Belgian Foreign Minister Rejects Soviet Protest Against Brussels Conference

Undercurrents of tension were felt here today on the eve of the opening of the world conference on Soviet Jewry and a counter-meeting here tonight, sponsored by the Belgian-Soviet Friendship Society. Moscow regards the conference as an anti-Soviet provocation and protested formally to the Belgian government. Foreign Minister Pierre Harmel summoned the Soviet Ambassador this morning and handed him his government’s reply. According to a communique issued afterwards. Harmel pointed out to the Soviet envoy that the conference was organized by a private body which assured the Belgian government that it would respect its hospitality. He said his government was not interfering and did not expect the event to harm its relations with the USSR. (In Washington today, State Department spokesman Robert J. McCloskey refused to comment when he was asked at a press briefing if the United States supported the Belgian government’s rejection of the Soviet protest.) The conference presidium held a press conference here today at which its spokesman denied that the gathering was anti-Soviet or a “cold war” conference as charged by Soviet officials. They said they had not been aware that the opening coincided with Red Army Day in Russia. Col. Gen. David Dragunsky, the highest ranking Jew in the Soviet Army who heads a delegation to the Belgian-Soviet counter-meeting here, had accused the conference organizers of insulting the Russian people by scheduling the event on Red Army Day.

The conference opens tomorrow and will run through Feb. 26 Claude Kelman of Paris, chairman of the conference presidium said “the Soviet attempt at intimidation was doomed to failure.” The conference spokesman told newsmen that the purpose of the gathering was to “coordinate efforts on behalf of Russian Jewry, over three million people suffering discrimination and disability.” The spokesman criticized Dr. Nahum Goldmann, president of the World Jewish Congress for a statement attributed to him in which he allegedly said the plight of Soviet Jews had been over-valued and over-dramatized. (The full text of Dr. Goldmann’s alleged statement was not immediately available to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in New York today.) The conference spokesman denied that an invitation to attend had been sent to Rabbi Meir Kahane, head of the Jewish Defense League in the U.S. They said Kahane was not expected here and observed that his presence would be irrelevant because his organization is outside the mainstream of American Jewry and is not recognized by official Jewish bodies. A spokesman for the conference instant members of the Russian delegation headed by Dragunsky had been invited to the conference or would be permitted to attend any of its sessions; even if a request was made. He claimed that the Dragunsky group “by no stretch of the imagination” could be considered representative of Soviet Jewry and that to have any of them at the conference would be a “grave insult” to Soviet Jews.

Gen. Dragunsky was apparently unaware that the conference was organized entirely by Jews and would be attended only by Jews. He told a press conference yesterday that the conference organizers had “not defended the Jews during World War II.” (The Israeli delegation left for Brussels today. It included Maj. Grischa Feigin, a former Soviet Air Force officer, who emigrated to Israel a week ago and now carries an Israeli passport. Feigin denounced the Dragunsky group. He said of the General. “He is forced to spit on his kinsmen. I can only have much pity for him.”) The Conference reported yesterday that it has received a message from Prof. Vladimir Jankeleitch, of the Sorbonne in Paris who is a veteran member of the Franco-Soviet Friendship League. Although a self-proclaimed friend of the Soviet Union, Jankeleitch reportedly wrote that he hoped the conference would convince the Kremlin that there “were Soviet Jews who did not consider themselves Russians and who would like to live outside the Soviet Union.” The message continued, “I find it impossible to understand how the liberators of Auschwitz who played such a powerful part in the destruction of Nazism, can now condemn Jews simply because they want to go to Israel.”