Wilson Reports Negative Reaction from Kosygin on Jewish Emigration

Prime Minister Harold Wilson indicated today that he had taken up with Premier Kosygin and other Soviet leaders, during his visit to Moscow last month, the question of emigration of Russian Jews to Israel and that he had received a negative response.

The Prime Minister disclosed this phase of his Soviet talks in a letter to Sir Barnett Janner, a member of Parliament and former chairman of the Board of Deputies of British Jews. Mr. Wilson wrote to Sir Barnett in response to a letter from the Jewish leader. Sir Barnett recalled in his letter that “a number of families” had been reunited in Israel “through your interventions in past years.” He asked the Prime Minister about “the outcome of any approaches you were able to make this time.”

The Prime Minister said, in his reply, that he had raised with the Soviet Premier and other Soviet leaders “the points you made” about the treatment of the Jews in the Soviet Union, the provision of kosher meat and matzohs and printing facilities for Jewish books “but there was no change in the Soviet position.”

The Prime Minister recalled that he had informed Sir Barnett, prior to his latest visit to Moscow, that the restrictions on emigration from the Soviet Union to Israel “would be a difficult subject to press in the present tense situation in the Middle East” and that “it became clear from my discussion with the Soviet leaders that the fears I expressed to you were justified and that there will be little hope of reconsideration at this time of this question.”

The Prime Minister added that, as before, reunion of families in individual cases was taken up during his Moscow visit and that “I arranged that this matter would continue to be dealt with through normal diplomatic channels, i.e., through our ambassador discussing each individual case with the Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs.”