U.S. Says Soviet Union Blocks Convention Against Religious Intolerance

The United States accused the Soviet Union today of attempting to prevent conclusion of a convention on the elimination of all forms of religious intolerance and charged that the Soviet representative was seeking to turn the United Nations Third Committee “into a forum for political vituperation.”

Mrs. Patricia R. Harris, the American representative in the Committee, took the floor today to answer allegations made by the Soviet delegate yesterday comparing the position of the Jews in the United States unfavorably with that of Jews in the Soviet Union. Mrs. Harris said the United States had no desire to “engage in a useless debate with the Soviet Union about the treatment of Jews in the Soviet Union” and dismissed as a “ridiculous contention” the Soviet assertion that Soviet Jews had a greater measure of freedom than Jews in the United States.

Mrs. Harris said that “anti-Semitism is without doubt the classic example of religious intolerance and discrimination in its most persistent and pervasive form. If the term ‘anti-Semitism’ causes difficulties for some delegations, the United States would be prepared to seek a more acceptable formulation.”