Local News in Brief : 600 Apply for Soviet Duty

More than 600 eager applicants are willing to forsake family, friends and conveniences for the chance to spend two years in the Soviet Union on the arms treaty verification team.

From that pool, officials will select a 35-member group of civilian Hughes Aircraft Co. employees in El Segundo to serve as front-line monitors of the historic Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

“I feel like I’m participating in something historical--something I truly believe in,” said Jerry Porter, a 49-year-old Hughes physicist who helped write the firm’s proposal for the five-year Air Force contract to provide verification. Porter, who is assembling the Hughes team, said volunteers are eager to play a part in the historic pact signed by President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev in Washington on Dec. 8.

Team members are not permitted to take spouses or other family members. Ages of the verification team range from 25 to 49 and there are about six women in the group, Porter said. They will be stationed in the city of Votkinsk, located in the foothills of the Ural Mountains, 600 miles northeast of Moscow.