Tarrasuk Backs Jackson Amendment

Dr. Leonid Tarrasuk, a former arms curator at the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad, urged today that the U.S. Congress enact the Jackson Amendment into law “as the only reliable” means to help not only the Jewish people but all peoples in the Soviet Union. He also strongly endorsed the statement made yesterday in Moscow by the dissident Soviet physicist. Andrei D. Sakharov, that Western detente with the Kremlin on Soviet terms posed a serious threat to the world.

Asked if the Jackson Amendment would hurt the Jews. Dr. Tarrasuk said it was “not true.” He said everyone he knew in the Soviet Union supported the Jackson Amendment which would deny U.S. trade benefits to the Soviet Union until the USSR relaxes restrictions on emigration. He said the only thing the Soviet Union recognizes is “crude reality.”

Asked for his opinion of Sen. J.W.Fulbright (D.Ark,), who is opposed to the Jackson Amendment and favors greater U.S.-Soviet relations, Dr. Tarrasuk at first groped for a word. Jerry Goodman executive director of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry, suggested “naive,” and Tarrasuk accepted it and smilingly said “I was going to say something more horrible.”

Dr. Tarrasuk, who had lost his museum job after applying for a visa to emigrate, arrived in Israel with his family last month. He and his wife, Nina, are in the U.S. under the sponsorship of the NCSJ. He is scheduled to meet with New York Mayor John V. Lindsay on Friday and visit Philadelphia, Baltimore and other cities. He arrived here from Los Angeles.

A delegation of the Egyptian Arab Socialist Union arrived yesterday in Budapest for a few days visit in Hungary, the Hungarian news agency MTI, reported. According to MTI, the Egyptians were invited by the Budapest Communist District Committee.