French Foreign Minister Louis de Guiringaud has told Parliament that his government will act on behalf of human rights in the Soviet Union but said that any such action “will have to be discreet if it should be effective.”
De Guiringaud answered a number of questions in Parliament this week on the French government’s attitude at the Belgrade conference on the implementation of the Helsinki agreement which opened today and on its stand when President Valery Giscard d’Estaing will meet Soviet Communist Party leader Leonid Brezhnev in Paris next week. Members of the National Assembly (lower House) and the Senate representing all political parties with the exception of the Communists, called on the government to take a vigorous stand in the defense of Soviet Jewry.
The Representative Council of Major Jewish Organizations in France (CRIF) has asked French parliamentarians, political parties and non-Jewish organizations to make their feelings known to the government on this issue. CRIF has urged Giscard to intervene on behalf of Jewish activist Anatoly Sharansky who is under arrest on charges of high treason.
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