2 Leaders Say U.S. Is Blocking Mideast Peace

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.”

Tass said Gorbachev rejected “inventions” circulating in some Arab countries that Moscow has a secret deal with Washington on Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union.

Gorbachev and Assad agreed that prospects for a solution to Middle East problems and the holding of an international conference are being held back by the position of the United States.

Tass said both leaders believe that the stand of the Bush Administration is “even worse” than that of the Ronald Reagan administration.

“As a result there is still no stimulus for the Israeli leadership to seek a real way out of the blind alley, and it is behaving aggressively and in a challenging fashion,” Tass said.

Assad raised the issue of emigration of Soviet Jews to Israel, which many Arab countries argue is helping Israel tighten its grip on occupied Arab land by allowing the establishment of new settlements.

Tass said the increased migration is linked to “internal processes in the Soviet Union, with certain undesirable phenomena in inter-ethnic relations.”

Apparently quoting Gorbachev, Tass said problems caused by Jewish emigration must be solved in the context “of the rights of the Arabs and not just of human rights in general.”

In resisting Arab calls to ban further emigration until now, Moscow has argued that its international commitments on human rights make it impossible for it to prevent Jews leaving for Israel.

The Tass report on the talks said the two presidents also discussed cooperation in the modernization of Syria’s armed forces--largely supplied with Soviet weaponry.

At separate talks with Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Shareh, Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze said Israel has not matched the goodwill shown by Arab states.

Tass said Moscow wants closer contact with Arab states regarding Israel’s “illegal activities” in settling Jewish immigrants and wants the United Nations Security Council to take a stand against “the colonization of these lands.”