The president of the Israel Bar Association held four separate meetings this week with the head of a counterpart Soviet group, during an American lawyers convention in New York, it was disclosed Thursday.
The meetings between Menachem Berger and Alexander Sukharev, president of the Association of Soviet Lawyers (ASL), took place against the background of an unsuccessful effort by delegates to the American Bar Association (ABA) meeting here to bring an end to a recently-established cooperation agreement with the ASL.
The Soviet group has been strongly criticized by human rights organizations as a propagandist for the Kremlin, and its publications have included fiercely anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic writings.
VERY GENERAL CONVERSATIONS
Berger said the first meeting with Sukharev was initiated by ABA president William Falsgraf, “and then it continued from day to day.” The conversations, he said in a telephone interview with the JTA, were “on very general terms,” and included such issue as Soviet Jewish emigration and “anti-Semitism in Russia as compared to anti-Semitism in Western Europe and the United States.” He said the possibility of establishing some kind of ties between the Israeli and Soviet bars was also discussed.
But Berger said he did not con front the ASL head with specific instances of anti-Semitic activities in which the organization has been engaged. Its copublication, for example, of the White Book, which assails Russian Jews who wish to emigrate, did not come up in their meetings.
“As a matter of fact, it was a surprise to me that a person of his standing would want to speak with the president of the Israeli bar,” said Berger, explaining why the talks were confined to such a general exchange of views.
“Mr. Sukharev listened to what I had to say,” he said. “He was neither sympathetic nor unsympathetic. He heard me. And this is a direct result of the cooperative agreement that the ABA has entered into with the Soviet lawyers groups.”
Berger, who was elected an honorary member of the ABA, said he had spoken in support of the much criticized cooperative agreement when he addressed an ABA convention session of the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists. Most of the 100 participants at the meeting shared his position, he said.
“The only chance we have to influence the Soviets, to demand the right to represent Jewish refuseniks in court, is by confronting them face to face, ” Berger maintained. “This can be done if there is some kind of relationship. It cannot be done otherwise.”
The agreement also received the support of Morris Abram, a lawyer who is chairman of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry and the Conference of President of Major American Jewish Organizations, who spoke at the ABA convention.
BASIS FOR FURTHER TIES
Berger said that further ties between the two organization would depend on the establishment of relations between the two governments.
Israeli-Soviet consular talks scheduled to take place next week in Helsinki have been widely interpreted as a possible opening for the reestablishment of some formal ties between the two countries, Berger said that further contact between his organization and the ASL might depend on the outcome of those talks.
“He has my card and I have his card, and we promised each other that once the talks will succeed we will see about starting mutual relations between our organizations, ” Berger said. “You have to allow yourself a certain period of time. These things don’t take just a month or two months,” he maintained. “It takes time. It takes time first of all to come to know each other.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
