Ethiopia has reacted negatively to a request by Foreign Minister Shimon Peres to allow the emigration of 15,000 Jews still living there.
Peres told the Conference on the Demography of the Jewish People here Wednesday that he made the request in a meeting last month in New York with his Ethiopian counterpart, Berhanu Bayih. “But the minister reacted negatively,” said Peres. “He argued that if the Jews were permitted to leave, the Moslems and the Christians would ask to do so.”
But Peres added that the minister conceded that Christians and Moslems had not asked to leave the country.
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