Israeli Premier Yitzhak Shamir will meet Thursday with Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze in New York, Israeli officials confirmed Monday.
It will be Shamir’s first meeting in his capacity as prime minister with a Soviet official of such high rank. According to Avi Pazner, Shamir’s press spokesman, the premier considers the meeting, expected to last more than an hour, to be “extremely important.”
Shevardnadze and Shamir are expected to discuss a number of issues, Pazner said, including the resumption of diplomatic relations between Israel and the Soviet Union, which was broken off by Moscow 21 years ago during the 1967 Six-Day War.
Shamir arrived here Monday morning on a four-day visit to attend the Third Special Session of the U.N. General Assembly on disarmament. He is scheduled to address the Assembly Tuesday, and will present a major plan for Middle East disarmament, Israeli officials told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
The officials did not go into detail but indicated the plan calls for demilitarization of the entire Middle East. Speaking to reporters at Ben Gurion Airport before leaving for New York Sunday night, Shamir stressed that disarmament was as urgent an issue in the Middle East as it was between the two superpowers.
It was vital, he said, because of the introduction of chemical warfare in the 7-year-old Iran-Iraq war.
The upcoming meeting with Shevardnadze, meanwhile, will be the major event of Shamir’s brief stay here. Shamir met five years ago, in his capacity as foreign minister, with the Soviet Foreign Minister, Andrei Gromyko. Israel’s present foreign minister, Shimon Peres, met with Shevardnadze in New York last fall.
‘WANTS TO SEE FOR HIMSELF’
Pazner said that Shamir “has been hearing so much about changes in the Kremlin and he wants to see for himself if indeed there is a change in the Soviet position toward Israel.”
Sources with Shamir’s entourage indicated that the premier will insist at his meeting with Shevardnadze that Moscow resume diplomatic ties with Israel at once, without preconditions.
The sources admitted that the prime minister is aware that things cannot change overnight. But he wants to move in the direction of renewed diplomatic ties, and toward that end would like to see a “dialogue” open between Jerusalem and Moscow.
Shamir’s first major diplomatic meeting here Monday was a luncheon with West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher at the Regency Hotel. Genscher is currently chairman of the European Community’s Council of Ministers.
According to Pazner, who briefed Israeli reporters, Shamir was sharply critical of the sanctions EC invoked recently against Israel in connection with the Palestinian uprising.
Genscher reportedly said his country opposes all forms of economic sanctions and assured Shamir that West Germany will act against such measures aimed at Israel.
Shamir also referred to the Arab summit scheduled to open Tuesday in Algiers. He expressed concern that it could re-ignite the Palestinian uprising which is waning, according to Shamir.
Another issue discussed between the two officials was Jewish emigration from Soviet Union. Genscher revealed to Shamir that the Soviets have been allowing about 3,000 ethnic Germans to leave the USSR each month during the past year, compared to only 1,000 to 1,200 Jews permitted to emigrate each month this year.
Shamir briefed Genscher on his meetings in Jerusalem Sunday with U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz, who was visiting the Middle East to advance his peace initiative, begun last winter.
(Tel Aviv correspondent Hugh Orgel contributed to this report.)
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
