President Vaclav Havel of Czechoslovakia has offered to have his country serve as a transit point for Soviet Jews immigrating to Israel.
But he insisted he would have to have “guarantees” that the newcomers would not be settled in the administered territories.
Havel referred to that and other subjects as he ended a three-day official visit here Friday, the first to Israel by an Eastern European head of state.
While he proposed no specific mediating role for Czechoslovakia in the Middle East conflict, he indicated in comments to the media that his country would like to serve the cause of peace in an evenhanded manner.
He said the new Czechoslovakia, founded on the quest for peace and human rights, was inevitably disturbed when those goals were not attained in other regions of the world.
Havel recommended that Israel accept U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s formula for an Israeli-Palestinian dialogue.
It has been rejected by Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s Likud government. But Havel said his discussions with Israeli leaders and Palestinians led him to believe that Baker’s plan could serve as a basis for peace.
He said his “hair stood on end” when he heard Iraqi President Saddam Hussein recently threaten to destroy “half of Israel” with chemical weapons.
Havel met with Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasir Arafat when Arafat visited Prague recently and apparently plans to see him again.
He told reporters his trip to Israel taught him a great deal and he would be much better informed next time he meets Arafat.
HERZOG ACCEPTS INVITATION
Havel disclosed that President Chaim Herzog has accepted his invitation to visit Czechoslovakia.
He signed a number of bilateral accords, including a student exchange program between the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and Charles University in Prague.
In a wide-ranging television interview here, Havel dismissed manifestations of anti-Semitism in his country as marginal.
He said he has never been able to understand anti-Semitism and maintained that it was never as strong in Czechoslovakia as elsewhere in central Europe.
He said the most moving and memorable event of his visit was his tour of the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.
Havel reiterated his support for German unification, despite his country’s bitter experience as a victim of German aggression. He said the German people had the right to achieve unification and, in fact, the process was inexorable.
But there must be ironclad guarantees that Germany will remain a democracy, Havel said.
“There is no need to fear a country of 100 million people if it is a democracy, whereas a dictatorship of 1 million people is dangerous,” he said.
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