Ussr Emigration

An estimated 120,000 demonstrators gathered outside the United Nations on Sunday to voice support for Soviet Jewish emigration and to express rage at reports of growing anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union. The ralliers, who packed Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, also called for direct flights from Moscow to Tel Aviv.

U.S. and Soviet negotiators Thursday completed their work on a comprehensive trade accord designed to pave the way for a further normalization of trade relations with Moscow during President Bush's summit meeting May 30 with Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev. Thursday's announcement, which followed three days of closed-door talks in Paris, came despite calls by some members of Congress for Bush to postpone the negotiations until Moscow resolves its current tensions with Lithuania.

Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev and Syrian President Hafez Assad said Saturday that U.S. policies are a major obstacle to peace in the Middle East, Tass news agency reported. The two presidents, after three hours of private talks, also expressed serious concern at what they said was the "problem of the possession of nuclear weapons by Israel."

Soviet soldiers on Wednesday unloaded an emergency food shipment of Israeli watermelons, tomatoes and oranges that Israeli leaders say is a gesture of thanks for allowing thousands of Soviet Jews to emigrate. Soviet troops shook hands with Israelis on the airport tarmac after 10 tons of produce was unloaded from an Israeli passenger plane. The shipment, destined for a Moscow hospital, was organized by the quasi-governmental Jewish Agency, which helps settle Jewish immigrants in Israel.

The National Council on Soviet Jewry Monday urged President Bush to give most-favored-nation trade benefits to the Soviet Union next year because of almost two years of sustained high levels of Jewish emigration. The council, the largest organization lobbying against Soviet restrictions on Jewish emigration, said that, although Moscow does not yet allow free emigration, enough progress has been made to warrant lower tariffs.

Many of the 150,000 Soviets who emigrated to Israel this year celebrated Hanukkah for the first time as Jews around the world began the eight-day Festival of Lights. Hanukkah marks the victory of the Jews over the Greco-Syrian kingdom in 165 BC. Many of the immigrants are secular Jews and know little of Jewish history. More than 1,000 Jews have been arriving in Israel daily as a result of Moscow's easing of its emigration policies.

With record numbers of Soviet Jewish immigrants streaming in, Israel faces enormous costs in absorbing them and will have to ask other countries and institutions for financial help, a top immigration official warned here Friday.

Reacting to predictions of severe food shortages in the Soviet Union this winter, President Bush said Friday that he is considering waiving restrictions on trade and export credits to allow Moscow to buy more U.S. grain and other agricultural products. The restrictions, which have long bedeviled U.S.-Soviet relations, were enacted in 1974 in an effort to increase Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union.

The government announced Friday that construction of 4,000 apartments for Jewish immigrants from the Soviet Union and other newcomers will begin next week. About 2,000 of the apartments will be in East Jerusalem, and Housing Minister David Levy, speaking to local officials in northern Israel, said the construction in that Arab quarter is a clear answer to U.S. policy questioning Israeli sovereignty over the area, Israel Radio reported. "It is not only our clear . . .

Syrian President Hafez Assad decried the changes sweeping Eastern Europe as a boon to Israel and called for a holy war "as long as time" against the Jewish state. Assad also fiercely denounced the recent wave of Soviet Jewish emigration to Israel, saying migrating Jews would force Palestinians from their homeland.