Kemp Wants General Assembly to Deal with Emigration Rights of Soviet Jews

Rep. Jack Kemp wants the United Nations General Assembly convening in New York next month to consider the issue of the emigration rights of Soviet Jews and persons “forcibly detained in any nation.” The New York Republican, currently in Poland with other members of the House of Representatives Education and Labor Committee, released a statement written by him in Warsaw in which he wrote that he had requested the U.S. ambassador to the UN, George Bush, to place the matter on the Assembly’s agenda. If placed, he wrote, “if would be a first” in the Assembly’s history. In his statement from Warsaw, released in Washington by his office, Kemp said he decided to push for the General Assembly discussion after conferring with leaders of the American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry and Bush in New York before his departure abroad. Kemp is a cosponsor of the legislation calling on the U.S. government to issue 30,000 special visas to Russian Jews and is also a co-sponsor of a resolution calling on the Voice of America to broadcast in Yiddish to Russian Jews. After he completes his visit to Poland and Southeast Asia, Kemp plans to visit Israel where he expects to talk with Russian emigres and review military and political matters.