Avital Shcharansky’ was assured by Secretary of State Alexander Haig today that the Reagan Administration will continue to press the Soviet Union to release her husband, Anatoly Shcharansky, a Soviet Jewish activist imprisoned in a labor camp in Siberia. Haig also agreed to present Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin with a resolution adopted by the Senate yesterday by a 65-0 vote, calling on the Soviet Union to release Shcharansky and allow him to join his wife in Israel.
Mrs. Shcharansky was accompanied at her 30-minute meeting with Haig by Sen. Alfonse D’Amato (R. N.Y.) who introduced the resolution, and Sen. Arlen Specter (R. Pa.). Also present were Jerry Goodman, exeuctive director of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry, and Zeesy Schnur, executive director of the Greater New York Conference on Soviet Jewry.
Goodman said Haig told the visitors that the Reagan Administration was committed to human rights but preferred to deal with it through quiet diplomacy. He said that President Reagan’s remarks at the White House on Holocaust Remembrance Day, April 30, that the U.S. will press for human rights in its diplomatic negotiations, represented the President’s true feelings. Shortly after the President made his statement, a White House spokesman said it did not mean that the U.S. would refuse to negotiate with a country, such as the Soviet Union, unless human rights were in the agenda.
Mrs. Shcharansky, who lives in Israel, is going to London to continue her campaign for public support to help her husband gain freedom. She will be back in Washington for a meeting next week with Vice President George Bush.
Meanwhile, this evening, Senators Howard Metzenbaum (D. Ohio) and Rudy Boschwitz (R. Minn.) and Rep. Benjamin Gilman (R. N.Y.) urged the Reagan Administration to deny AWACS to Saudi Arabia, warning that the inherent dangers in the planes for out-weigh any conceivable benefit. They stated their views at an AJC reception for several hundred members of Congress and other political figures. Rep. Sidney Yates (D. III.) served as moderator for the three legislators.
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