Speech #930068566

Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities. of which I am a member. has voted to suspend hearings into the circumstances surrounding the June 17. 1972. breakin at the Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate Office Building. We so voted as an act of encouragement to the current negotiations between General Secretary Brezhnev and President Nixon and with the hope of fostering good will between the United States and the Soviet Union. I have noted that during our postponement Secretary Brezhnev spoke to leaders of the Congress and advised them that his statistics show that there are no problems of emigration for Soviet Jews and others. He urged that the link between emigration of Soviet Jews and U.S. credits and tariffs is an artificial "pretext" to trade negotiations between our two countries. I wish to take this opportunity to disagree with Mr. Brezhnevs analysis of this situation. Mr. Brezhnev has said that 60.200 persons have been given current permission to emigrate and that approximately 68.000 persons who have left the Soviet Union are part of a current emigration. The statistics which have been made available to myself and other Members of the Senate by Jewish organizations throughout the world greatly contradict those figures. They show that 68.000 persons spoken of by Mr. Brezhnev are not part of a current emigration. but are the total emigration to Israel since 1948. They also show that of the 60.200 persons which Mr. Brezhnev states have been given permission to emigrate. only 32.000 have actually left. Additionally. there are untold scores of affidavits received by these organizations from persons wishing to emigrate which have not been acted upon. Even as Mr. Brezhnev spoke this week of the nonexistence of any problems. Soviet Jews were rounded up and arrested because of their desire to emigrate. I wish to point out to Mr. Brezhnev that I have not altered my position of support for the Jackson amendment. The United States is a country founded upon the principle of free religious beliefs. My native Georgia was founded by men and women who emigrated from their countries to find a better way of life for themselves. There are thousands in Mr. Brezhnevs Georgian Republic who should be given the same opportunity. The farmers who grew the very wheat which the Soviet Union now seeks from our country are descendants of those who emigrated from Russia and other countries in order to be able to grow - those agricultural products. In my opinion. it would be an insult to the memory of those early immigrants to give the products of their sons and grandsons to a country which will not allow all of its citizens to freely emigrate. There are many countries which are seeking our goods and are willing to pay high prices for them. We should not sell those goods at a discount with credits and a mostfavorednation tariff treatment to the Soviet Union unless it agrees in writing to permit free emigration of all of those people who seek to leave and can further prove that such emigration will continue during the course of any longrange economic relationships with the United States. In the same spirit with which the Select Committee suspended its hearings. I hereby call upon General Secretary Brezhnev to suspend all restrictions upon free emigration from the Soviet Union. If our two countries are to establish new and lasting economic and social relationships. mutual respect is the atmosphere in which they must be created.