Soviet Foreign Minister Gennady Gerasimov predicted that the number of Russian Jews seeking visas for Israel will decline because of the Israel government’s decision Sunday to issue them only to Jews committed to settling in Israel.
Gerasimov, in a telephone interview with Maariv, published Tuesday, chided the Israelis for the decision. “The impression has been formed that Israeli leaders do not particularly admire the principle of the right of each person to move freely about wherever he wants,” the Russian diplomat said with a touch of irony.
“The meaning of the Israeli decision is to rule out peoples’ freedom to choose to travel wherever they wish,” he added, noting that this principle is protected under the United Nations Charter.
Asked how he thought this might affect Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union, Gerasimov said: “I’m afraid their numbers will decline. Fewer and fewer Jews will request exit visas to Israel, because they compare life in Israel, in the shadow of the Palestinian uprising, and your weather, with the good life one can lead in California.”
The Soviet diplomat said, however, that as far as his government is concerned, Jews leaving the Soviet Union may go anywhere they like. It is “OK if a Jew receives a visa for Israel, he can go to Israel, and if he (receives it) for the United States, he can go to California.”
In another matter affecting Soviet-Israeli relations, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Tuesday that he discerned a “certain closing of the gap” between the United States and the Soviet Union with respect to an international conference for Middle East peace.
But he said he is unaware of any other joint American-Soviet ventures regarding the Middle East.
Peres spoke in response to a comment by Likud Knesset member Ehud Olmert, who claimed Monday he knew for a fact that Washington and Moscow were preparing a joint peace plan for the Middle East.
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