Shevardnadze, Peres Discuss Renewing Ties

Prime Minister Shimon Peres of Israel met for more than an hour Monday with Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze and told reporters afterward that they discussed “steps necessary to normalize diplomatic relations.”

Peres declined to say what these steps might be, but he said there will be further contacts between the two governments. The Soviet Union, which was the second country after the United States to recognize the new Jewish state in 1948, closed its embassy there at the outbreak of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

Shevardnadze, leaving the meeting in the office of the president of the Security Council, made no mention of diplomatic relations but said the two discussed “very serious matters in a very normal atmosphere.” He emphasized his government’s proposals for an international conference on Middle East peace, a meeting in which Moscow would take part.

Peres made no mention of this proposal, which has aroused little enthusiasm in Jerusalem and Washington.

“There should be practical preparations,” Shevardnadze said of the Soviet initiative for a Mideast conference. “That’s why we are proposing (that) a preparatory committee” be set up to draft an agenda for such a conference.

Settlement a Priority

Later, Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir Petrovsky told a press conference that the initiative for the Peres-Shevardnadze meeting came from Israel. He said that the question of restoration of formal diplomatic ties was raised but that “the Soviet side put as a priority thing the need for a Middle East settlement.”

He said Moscow supports a settlement that would safeguard Israel’s right to exist and would give the Palestinians “self-determination, including the right to a state of their own.”

He reiterated the Kremlin’s view that the way to settle Middle East issues is through a peace conference attended by the parties to the dispute plus the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council.

The last high-level working meeting between representatives of Israel and the Soviet Union took place during the 1984 General Assembly, when Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir conferred with Andrei A. Gromyko, then his Soviet counterpart, at the Soviet Mission here. Before that, Shamir had met with Gromyko in New York in 1981.

Lower-level officials from the two countries conferred in Helsinki, Finland, in August, ostensibly on consular matters.

The talks lasted only 90 minutes and ended after the Israeli side raised the issue of Soviet Jewish emigration, which has slumped in recent years to around 1,000 people annually after a high of more than 50,000 in 1979.

Before the Peres-Shevardnadze meeting Monday, the Israeli prime minster held a meeting at U.N. headquarters with U.S. industrialist Armand Hammer. Hammer is a frequent visitor to the Soviet Union and also recently visited Israel.