WORLD : Sakharov Quits Legislative Race

Human rights champion Andrei Sakharov turned down a nomination by Moscow residents as a candidate for the new Soviet parliament and will not run unless the Academy of Sciences reverses an earlier decision and nominates him, newspapers in Moscow and Canada said today.

Sakharov, in a letter, published in the weekly Moscow News, said he will not accept nominations from territorial districts because he believes that he should represent the Academy of Sciences. The academy, where Sakharov works as a nuclear physicist, last month refused to nominate him as its representative in the new 2,250-seat Congress of People’s Deputies. The 67-year-old dean of the Soviet human rights movement was later nominated to represent a Moscow district. “I have come to the conclusion that I should be a candidate . . . of the academy in the new elections or not be one at all,” Sakharov said in the letter.