Dissident seen as hero

Press, 13 February 1986, Page 10

Dissident seen as hero

NZPA-Reuter Tel Aviv

Anatoly Shcharansky received a hero’s welcome from his new countrymen yesterday and said he would continue his struggle for the emigration of Soviet Jews to Israel.

Mr Shcharansky, freed from a Soviet prison in an East-West spy swap, was hugged and kissed by the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Shimon Peres, after alighting from a Government executive jet that had flown him from West Germany. “I hope the joy that fills our hearts today will give us the strength to continue the struggle for the freedom of our brothers in Russia,” Mr Shcharansky said at Ben-Gurion airport, where several thousand Israelis were waiting to greet him. He had been arrested in 1977 on charges of spying for the United States. Minutes after his arrival, Mr Shcharansky and Mr Peres telephoned the President of the United States, Mr Ronald Reagan, and the Secretary of State, Mr George Shultz, to thank them for American efforts to free him. His wife, Avital, who

had campaigned for his release since being forced to leave him the day after their wedding in 1974, told Mr Reagan, “I Just wanted to say thank you.” “We believe this is only the beginning of an exodus of our people from Russia,” she said. In Moscow, diplomats said that Mr Shcharansky’s release was a calculated Kremlin manoeuvre to boost the image of the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, and throw the country’s dissident movement into disarray. Diplomats said Mr Shcharansky’s release represented a twin advantage to Moscow in its campaign to impress Western public opinion with its good intentions in the field of human rights. Freeing Mr Shcharansky would serve to deprive Washington of leverage against Moscow before this year’s summit meeting between Messrs Gorbachev and Reagan, who portrays himself as a staunch defender of human rights.

It will also take the bite out of militant anti-Soviet campaigns by American Jewish groups, which made ample use of Mr Shcharansky as a symbol for their cause.