Soviets Arrest Prisoners For Possession of Drugs

MOSCOW--Four former political prisoners were arrested in the Ukraine en route to an unofficial human rights seminar in Moscow and charged with possession of drugs, an activist said yesterday.

And another spokesman for Jewish refuseniks said yesterday that 14 people were arrested in Moscow outside the Foreign Ministry, where they had planned to hold a demonstration.

Lev Timofeyev, co-founder of the unofficial press club "Glasnost" formed earlier this year by former political prisoners and other activists, told The Associated Press by telephone that the four men were detained while boarding a train in Lvov.

He identified the four as Armenian human rights activist Paruir Irikyan; Vyacheslav Chernovol, editor of an unofficial Ukrainian journal; Mikhail Gorin, a Ukrainian human rights activist; and Ivan Gell.

He said all four had intended to travel to Moscow to participate in seminar that the press club plans to hold in the capital Thursday through Sunday.

The seminar is scheduled to consist of four days of discussion of human tarian problems.

The Glasnost club has invited participants from Western Europe and the United States to take part in the discussions, which the group plans to hold at private apartments around Moscow.

Timofeyev said he spoke for the 15 members of the seminar's organizing committee in protesting the arrests in Lvov.

He said all four had been formally charged with possessing drugs and were now held in pre-trial detention. There was no way to confirm the report independently.

All four detained men were among about 100 political prisoners released this year from jail or from internal exile, Timofeyev said.

Meanwhile, Jewish refusenik spokesman David Schwartzman said an undetermined number of people were detained on their way to a demonstration planned today outside the Foreign Ministry, where authorities broke up a protest Sunday by people demanding open Jewish emigration.