Israeli Deputy Premier Yitzhak Shamir asked President Francois Mitterrand Tuesday to intervene on behalf of the thousands of Soviet Jews who are trying to leave Russia for Israel.
Mitterrand will pay on official visit to Moscow next month to confer with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Sources close to Mitterrand said he would raise a number of humanitarian questions, especially those of refuseniks separated from their families because they have been denied exit visas.
Shamir asked Mitterrand to bring up several specific cases which he described as particularly poignant. He gave the President a list of names of people who have been waiting, some of them for years, for the right to leave for Israel.
Shamir met with Premier Jacques Chirac Monday and inaugurated the Israel-European Economic Community Chamber of Commerce. He cut his visit to France short by one day and flew back to Israel Tuesday afternoon to attend an Inner Cabinet meeting on the proposed investigation of the head of Israel’s internal security service.
Before his departure Shamir conferred with Foreign Minister Jean Bernard Raimond. They reviewed the situation in southern Lebanon and the possibility of extending trade ties between Israel and the 12-nation EEC.
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