Russian Scientist Faces Trial for Chemical-Arms Report : Rights: U.S. has lobbied in vain for open proceedings. Case will test Moscow’s definition of free speech.

Despite protests from U.S. officials and international human rights groups, a Russian scientist who publicized an alleged covert chemical-weapons program faces trial Thursday on charges of divulging state secrets.

The closed-door trial of Vil S. Mirzayanov, the first dissident of Boris N. Yeltsin’s presidency, comes just days before President Clinton is scheduled to arrive in Moscow for summit talks. The U.S. State Department, which has repeatedly expressed concern about the Mirzayanov case, had lobbied for an open trial with international observers permitted.

“Please do not think democratization has succeeded. It hasn’t,” Mirzayanov said in an interview Tuesday after warning visitors that the conversation in his Moscow apartment was being wiretapped.

The prosecution of the 59-year-old chemist raises questions about how the new Russia will define free speech when the subject is national security--and whether the old Soviet security and legal systems can be reformed.

Mirzayanov was arrested in October, 1992, for publishing a newspaper article alleging that Russian scientists were producing a new and highly potent type of chemical weapon as late as the spring of 1992--that is, more than two years after the Soviet Union signed an agreement to halt production of chemical weapons, and several months after Yeltsin promised to abide by the ban.

Mirzayanov and co-author Lev Fyodorov wrote that chemists at the Government All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Organic Chemistry and Technology had concocted a nerve agent more toxic than any previously known. They warned that an accident could also endanger Muscovites living near the drab institute on the northeastern outskirts of the capital.

Mirzayanov was held for 12 days in a former KGB prison and then released, but he is not allowed to leave Moscow. He says he spent nearly a year reading and copying by hand the five volumes of evidence against him.

Meanwhile, his wife, Nuria, traveled to the United States to accept on her husband’s behalf a special award for “moral courage” from the Cavallo Foundation, a nonprofit organization in Cambridge, Mass. Nuria Mirzayanov and Fyodorov also met with State Department officials to voice their concerns.

Mirzayanov said he believes that chemical-weapon research at the plant is “in stagnation” but that the research provides “a good foundation” for future weaponry should it be desired.

The scientist said he is particularly concerned that the stockpiled toxin, or its ingredients, could be exported to such nations as Iraq or Libya. The chemicals in question, which he said he could not name, are not on the list of substances that Yeltsin has banned from export because they are known components for chemical weapons, Mirzayanov said.

Mirzayanov says that evidence against him has been falsified, that the commission set up to investigate his “crimes” was packed with KGB employees and that he never had access to the classified data he is accused of disclosing. He said he doubts he can get a fair trial behind closed doors.

Mirzayanov argues that political reform has been superficial. While former dissidents can now freely criticize Cabinet ministers, the “machine” of state repression has not been dismantled by the Yeltsin government and continues to be used against critics of the still powerful military-industrial complex, he said.

“The machine is working, and Yeltsin cannot stop it without damage to himself,” Mirzayanov said. “Yeltsin does not run the machine. Yeltsin can influence only some separate parts. . . .

“I have the impression that he is imprisoned by the military, the KGB, the Interior Ministry. He does not have a wide range of choices.”

Prosecutors have had little to say about the case. At the time of Mirzayanov’s arrest, the Security Ministry--the renamed KGB--issued a statement saying he had impermissibly disclosed information “about developments in the field of chemical technology.”

In April, Security Ministry officials summoned a Baltimore Sun reporter who had interviewed Mirzayanov for a four-hour interrogation at Lefortovo prison. The American reporter, as well as two Russian journalists, were among the witnesses who were listed to be called by the government to testify at the trial.

Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), one of several U.S. lawmakers who have urged the Clinton Administration to pursue the case, said he was “deeply troubled” by the news that a closed trial is expected.

“The continuation of closed and secret trials in Russia is very disturbing, especially on the eve of the upcoming summit,” Conyers said in a statement, adding that he would ask Secretary of State Warren Christopher to appeal personally for Mirzayanov’s release.

“Whistle-blowers on both sides of the now-defunct Iron Curtain deserve protection, not prosecution,” Conyers said.

U.S. officials said the Mirzayanov case is on the agenda of pre-summit meetings in Moscow of U.S. and Russian human rights officials scheduled to begin today. The talks, which are to be held periodically, are aimed at building a less confrontational working relationship on human rights.

The Russian side is expected to use the forum to discuss human rights problems of Russian minorities in the newly independent former Soviet republics, the officials said.