Allard K. Lowenstein, U.S. representative to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, says that while Russian leaders accuse the U.S. of “meddling” in their country’s internal affairs, “the Soviet Union has never stopped criticizing” the United States. “Read Pravda any time you want to find out about violations of human rights in the United States, as viewed by the Soviet Union,” Lowenstein told a luncheon meeting sponsored by the American Jewish Congress at the Harmonie Club.
“Brezhnev talks all the time about the right to pursue the ideological conflict in ways that are not military,” he said. The Russians support Communist parties all over the world as a sort of given right. “if you compare whatever meager support may be ascribed to us in dealing with dissidents in the USSR with what the Soviets do all over the world for the people who agree with them, you will realize how irrational it is to say that we are somehow doing something inconsistent with what they do,” Lowenstein said.
He rejected the idea that President Carter’s statements on human rights had slowed progress on strategic arms limitation talks with the USSR.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
