Soviet Scientists Decry AIDS Charges

MOSCOW — Top Soviet scientists on Thursday angrily rejected accusations published by the Soviet press last year that the Pentagon manufactured the deadly AIDS virus as part of a U.S. biological warfare program.

“Not a single serious scientist has even hinted that AIDS was artificially manufactured,” space expert Roald D. Sagdeyev of the Soviet Academy of Sciences told a news conference.

“The academy has never had anything to do with such accusations,” he said.

Last year, the then-U.S. ambassador in Moscow, Arthur A. Hartman, protested to the editors of the Literary Gazette and Soviet Russia, which published the attacks.

Since then, the Soviet press has stopped suggesting that acquired immune deficiency syndrome is a problem confined to the decadent West and started informing readers about the incurable disease.