Israeli Envoy to ‘Call Shots’ in Soviet Talks

A senior Israeli diplomat arrived here quietly Sunday to take behind-the-scenes charge of his country’s delegation at the first formal talks between Israel and the Soviet Union in more than 19 years.

Neither the delegation spokesman, Ehud Gol, nor the tiny Israeli Embassy here would even confirm officially that Hanan Baron, deputy director general of Israel’s Foreign Ministry, is joining the negotiating effort. But officials here and in Jerusalem said that Baron is in Helsinki, as one put it, to “call the shots” during the scheduled two-day talks.

Baron will not sit in on the formal meetings but will monitor them from the Israeli Embassy, the sources said.

Referring to the Soviet side, one Israeli source said, “I’m sure they will also have people in the background with higher standing than those represented on the delegation.”

However, the Soviets were keeping such a low profile that, by late Sunday, it could not even be confirmed that Moscow’s delegation had arrived for the talks, which are scheduled to begin this morning in a tightly guarded Finnish government compound in downtown Helsinki.

Callers to the Soviet Embassy were advised that the mission was closed for the weekend.

The two sides still had not been in direct contact with each other as of Sunday evening and apparently will not be in touch until the Soviet-initiated talks actually start.

The Finnish Foreign Ministry has served as an intermediary, arranging the time and place for the talks and handling security.

Israeli officials said Moscow has refused to permit direct press access to any aspect of the talks, balking even at photographic coverage of the ritual handshake that presumably will open them. The Soviets have also asked that their delegation arrive by a different entrance than the one used by the Israelis.

There is no agenda for the talks, and Israeli officials here raised the possibility that the first session could turn out to be the last because of differences between the two sides on what should be discussed.

In initiating the meeting, the Soviets said they wanted to discuss sending a delegation to Israel for three months. Its mission would be to survey Soviet property there and in the occupied West Bank of the Jordan River, to contact a few Soviet passport holders who live in Israel and to examine the functioning of that portion of the Finnish Embassy in Tel Aviv that handles Soviet interests in Israel.

Moscow and all its East Bloc allies except Romania broke off formal relations in the wake of the Six-Day War of 1967.

No ‘Political Issues’

Moscow has insisted repeatedly in public statements that it will not discuss “political issues” with the Israeli delegation.

Israeli officials here said Sunday that the Soviets, communicating through the Finns, have specifically ruled out any discussion on the status of Soviet Jews or the possible reopening of diplomatic relations with Israel.

Meanwhile, the Israeli government has ordered its delegation to make Soviet Jewry its top priority. According to the Israelis, about 400,000 of the Soviet Union’s estimated 2 million Jews want to emigrate.

Another aspect of the same issue is the 14 so-called “prisoners of Zion”--Jews whose activity in support of free emigration or preservation of Jewish culture has led to their imprisonment in the Soviet Union. Twenty-five others have been freed from jail but are still denied permission to emigrate.

Guiding the Discussion

While Israel clearly wants, as one official put it, to “slide the meeting in the direction of Soviet Jewry and Mideast policy,” it is unclear what its stand will be if the Soviets stick to their public position of refusing to discuss those issues.

However, it is believed that Jerusalem wants to keep communications open at least until it can resolve what one senior official described as a debate within the Israeli government over the significance of the Soviet initiative.

“We want to know what’s behind it,” the official said. “Is it an effort to improve the atmosphere before the next Reagan-Gorbachev summit? Or is it the first incremental step toward a change in their policy in the region?”

The official, who admitted skepticism about any major Soviet policy shift, said that before the last meeting between President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev last November, the Soviets promised to make “a major humanitarian gesture” after the summit.

Release of Shcharansky

Last February, Moscow released dissident activist Anatoly Shcharansky in a prisoner exchange, allowing him to emigrate to Israel. But despite Israeli pleasure, this official said, it was considered not nearly enough.

At a minimum, the Israeli delegation has reportedly been ordered to insist on full reciprocity.

That means that if a Soviet delegation is to visit Israel for three months, Israel will insist on having its own team travel to Moscow to inspect its empty embassy there, to make contact with about 90 Soviet Jews who have been awarded Israeli citizenship in absentia and to review the interests section in the Netherlands Embassy that has handled Israeli affairs in Moscow since 1967.

Israeli officials dismissed much of what Moscow has been saying publicly about the precedent-setting encounter here as aimed at soothing its Arab allies. Meantime, as one put it, “One fact is there: They wanted to meet.”

Concern About Arabs

Moscow’s concern about Arab reaction to the talks was clear in a commentary released by the semiofficial Novosti press agency late last week. The commentary stressed that it was Israeli “aggression and expansionist policy” in the Middle East that led to relations being severed and added that there are no signs that Israel is changing its approach. “Consequently, there is no reason to reconsider this Soviet solution (breaking relations).”

According to Novosti, Israel is engaging in “unforgivable speculation” that this week’s meetings may signal a change in Soviet policy. Worse, it said, “the mass media of certain Arab countries have concurred in these speculations, ignoring the fact that they, in this way, concur . . . in the Zionist anti-Arab campaign. . . . For the Tel Aviv speculations aim at the distortion of the Middle East policy of the Arabs’ loyal and trustworthy friend, the Soviet Union.”

Novosti said that Israel hopes to demoralize the Arabs, “persuading them to sympathy and surrender. The calculations are based upon the fact that if the U.S.S.R. starts approaching Israel, naturally, also the Arabs should agree to separate business and manifest ‘flexibility and compliance’--in other words, to yield (to) Israel.”

Protest in Jerusalem

In Israel, meanwhile, activists on behalf of Soviet Jews staged a demonstration on a main Jerusalem street Sunday against the Helsinki talks.

“We protest against these unprincipled negotiations in Helsinki because there is not any question of Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union in the agenda of these negotiations,” said Yakov Girodsky, leader of a group calling itself Israel Action.

“Our prime minister must not negotiate with the Soviet Union until the question of Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union is put into the agenda properly,” Girodsky said.