The secretary-general of the Histadrut, Israel’s labor federation, will meet with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow at the end of September, it was announced here Wednesday.
The invitation to Yisrael Kessar was conveyed by Masha Lubelsky, secretary-general of Na’amat Israel, the women’s Labor Zionist Organization, which is affiliated with the Histadrut.
Lubelsky was in Moscow to meet with Soviet trade union leaders.
Kessar visited the Soviet Union within the past year.
Since his visit, an additional step of cooperation was achieved in a growing relationship that has existed for a year-and-a-half between Histadrut and the Federation of Soviet Trade Unions.
The Soviet workers group has proposed exchange visits between Israeli and Soviet workers’ families and invited Histadrut to its annual meeting.
Last month, the Soviet delegation to the International Labor Organization’s annual meeting in Geneva met there with the Histadrut representative.
The Soviet workers group offered free accommodations to 10 Histadrut families at its rest house resorts on the Black Sea.
In exchange, 10 Soviet families would be invited to Histadrut rest houses in Israel, said Jacques Amir, who was the Histadrut delegate to the ILO meeting.
Such labor maneuvers could be an indirect way of advancing ties between the two countries, which as yet do not have full diplomatic relations.
(JTA correspondent Tamar Levy in Geneva contributed to this report.)
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