World Notes SOVIET UNION

Until recently, the form of travel available to Soviet dissidents was one way. Now, though, it looks as if the Soviet Union's most prominent dissenter will be granted a visa for a trip to the U.S. that will not result in unwanted exile. Physicist Andrei Sakharov, winner of the 1975 Nobel Peace Prize for his human rights efforts, announced last week that the Soviet government had tentatively agreed to let him visit the U.S. next month. The reason for the trip: a conference of the International Foundation for the Survival and Development of Humanity, an organization devoted to environmental, economic and human rights problems that was launched last January in Moscow. The group has a Nov. 13-16 meeting in Washington, where its U.S. headquarters is located. Permission to travel is not the only fruit of glasnost for Sakharov, who was forced to live in internal exile in the city of Gorki from 1980 to 1986. He was elected last week to the 47-member presidium of the Soviet Academy of Sciences -- a far cry from the treatment he experienced during the Brezhnev years, when some members tried to have him stripped of his academy membership for his criticism of the Soviet government.