Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir said today that contacts between Israel and the Soviet Union would continue despite a leak to the Israeli media over the weekend of a meeting in Paris between the Israeli and Soviet Ambassadors to France, Ovadia Sofer and Youli Vorontsov, respectively.
According to the leaked story, the two envoys discussed the possible restoration of diplomatic relations between Israel and the USSR and what actions on both sides might help bring that about. While deploring the leak, Shamir strongly defended Sofer as a good, active and useful Ambassador.
Shamir appeared before the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Security Committee to respond to expressions of incredulity over the contents of Sofer’s cabled report of his conversation with Vorontsov — which Israel Radio somehow picked up and broadcast last Friday.
Labor MK Abba Eban, the committee chairman, said it was highly unlikely that the Soviet Ambassador would have discussed his own impending promotion to Washington with an Israeli diplomat.
According to the leaked report, Vorontsov told Sofer he was slated to replace veteran Anatoly Dobrynin as Soviet Ambassador to the U.S. Eban also expressed disbelief that the Russian envoy told the Israeli that his government had made a serious mistake when it broke its ties with Israel during the Six-Day War 18 years ago.
Mapam MK Victor Shem-Tov asked where the distinction was in Sofer’s dispatch between reality and fantasy. Moscow flatly denied the contents of the Israel Radio report. Jerusalem was clearly embarrassed by the leak.
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