Pen Pals

Moscow steps up the pressure our appeal for banning space-based weapons is permeated with grave concern about the peaceful future of space," read the letter from Moscow. "I fully share this concern. To prevent the militarization of space is one of the most urgent tasks facing mankind." The author of the message was Soviet Leader Yuri Andropov, who seems to be making a habit of addressing American citizens directly. He was replying to an appeal that had been sent to him and to President Reagan by a group of distinguished U.S. scientists and arms experts who are campaigning for a ban on the development of weapons in space. The Soviet leader's letter, which was released by the Soviet news agency TASS last week, appeared to be part of a broader effort by the Kremlin to undercut the Reagan Administration's plans to launch an extensive research and development effort to produce new weapons aimed at destroying offensive warheads and enemy satellites in space.

The U.S. scientists' petition was drafted by Astronomer Carl Sagan and Richard Garwin, military expert at IBM's Watson Research Center, even before Reagan's star wars speech in March, which called for accelerated research on defensive weapons, including those that could be based in space. After the President's address, more than a dozen people joined in the appeal. Among them: Hans Bethe and Isidor Rabi, winners of the Nobel Prize for Physics; Retired Admiral Noel Gayler, who was director of the National Security Agency from 1969 to 1972; Lee DuBridge, physicist and president emeritus of the California Institute of Technology; and former NASA senior Space Wizard Christopher Kraft. The petition is part of a major campaign by U.S. scientists to head off an extension of the arms race into space. Although Andropov's response noted that Moscow had presented a draft treaty to the United Nations in 1981 calling for a ban on weapons in space, he failed to mention that the Soviet Union has already tested an ASAT, or antisatellite interceptor, capable of destroying a satellite in orbit. The U.S. began in the early 1970s to develop a similar weapon.

President Reagan did not respond to the scientists' petition, and Administration officials had no comment on Andropov's letter. But a senior Western diplomat in Moscow said that the Soviet tactic of appealing to Western public opinion through individual letters undermined serious arms negotiations. "Propaganda is being turned out more quickly and more cleverly under Andropov," he said. "They are using this technique not to talk seriously about vital questions, but to build a worldwide campaign against the Reagan Administration."

Andropov's response to the scientists was released only three days after a letter from nun had been received by Samantha Smith, 10, of Manchester, Maine. The fifth-grader had written Andropov to express her concern about the dangers of nuclear war. "Why do you want to conquer the world, or at least the U.S.?" she had asked the Soviet leader. Andropov assured Samantha, whom he described as "a courageous and honest girl, resembling in some ways Becky, Tom Sawyer's friend from the well-known book," that Moscow wanted a relationship of peace, trade and cooperation with "such a great country as the United States of America." Samantha said that Andropov's reply read like "a letter from a friend," and that the Soviet leader did not seem as grim as she had imagined. Her father Arthur Smith, an English instructor at the University of Maine, was more skeptical of Andropov's motives, saying he "didn't write to her simply because he's one of her fans."

Meanwhile, there were indications last week that Moscow may have decided to rid itself quietly of some well-known dissidents. Austrian officials confirmed that Vienna University had sent Physicist Andrei Sakharov an invitation to serve as a guest professor for a year. Soviet officials hinted that Sakharov, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975 and who has been exiled to Gorky, 230 miles east of Moscow, since January 1980, would be permitted to leave. Sakharov has refused previous invitations to travel outside the country, fearing that he would not be allowed to return. But his wife, Human Rights Activist Yelena Bonner, reportedly said recently that he "felt isolated" and indicated that he might accept a new invitation. Novelist Georgi Vladimov, another prominent dissident, has already accepted a similar guest professorship at the University of Cologne in West Germany. The pattern seemed to fit in with reports that Andropov was giving priority to settling the dissident problem. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.