U.S. to Send Medical Supplies to the Soviets : Relief: The $5-million worth of pharmaceutical donations underscores concern over the Baltics.

The White House announced today that urgently needed medical supplies will be sent to the Baltic republics and to help cancer victims from the Chernobyl disaster in the Soviet Ukraine.

Spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said that the move was chiefly a humanitarian gesture but that it also underscored U.S. concerns about a peaceful dialogue between the breakaway Baltics and the Soviet government in Moscow.

The United States will provide $5 million to transport the supplies that are expected to be donated by private pharmaceutical firms and coordinated through a nonprofit organization called Project Hope.

Fitzwater said the question of sending medical assistance to the Baltics and Ukraine had been discussed with Soviet officials, but that President Bush had had no direct contact with Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev about it.

“The President has decided to help provide badly needed medical supplies to Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia in response to their requests for assistance to alleviate medical shortages there and to demonstrate U.S. concern for the situation in the Baltic states,” Fitzwater told reporters.

The spokesman said assistance for the Baltics will begin in the last week of February and that an additional shipment will be made “to aid victims of the Chernobyl disaster,” referring to people who developed radiation cancers from the April, 1986, partial meltdown of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor.

Fitzwater said more shipments will be sent over the next 12 months to other areas of the Soviet Union experiencing “acute, immediate shortages of basic medical supplies.” He did not identify the other areas.

He said the central government in Moscow had been told that “we would want to provide medical assistance and they are aware that we have had requests from the Baltic states directly and that we are going ahead with this assistance.

“I don’t believe there have been any objections,” he said.

Fitzwater said he did not believe that the move would undercut the Soviet government. The United States has condemned a crackdown by the Soviet military on independence movements.