Secretary of State George Shultz said Sunday that the exit visas given two Soviet Jewish families last week did not come about because of any “precise agreement” during the meeting between President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik, Iceland, October 11-12.
“We didn’t have any precise agreement, although many names of individuals were talked about,” Shultz said on the NBC-TV “Meet the Press” program. He added that Reagan and Gorbachev also discussed the “hundreds of thousands who would love to emigrate. So all of that was discussed, but there was no precise agreement on either of those cases.”
The two cases he referred to were those of David Goldfarb, a long-time refusenik, who was flown to the U.S. by Armand Hammer last Thursday with his wife, Cecilia, and Viktor and Inessa Flerov who were told Friday they could leave for Israel. Inessa Flerova has a brother in Israel, Michael Shirman, who suffers from acute leukemia. She will donate bone marrow for a transplant that may save his life.
In an address to the National Press Club Friday, Shultz said there was “sustained discussion” on human rights issues in Iceland. He said the National Conference for Soviet Jewry and other human rights groups “helped us to make a powerful presentation.”
Asked on “Meet the Press” about criticism that the U.S. was making concessions to the Soviets in return for the release of individuals, Shultz replied, “trading in human beings is inherently a repulsive matter.” He added, however, that the Soviet “system is as it is. When we can get people out we’re glad to have them out.”
He stressed that it was not only important to gain the emigration of people whose names are well known, but also the “great mass of people” who want to leave. The number of refuseniks in the Soviet Union is estimated at 400,000.
Asked if Gorbachev knows that if he were to come to the U.S. for a summit meeting he would face large demonstrations, Shultz said the Soviet leader has been told “he will be treated with the respect and dignity that he deserves. But there won’t be the kind of warmth out there in the American public … because of the human rights problem.”
On other matters, Shultz said the situation along Israel’s northern border was “tense” but he did not expect a war to break out. “We certainly don’t want that to happen,” he said. He added, “We do have a situation where Israel in its northern border is concerned, and understandably so, about attacks that come from southern Lebanon.”
Shultz denied an Israeli report that he sent a letter to incoming Premier Yitzhak Shamir not to establish more Jewish settlements in the West Bank. However, he said he was opposed to the expansion of such settlements. Shultz said he had a “long session” with Shamir when he was here as Foreign Minister in September to attend the United Nations General Assembly, and spoke as well with other Israelis.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
