Jackson Demands Soviet ” Commitment” on Emigration Before U.S. Eases Trade Bans

Sen. Henry M. Jackson (D. Wash), co-author of the Jackson Vanik Amendment, has demanded ” a firm commitment to freer emigration from the Soviets themselves ” before the U.S. eases its present restrictions on trade and financial benefits to the Soviet Union. In a speech prepared for delivery tonight at a dinner meeting of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry at the Shoreham Hotel here , Jackson declared, ” without the assurances the law requires, we will have no way of knowing what to expect from the Soviets in the future.”

Jackson spelled out his view of specific assurances from the Soviet government just a week before President Carter and Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev meet in Vienna to sign the SALT II pact. Soviet emigration practices and the Kremlin’s desire for U.S. trade benefits, including most-favored-nation treatment, are expected to be major topics of discussion.

DOES NOT TRUST SOVIETS

Jackson noted, ” We have seen how cruel and capricious their (the Soviet) emigration policies can be , sometimes separating parents from children or husbands from wives, sometimes permitting the numbers to rise, sometimes holding them down.” He referred to the Soviet education tax intended to bring emigration to a halt and the trials “designed to intimidate would-be applicants and imprison those brave enough to resist.” Jackson added, ” We have seen enough in short to know that without a firm commitment to freer emigration from the Soviets themselves, any concessions on trade or credits would be leaping in the dark with consequences for the prisoners and refuseniks and all who desire to emigrate that cannot be foreseen.”

In his prepared remarks made available to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Jackson said, in the struggle of the Soviet Jews to obtain their freedom, we have come a long way. We have a long way yet to go. Together we will bring home the refuseniks and the prisoners and the thousands who have applied to leave but have not yet received their visas and the thousands more who would apply if they believed that their families would be safe from retaliation and harassment.”

Jackson assailed Carter Administration officials “who have recently embraced the notion of evenhandedness” noting that they think the U.S. should provide benefits to the Soviets because they are ready to give them to China. Jackson said the Soviet Union has “chosen not to conform “to the Trade Reform Act of 1974 of which the Jackson Amendment is a part. “As of now the Soviets have not given us” the assurances of ” letting people leave without harassment, without intimidation, without punitive action .However joyously we may welcome the special few who have been permitted to leave, we must not forget the many who have not, ” he said, The NCSJ dinner opened its three-day policy meeting here.