World Notes SOVIET UNION

Seems only yesterday that he was a pariah in his homeland, condemned to internal exile. But since the fateful phone call came from Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev two years ago informing Andrei Sakharov that he could return to Moscow, the Nobel laureate and human-rights activist has assumed an increasingly public role in Soviet life. Two weeks ago, Sakharov, 67, led a fact-finding mission to the strife-torn republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan -- reportedly with Gorbachev's personal blessing.

Sakharov's delegation visited Baku, Yerevan and Stepanakert, the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh, the Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan that has been at the heart of the ethnic clashes that have been rocking the Soviet Union since February. He also stopped in Spitak, the town virtually destroyed in the Dec. 7 earthquake that the Kremlin now estimates took 25,000 lives.