Israeli Hopes Raised by Talk of Normalization with USSR

Foreign Minister Moshe Arens’ meeting with his Soviet counterpart, Eduard Shevardnadze, in Paris on Sunday has raised hopeful speculation in government circles here about the future of Soviet-Israeli relations.

Arens is known to have cabled a very favor able report of his talk with Shevardnadze.

The two agreed to “normalize” relations and improve the working conditions of their respective consular missions.

This has been taken to mean that the Israeli Embassy building in Moscow, vacant for the past 21 years, will be restored and that the consular missions’ severely limited activities will be expanded.

The Israeli consular delegation has been in Moscow since late July. Aviv in June 1987.

The Israeli mission has been working out of hotel rooms since arriving in Moscow. Its deputy head, Yisrael Mei-Ami, told an interviewer Monday that visitors must wait in the corridor “in the cold, sometimes for hours on end.”

The Jerusalem Post reported Monday that Soviet workmen were seen restoring electric power to the ground floor of the embassy building last week. The report raised hopes that the building will soon revert to its original functions.

Arens reportedly assured the Soviet foreign minister that Israel is preparing a new peace plan for the Middle East, which would “take account of the changing circumstances” in the region.

Arens, in Paris for an international conference on banning chemical warfare weapons, has met with ranking diplomats of many countries. He has spoken to each of them of a new Israeli peace plan to be unveiled shortly.

This has led Geula Cohen of the ultranationalist party Tehiya to demand Arens’ recall, “because he is presenting a new Israeli plan before it has been shown to the Cabinet and the Knesset.”