Soviet Delegate Demands Deletion of Religious Intolerance Clause from U.N. Draft

The situation of Russian Jewry erupted suddenly here Wednesday in the Economic and Social Council when, out of context of other items on the agenda, the Soviet representative demanded that a clause in the draft declaration on elimination of all religious intolerance be deleted so as to make no mention of condemning anti-Semitism.

The religious freedoms draft is on the agenda of the current ECOSOC session but had not been reached as yet when the proposal to delete mention of anti-Semitism was made by Evgeny Nasinovsky, the Russian delegate. He insisted that the religious freedoms draft should mention no “isms.”

At that point, the Libyan representative received a formulation proposed in the General Assembly three years ago, calling for condemnation of “anti-Semitism, Nazism and Zionism.” Dr. Joel Barromi, Israel’s representative, requested the USSR to let the religious freedoms draft stand as drafted, condemning anti-Semitism. Dr. Barromi reminded Nasinovsky that Premier Kosygin himself had condemned anti-Semitism in a speech at Riga a year ago.