Soviet institution to ensure that the visit will be scientifically

productive. Similarly, with regard to our program of bilateral workshops,

we will select only topics which reflect outstanding Soviet scientific

capabilities.

As to Soviet scientists who visit the US under the interacademy

program, we have, during the past several years, been reasonably satisfied with the scientific capabilities of the exchangees. Their visits are often scientifically rewarding for the U.S. hosts as well as for the visiting scientists. Unfortunately, many Soviet scientists who are well known and respected by U.S. colleagues are not allowed by the Soviet authorities to travel to the U.S., and this restriction is of course very disappointing. Still, the Soviet scientists who have been selected by the Soviet Academy of Sciences during the past several years have been of high quality.

Scientists from many disciplines participate in interacademy

exchanges. Among the more popular fields for Americans visiting the USSR

are mathematics, biology, ecology, biochemistry, biophysics, and the earth

and atmospheric sciences. During recent years, the USSR has sent significant numbers of exchangees to the US in physics, chemistry, biochemistry, biophysics, and engineering.

Obviously, there are areas of scientific research in the U.S. of great interest to the USSR which have important military applications. However, we carefully avoid participating in cooperative activities that raise national security concerns; for example, research in microelectronics and information coding. Indeed, our latest Agreement with the Soviet Academy is explicitly limited to cooperation in "non-sensitive" fields.

Our principal source of advice as to appropriate topics for bilateral workshops, for cooperative research, and for individual exchanges is the U.S. scientific community; that is, our program with the Soviet Union is science-driven. Also, from following the scientific literature and from international contacts at conferences and travel abroad, they have a very sophisticated appreciation of the general level of scientific advancement in the USSR in their areas of specialization.

The U.S.-Soviet Cultural Exchange Agreement signed at the Geneva Summit last November as well as earlier intergovernmental exchange agreements call upon the two Governments to assist in the implementation

of the interacademy agreement. In this regard, for many years the National Academy of Sciences has consulted closely with the U.S. Government in conducting its program of exchanges with the Soviet Academy. Such consultations are very important with regard to the national security aspects of exchanges, and we routinely seek the views of our Government on each of our exchange activities. From time to time we may have had differences of opinions on the technical aspects of specific activities, but these differences have been invariably resolved through discussions of the scientific details of the proposed activities.

In recent years, we have been concerned over the abuse of human rights in the USSR, and particularly the infringement upon the human rights of

scientific colleagues. In 1981, we terminated our program of bilateral workshops and we refused to negotiate a formal renewal of our exchange agreement in view of the internal exile to Gorki of Andrei Sakharov, a Foreign Associate Member of the National Academy of Sciences. We continued our program of exchanges of individual scientists on the basis of informal understandings during the early 1980s.

However, in late 1984, after extensive consultations with our members, we concluded that we could be more effective in addressing contentious issues if we restored our formal channels of communication with the leadership of the Soviet scientific community, which had atrophied severely during the previous three years. Therefore, we began negotiation

of a new exchange agreement, signed in April of this year.

Our new agreement has several features which set it apart from

previous agreements between the two academies and which depart somewhat from other bilateral agreements.

First, reflecting our policy that exchanges must be on the basis of reciprocal scientific benefit, the new agreement stipulates that cooperative programs will be concentrated in fields of major scientific importance in which both countries are world leaders.

Second, all activities conducted under the agreement will be based on the principles of the Helsinki Accords, a requirement that parallels similar provisions in the intergovernmental agreement and in earlier interacademy agreements. In addition, officers of both Academies will

meet at least once a year to discuss problems and opportunities for fostering cooperation. These meetings will include discussions of steps which can be taken by the Academies that contribute to a favorable environment for scientific cooperation.

Third, the agreement increases the opportunity for the two Academies to involve leading scientists from both countries more actively in the program. Each organization may nominate its members and may invite members of the other Academy to be designated as Academy Scholars for exchange visits of 2-4 weeks in order to present scientific and public lectures and to participate in scientific consultations.

The Academies also agreed that invitations from scientists to colleagues in the other country should "become an important and significant portion of the total individual exchanges." While there is an annual quota of 50 months of exchanges in each direction for scientists nominated by the sending Academy, no upper limit is placed on the number

of invitational visits.

Other sections of the agreement call for a program of bilateral

scientific workshops with topics and participants jointly selected by the two Academies and for identification of possible areas for cooperative

research.

If either side is unable to meet the agreed conditions for individual projects, the agreement states that "those particular projects may be

terminated by the other side or postponed pending a joint review by officers of the two Academies."

Finally, I would like to draw your attention to the many reviews of bilateral cooperation with the USSR in science and technology which have been conducted during the past ten years. These have been undertaken primarily by U.S. Government agencies, by organizations which support Government activities, and by the Congress. Four of these reviews in the late 1970s and early 1980s were undertaken by panels assembled by the National Academy of Sciences. Our recent examination of about 25 reviews of exchange activities indicates a unanimity of opinion that well managed exchanges can be of considerable scientific benefit to the United States. Several of these reviews also raise the issue of the transfer of

militarily important technology, but point out that scientific exchanges are not a major conduit for Soviet acquisition of such technology and that these concerns are manageable.

With the Chairman's permission, I would like to submit for the record several documents presenting some of the highlights of exchanges supported by the National Academy of Sciences during the past few years. In particular, we believe that many of our exchanges have resulted in readily identifiable scientific benefits, and a few examples of such exchanges

have been described in an effort to assist in framing future exchanges.