Soviet authorities began releasing yesterday Jewish activists taken into custody during the Moscow summit meeting. Jewish sources in the Soviet Union reported today. Soviet emigration policy and the harassment of Jews seeking exit visas for Israel were discussed by President Nixon and Soviet Communist Party leader Leonid Brezhnev at their summit meeting, according to Secretary of Stats Henry A. Kissinger, who made the report at a press conference in Moscow yesterday recorded by the State Department here. An estimated 100 Soviet Jewish dissidents were rounded up in advance of Nixon’s arrival.
Kissinger declined to provide details of those discussions but said he would take up the subject with pertinent members of Congress when he returns to Washington. Kissinger has met frequently on the issue of Soviet Jews with Sens. Henry M. Jackson (D.Wash.), Abraham Ribicoff (D.Conn.) and Jacob K. Javits (R.NY). It is presumed here that he will have a post summit meeting with them next week after Congress returns from its July 4 recess.
The Soviet government made informal expressions of regret to the three major American television networks yesterday for the blackout of transmissions regarding the treatment of Jews and dissidents in the USSR. The telecasts by NBC, CBS and ABC were cut off in mid-sentence Tuesday. Kissinger said at his press conference yesterday that he lacked “details” of the interruptions but “we certainly don’t approve of them.” A senior Soviet broadcasting official attributed the blackouts to “hot-headed” technicians who, he said, had been told not to do it again. But a second blackout occurred after the explanation. The action is believed to be in violation of an agreement made between the U.S. and USSR on broadcasts to the U.S. of the summit talks. A spokesman for the three networks said yesterday, however, that it had been decided not to press the issue despite a White House offer to lodge a formal protest with the Russians.
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