WASHINGTON - A division of the pharmaceutical giant Bayer in the 1980s sold a medicine to Malaysia and other Third World countries that carried a high risk of transmitting AIDS while it was selling a new, safer product in the West, The New York Times alleged today.

According to the daily, the inferior drug was also sold to Singapore, Indonesia, Japan and Argentina.

Cutter Biological wanted to avoid being stuck with large stores of a product that was becoming increasingly unmarketable in the United States and Europe, according to internal company documents obtained by the daily.