falin’s “absurd allegations.”

He urged reporters not to “upset the balance of what has been a profoundly serious” series of meetings with Soviet officials during his stay here. He said he would hate to see headlines describing an “abrupt, temperamental walkout” or suggestions that he is an official with a “short fuse.”

Other Officials ‘Pleasant’

In meetings with other Soviet officials, Wick said, his hosts had proved to be “most pleasant, hospitable, candid . . . responsive to concerns.”

In the course of his week in Moscow, he said, he has objected to Moscow Radio broadcasts relayed from Cuba on medium-wave frequencies that interfere with radio stations in Florida. He said the Soviets told him they understand the problem and were only experimenting on the frequency. He said they added that they would like to be able to broadcast to the United States from Cuba but that the frequency they would like to use would interfere with 100 American stations.

Soviet officials complained, he said, that unlike Russians, few Americans have shortwave radios, and that as a consequence Russians can listen to the Voice of America but few Americans can tune in Radio Moscow.

He said he is willing to support the idea of putting Soviet programs on U.S. radio and television stations as long as there is reciprocity.

Complained About Jamming

Wick said he also complained that although the Soviets had stopped jamming Voice of America broadcasts, they are still trying to interfere with Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty.

The Soviet explanation for this, he said, is that the latter two stations, operating from Munich, are “vicious broadcasts concocted by emigres hostile to the Soviet Union and . . . seeking to destroy the Soviet Union.”

As to why the Soviets stopped jamming the Voice of America, he said he was told that “under (Soviet leader Mikhail S.) Gorbachev’s view of the world, past practices are no longer needed.”