Three top Soviet officials attending the U.S.-Soviet Trade Conference which opened at the Shoreham Hotel here today heard Sen. Edmund S. Muskie (D., Me.) warn that Soviet policies toward Jews seeking to emigrate are a “major road block” in the way of expanded East-West trade.
Muskie declared that “Soviet leaders would be profoundly mistaken if they underestimated American feelings on the exit visa question. Americans properly perceive the exorbitant tax on Jewish emigrants as being in violation of fundamental human rights and freedoms,” he said. “For more than two million Soviet Jews, those provisions of international and domestic law are dead letters,” Muskie said, referring to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Soviet law.
The panel at which Muskie spoke was closed to the press but the prepared text of his remarks was made available. The panel members included V. S. Alkhimov, the Soviet Deputy Minister for Trade who heads the 15-member high level delegation of Soviet experts attending the conference; G.A. Arbatov, director of the Institute for U.S. Studies of the Soviet Academy of Sciences and N.N. Inoz-emtsev, director of the Institute of World Economics and International Relations of the Academy.
In addition to the 15 experts from Moscow, the conference opening today was attended by about 20 members of the Soviet Embassy staff in Washington. The importance the Russians attach to the conference was indicated by the fact that it is being covered by two correspondents from the Washington bureau of Tass, the Soviet news agency.
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