Rise in Soviet Emigration Pleases Reagan
President Reagan said Tuesday night that he is encouraged by the increase in emigration that the Soviet Union has permitted since his summit conference last November with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev in Geneva.
On the day that dissident Anatoly Shcharansky was freed by Soviet authorities, Reagan referred at a news conference to the recent spate of emigrations and said: “I am encouraged by this because I did talk at great length about the matter of human rights” with Gorbachev.
“All we can do is hope that this is a beginning, a sign for what is going to continue to take place.”
Reagan said he has no way to determine what motivated the Soviets to accept the prisoner exchange. Nor, he said, could he pass judgment on the validity of the Soviet argument that physicist Andrei D. Sakharov could not be released because of his knowledge of Soviet nuclear secrets.
“It’s an argument they’ve used for a number of people . . . who have in their estimation been close to some things that they feel are secrets.”
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