December 4, 1985

The Reagan Administration intends to warn Rumania that it is in jeopardy of losing its benefits in trade with the United States if it does not improve its human rights record, State Department officials said today. They said Secretary of State George P. Shultz, on a visit to Bucharest on Dec. 15, would advise the Rumanians that, unless they met American concerns, it would be difficult if not impossible to extend Rumania's most-favored-nation tariff status. A State Department official said of Mr. Shultz's trip, ''Even though the visit is a short one, I think it is an important one, and perhaps a watershed visit.'' Hungary Also on Itinerary Mr. Shultz will also visit Hungary and Yugoslavia on the trip, which will follow a meeting of foreign ministers of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization next week.

Companies The Navy suspended General Dynamics from getting new Government contracts, acting one day after the company and four former or current executives were indicted on fraud charges. In the last fiscal year, General Dynamics had about $7 billion in revenues from Government contracts. The suspension is the second against the company this year and is considered more serious than the earlier one, which lasted three months and delayed the award of more than $1 billion in contracts. [Page A1.] Sohio is taking a $1.86 billion pretax charge for the fourth quarter as part of a major restructuring. It will write down assets at its Kennecott copper facilities, dispose of copper, coal and shale oil reserves and cancel some oil and gas leases. It is also cutting staff. The company said the cutbacks should contribute $175 million after taxes to 1986 earnings. The stock rose $1.75, to $52.75. [D1.]

A report last Friday in the Briefing column on the Washington Talk page incorrectly identified Josh Darden, a possible Democratic candidate for the House of Represenatives in Virginia's Norfolk district. He is a nephew of former Gov. Colgate W. Darden Jr.

For 207 days of the last 18 months, Andrei D. Sakharov was separated from his wife and was being fed forcibly, his nose clamped shut to force him to open his mouth, relatives said today. And for much of that time, the relatives said, the Soviet authorities tried to conceal Dr. Sakharov's fast by altering or forging messages addressed to friends from the Sakharovs in their place of banishment in Gorky. Dr. Sakharov's last hunger strike, which began April 16, continued with an interruption of two weeks until Oct. 23, when the physicist and rights advocate learned that his wife, Yelena G. Bonner, had been given permission to travel to Italy and to the United States for medical treatment. Account Given by Relatives The information about life in Gorky was supplied in interviews and in a news conference today by Yefrem V. Yankelevich, Miss Bonner's son-in-law, and by Alexei I. Semyonov, her son, both of whom had traveled from their home in Newton, Mass., to Italy to meet her on her arrival from Moscow. They said their account was based on telephone conversations with Dr. Sakharov last month and on facts that had slipped out of Gorky. The information, they said, had been ''clarified'' but not substantively added to by Miss Bonner.

The Senate tonight approved a rescue plan for the financially strained Farm Credit System, the nation's largest agricultural lender. The proposal, passed by a vote of 57 to 34, would reorganize the system's governing body, create a unit to absorb nonperforming loans, and change rules for channeling funds from stronger regional banks into weaker ones. The bill would authorize, but not require, the Secretary of the Treasury to buy loans from the new unit, called the Farm Credit System Capital Corporation. Meanwhile, a House Agriculture subcommittee worked on its version of a similar bill, a task to which it will return Wednesday. That measure is expected to go to the full committee and possibly the House floor this week.