The head of the Komsomol, Communist Youth Organization in the Soviet Union threatened to expel the Israeli delegation from the World Youth Festival now taking place in Moscow, unless it stopped distributing material printed in Israel, it was reported here today from Moscow.
The Israeli youth delegation was forced to accept the warning and decided to discontinue its distribution despite the fact that permission had been granted earlier for distribution of Israeli calendars and Israeli song booklets, a cable from Moscow to the evening paper, Maariv, said.
The non-Communist section of the delegation had been handing out factual material about Israeli youth printed in Russian and English in addition to the calendars and songs. The Festival management banned the distribution of the printed matter only, however.
The Komsomol head went further and ruled that the Israeli delegation could not distribute anything. His ruling cancelled the previous management permission covering the other material as well, the Moscow cable stated.
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