Diplomacy Brief Comings and Goings

By Jill Smolowe

After a 19-year hiatus in diplomatic relations, Israel and the Soviet Union sat down to talk last week. But even before the meeting got under way in Helsinki, the signs were inauspicious. For starters, there was no agreement on issues to be negotiated. Then, while some members of the Israeli delegation eagerly showed up four days early, the Soviets just made it to the Monday- morning meeting. While the Israelis parked 30 yards short of the Council of State compound and walked to the entrance to enable cameramen to film the historic moment, the Soviets steered their blue Mercedes past the press.

The talks, which were scheduled to last two days, broke up after 90 minutes. It was clear that the two sides had a disastrous encounter. "After 19 years," sighed a Western diplomatic observer, "the Israelis and the Soviets don't even know how to begin." Moscow claimed at a news conference that the Israelis, instead of sticking to a narrow agenda of Soviet property interests in Israel, had dashed the talks by raising the prickly issue of permitting Soviet Jews to emigrate. "A preliminary meeting was held and it resulted in nothing," said Gennadi Gerasimov, the Soviet Foreign Ministry spokesman. "Therefore, there will be no follow-up."

The Israelis initially tried to paint a brighter picture, calling the session "candid and correct." But the rhetoric soon heated up. In Jerusalem, Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir declared that Israel had been entitled to raise the emigration issue, since it had a valuable "asset" in the form of 2 million Soviet Jews. In Moscow, Gerasimov retorted, "That is a very arrogant interference in (our) internal affairs. It is like saying that all the Anglo- Saxons in America are the property of the Queen of England."

The Soviet truculence left Western analysts wondering why Moscow had agreed to the meeting in the first place. Some suggested the Helsinki overture reflected the less menacing and more flexible foreign policy that General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev has been developing. The Soviets must renew relations with Israel if they hope to play a central role in any Middle East peace process. They may also have agreed to the meeting in an attempt to defuse hostility within the U.S. Jewish community, thus lessening the chance of anti-Soviet demonstrations should Gorbachev journey to Washington later this year for a summit with President Reagan.

Experts indicated that the Israelis blundered in their strong insistence on the highly charged question of Soviet Jewry. Domestic politics clearly played a large role in the Israeli performance. Under a power-sharing agreement, Shamir and Prime Minister Shimon Peres are due to swap jobs in October. Some government insiders contend that Shamir aimed to undermine the Helsinki talks to deny Peres a foreign policy triumph. Hence, they say, Shamir pushed hard to put Soviet Jewry on the agenda. But if Shamir upstaged Peres in Helsinki, Peres played an impressive card of his own: on Thursday he announced he would meet with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak next month to warm up the cold peace between Cairo and Jerusalem. Mubarak has not yet confirmed the engagement.

For now, the door has apparently slammed shut on further official contacts between Israel and the Soviet Union. Neither country can expect much encouragement to pursue an accord. Moscow's Arab allies generally voiced skepticism that the talks would lead anywhere. When the meeting faltered, one Syrian official declared, "Moscow has not failed us." Even Israel's staunchest ally, the U.S., could not wholeheartedly embrace the dialogue. While the Reagan Administration hailed the talks as a "positive development," Washington is not eager to lose its role as the only superpower that seeks peace in the Middle East.

With reporting by James O. Jackson/Moscow and William Rademaekers/Helsinki