Cautious Attempt to Establish a Dialogue Between Western Jews and the USSR Will Be Made in the New Y

A cautious attempt to establish a dialogue between Western Jews and the Soviet Union is to be made in the new year following last week’s visit to Britain by Mikhail Gorbachov, number two leader in the Kremlin.

Greville Janner, a Labor member of Parliament and president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, said he had a brief meeting with Gorbachov who advised Janner to write to him via the Soviet Ambassador to Britain, V.I. Popov.

As a result, Janner told the press, he hoped to meet Popov early in 1985. “Doors should be kept open or else nobody can emerge”, he said.

Otherwise, the Jewish community was less successful in contacting Gorbachov, the most senior Soviet visitor to Britain for decades. Arye Handler, chairman of the National Council for Soviet Jewry, disclosed that Gorbachov had been asked to receive a Jewish delegation but that the request was not even answered.

Nevertheless, human rights, including Jewish grievances, loomed large in the visit. Gorbachov was quizzed about specific cases by the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee and 45 minutes were devoted to this subject during a prolonged meeting with Neil Kinnock, leader of the opposition Labor Party, who himself recently visited Moscow and raised some individual human rights cases.

At the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, however, Gorbachov showed little sensitivity to the questions posed by British members of Parliament. He firmly told them not to interfere in Soviet domestic matters and accused Britain of discriminating against “whole communities” — possibly a reference to Northem lreland Catholics.

But he was also made aware of the strength of feeling about human rights by vigorous demonstrations led by the Women’s Campaign for Soviet Jewry, in which the name of Anatoly Shcharansky was prominent.