President Reagan announced Wednesday that he will go to Moscow May 29 to June 2 for his fourth summit with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
Reagan made the announcement to reporters as he was meeting in the White House with Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze.
Morris Abram, chairman of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry, immediately urged that the upcoming summit achieve “significant progress” to alleviate the plight of Soviet Jews. He said no meaningful progress occurred during the summit in Washington last December.
“We expect that the issue of Soviet Jewry will be on the agenda of the Moscow summit,” Abram said. Saying the “plight of Soviet Jews is high on the list of human rights abuses in the USSR,” Abram called on the Soviet Union to fulfill a promise, made in an October 1987 statement prior to the Washington summit, that “significant headway” would be made on the issue of human rights.
“We regret that significant progress was not forthcoming prior to, and following, the Washington summit,” he said.
“If the deliberations in Moscow are to be considered fruitful, and if we are to be able to believe Soviet promises on the whole range of issues, the Moscow meeting must result in the adoption by the Soviet Union of a program that will lead to sustained, systematic and substantial Jewish emigration.”
Jewish emigration totaled 1,452 during the first two months of 1988.
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