UN Secretariat Charged with Suppressing Material on Russian Treatment of Jews

Israel accused the United Nations secretariat today, and by implication, Secretary-General U Thant, of knuckling under to Soviet pressure and suppressing material dealing with the treatment of Jews in the Soviet Union which Israel had asked to be circulated to all members of the United Nations as a General Assembly document. Ambassador Yosef Tekoah told a crowded press conference here Wednesday that the Israeli request had been made on January 30. Israel asked that copies of an appeal by 25 Moscow Jews for United Nations assistance in securing the right to leave the Soviet Union for resettlement in Israel be circulated with the Israeli letter on the treatment of Jews in the Soviet Union.

On Feb. 11 Ambassador Tekoah said, he was advised that the Israeli letter would not be circulated because it did not refer to a pending item on the agenda of the last General Assembly or an item on the provisional agenda of the forthcoming General Assembly. But Mr. Tekoah charged that the real reason for the UN decision was pressure from Ambassador Jacob Malik, head of the Soviet delegation to ‘he UN. He called the UN capitulation an “international scandal.” The Israeli envoy termed the episode “a further expression of the double standard to which Israel has been subjected for years in the United Nations” which, he said, made it impossible for Israel to obtain justice at the hands of UN organs.

The vehemence of the Soviet efforts to suppress news of the treatment of the three and a half million Jews within the Soviet borders, he said, was a testimony to the seriousness of the situation of Soviet Jewry and of the extent to which the Jews there were acting to secure the right to emigrate. He said that the document he had submitted to Secretary-General U Thant on Jan. 27–an appeal from 25 Jews resident in Moscow–had become a petition being signed by Jews in all parts of the Soviet Union. Information has subsequently been received here, he said, of the widespread distribution of this petition in the Soviet Union and copies have been received bearing the signatures of Jews from Riga in the former Latvian Republic and from the Georgian Republic.

TEKOAH SAYS ROLE OF U THANT IN SUPPRESSING MATERIAL A MATTER OF ONE’S INTERPRETATION

Mr. Tekoah parried one reporter’s question as to whether he held the Secretary-General directly responsible for the suppression of the documents, asserting that this was a matter for individual interpretation. In response to a further question, he said that the Israelis had received no information that Mr. Thant was using his “good offices” in behalf of Soviet Jews as Israel had requested of him.

Correspondents leaving the press conference were informed that there would be a UN briefing immediately in the press room. Here, the UN spokesman made available the text of a letter from the head of the UN legal section to Mr. Tekoah explaining that without the relevant General Assembly agenda item, the Israeli letter and accompanying documents could not be transmitted as a General Assembly document. The UN spokesman angrily disputed Mr. Tekoah’s assertion that he had been informed by secretariat officials that the formalistic reasons for the refusal were “flimsy” and challenged Mr. Tekoah to identify the officials.

He said Israel could have secured distribution of the documents in the form of an “aide memoire” and indicated that the Secretary-General was considering asking the General Assembly for a ruling on future cases. The UN spokesman said that the Soviet Union had objected to the circulation of a similar letter and documents last December but said he had no information to bear out Mr. Tekoah’s charges that the Russians had protested against the distribution of the latest Israeli letter. He insisted that the Secretariat decision was in conformity with UN precedent and legality and that it was not the result of protest by another state.