The head of the World Jewish Congress, Edgar Bronfman, held a rare hour-long meeting at the Kremlin last week with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, according to officials of the Jewish organization.
Gorbachev indicated there was “an open door” for Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir to discuss all matters of the Arab-Israeli conflict with the Soviet Union, WJC leaders reported.
The Jan. 8 meeting, which was reported by the Soviet news media, and sessions with other Soviet leaders gave the WJC leaders cause for optimism that full diplomatic relations would be restored between the Soviet Union and Israel.
Bronfman’s encounter with Gorbachev enabled the increasingly embattled Soviet leader “to demonstrate that glasnost continues on a straight line,” said Israel Singer, WJC secretary-general, who accompanied Bronfman to Moscow.
At a time when Gorbachev is coming under attack at home for failed policies of openness or democracy, the Soviet leader can demonstrate a proven success in the area of emigration.
If Gorbachev continues to let Jews out of the Soviet Union, “it indicates that he is still the head of a democratic country,” that “he is still continuing one of the areas of his greatest relaxation of previous (Soviet) behavior,” Singer said.
The meeting could also be interpreted as a sign that Gorbachev intends to live up to the promised emigration reforms that led President Bush to waive trade sanctions contained in the 1974 Jackson-Vanik Amendment.
YELTSIN OPPOSES ANTI-SEMITISM
The WJC delegation, which also included its executive director, Elan Steinberg, also met with Boris Yeltsin, president of the Russian republic, who has occasionally shown support for anti-Semitic elements in the Soviet Union.
Yeltsin told the WJC delegation he is a “staunch opponent of anti-Semitism” and would soon be issuing a statement “asking for tolerance and equal protection for all national minorities,” Steinberg reported. Rumors that Yeltsin was anti-Semitic made it important that he make the statement, Steinberg said.
Over a three-day period, the WJC group met with several major Soviet figures, including V.K. Ossipian, head of the Soviet Academy of Arts and Sciences and also head of Gorbachev’s presidential commission on Soviet-Israeli relations, which is in charge of trade and scientific exchanges.
Soviet leaders stressed that the Soviet Union continues to support the U.N. Security Council resolutions on enforcing Iraq to leave Kuwait, Singer and Steinberg said.
They also met with the leaders of the Vaad, the umbrella group of Soviet Jewish organizations, and the group’s executive committee. Michael Chlenov, co-president of the Vaad, attended a meeting that the WJC group held with outgoing Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze.
Shevardnadze’s recent surprise resignation will “not make any change” in Soviet policy, both the foreign minister and president stressed to the WJC leaders.
Singer, who described the meeting with Shevardnadze as “most moving,” said it was clear that Shevardnadze spoke “in retrospect” and fully planned to go ahead with his resignation.
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.
