Talks With Israel Fail, No More Planned, Soviets Say

A spokesman for the Soviet Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that the Helsinki talks with Israeli diplomats failed to produce any results and that no further meetings are planned.

This appraisal of Monday’s meeting in Helsinki, the first official Soviet-Israeli encounter in 19 years, conflicted with more positive accounts by Israeli officials. The 90-minute meeting ended abruptly when the Soviet side declared that the talks had been “sufficient.”

“The Helsinki meeting led to nothing,” the Foreign Ministry spokesman, Gennady I. Gerasimov, told reporters. “There won’t be any follow-up.”

Israeli Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir had said earlier that the Soviet-Israeli contacts would probably continue. “It was a good beginning,” Shamir said.

And Ehud Gol, spokesman for the Israeli delegation to the Helsinki meeting, said that the session was “definitely not” a failure despite its brevity. Calling the talks “candid and concrete,” he said the two sides agreed that “we should continue with our contacts through proper diplomatic channels.”

The Kremlin apparently wants Israeli support for a larger Soviet role in the Mideast peace process, but Israel has made it clear that this is not possible until some form of diplomatic ties are restored between Moscow and Tel Aviv.

However, the Soviet Union has been criticized by its Arab allies for renewing direct contacts with Israel. The Soviet Union and most of its East Bloc allies severed diplomatic relations with Israel as a result of the Arab-Israeli War of 1967.

Gerasimov, at a previous briefing for the press, had said that an agreement on restoring relations at the consular level was a possibility, but Tuesday he took a different position.

‘No Backstage Game’

“We are not talking about establishing consular relations,” he said. “There is no backstage game here.”

Gerasimov took exception to a remark made Monday by Shamir that described the Soviet Union’s 2 million Jews as valuable Israeli property.

The Soviet official said that this is “very arrogant interference in our internal affairs . . . totally unacceptable since Israel has no right to speak for Soviet citizens of Jewish nationality.”

He said the Soviet view is that in contacts with Israel, the only matters that can be brought up are consular matters, such as those involving property and the personal affairs of citizens. He said there is no Israeli property in the Soviet Union and no Israeli citizens living permanently on Soviet soil.

Church Property Cited

Soviet officials have said they want to inspect property of the Russian Orthodox Church in Israel, but the Israelis have said that first they want to send a delegation to Moscow to contact Soviet Jews.

Shamir has said it is inconceivable that the Soviet Union and Israel could improve relations without “an essential and substantial change in their attitudes toward Soviet Jews.”

Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union, which peaked at 51,330 in 1979, declined to less than 1,000 last year and is moving at an even slower pace in 1986.

Represented by Finland

Soviet interests in Israel are represented by Finland; the Netherlands represents Israeli interests in the Soviet Union.

In Israel, Prime Minister Shimon Peres, on a tour of the central Israeli town of Netanya, said that despite Gerasimov’s comments, it was not clear if contacts between the two countries would cease, Reuters news agency reported.

“It is hard to interpret the Soviet nuances, why exactly they wanted contact with us, why they stopped, if they stopped, which is something that is not yet clear,” Peres said, according to the agency.