4W- 4%0r f' a ..EWS T-111 L' T WE WANT YOUR SMILE ON FILE COMPLIMENTARY PORTRAIT • CHILDREN • FAMILIES • COUPLES • PETS , Now through April 30, Come to our Studio for a NO CHARGE creative MINI-MASTERPIECE PORTRAIT ONCE A YEAR SPECIAL - JUST CALL FOR AN APPOINTMENT EVERGREEN PLAZA OFFER LIMITED - ONE PER FAMILY - SITTINGS DONE BEFORE APRIL 30, 1985 410 19919 W. Twelve Mile Road Southfield, Mich. 48076 557-4848 1Ik S t4 jib. 440. 4 4110 . 4t 412P NL\ v WiP A+, V O." 1.1 410 NPAAPAPY 4,41‘ z Rhoshel boutique Profiles cosmetics NEWS Senate 'Fast-Tracks' Israel Free Trade Bill Washington(JTA) — The re- cently concluded U.S.-Israel Free Trade Area (FTA) agreement ap- pears to be headed toward its ex- pected swift Congessional ap- proval, as the Senate Finance Committee this week rejected proposed amendments to the pact. Having turned down three minor technical modifications, the committee voted to begin con- sultations with the House and Administration on preparing legislation in support of the pact initialed by Israel and the United States earlier this month. The FTA provides for the gradual elimination by both the United States and Israel of tariffs on goods traded between them. According to the pact, duties on items regarded as sensitive to im- port competition will be phased out more slowly than others, with all tariffs and other trade barriers to be eliminated within ten years. Although Congress has already given its approval to conclude the agreement in principle through its passage of the Tariff and Trade Act in 1984, the pact itself must be approved by both Houses of Con- gress once final legislation is for- mally introduced by the President. The 1984 legislation also stipu- lates that the agreement would be considered for approval by Con- gress on an expedited basis. It was this pledge to "fast track" the President's bill through Congress that provided the justification for the committee's refusal to intro- duce amendments, including one by committee chairman Robert Packwood (R-Ore.). Packwood's amendment would have authorized the President to phase out tariffs on all goods within ten years in accordance with the agreement. The President's version excluded cer- tain import-sensitive items leav- ing them to subsequent approval by Congress. The House Ways and Means Committee has already adopted an amendment similar to the one proposed by Packwood. The clear indication given by the majority of committee mem- bers is that they would reject any change that might delay the final drafting and approval of the bill. This caused some resentment on the part of those seeking more ex- tensive debate of the agreement that might address concern about the American textile and foot- wear industries in particular, and the timing for Israel's phasing out subsidies on export goods. If the understanding is that no amendment can be made, George Mitchell (D-Ma.) who introduced one of the amendments, told the committee, "then the consultation process of this committee is an- nulled, its a charade, its a farce." But Packwood also defended the swift consideration of the pact, saying it was keeping with the Congressional promise to fast- track the bill. Although some compromise is expected on the exact wording of the bill to be formally introduced to the President, a staff member of the Senate Finance committee said the agreement was virtually guaranteed swift Congressional approval. High Intermarriage Rate Cuts French Population LINDA MARCI RICKI RHODA SHARON REY DON TERRY A SALON • 6601 ORCHARD LAKE ROAD • WEST BLOOMFIELD 626s 9191 Paris (JTA) — From the mid- 1960s until now, more than 50 percent of French Jews who mar- ried took a non-Jewish spouse, ac- cording to a survey carried out by the French National Research Center and the Hebrew Univer- sity's Institute of Demographic Studies. The 400-page study just re- leased here by the National Re- search Center, also found that there are 535,000 Jews currently living in France, about 200,000 fewer than previous estimates, and that the average age of French Jews is increasing. The principal authors of the study are Prof. Doris Bensinion of Caen University, who is chief re- search scientist at the National Research Center, and Dr. Sergio Dela Pergola, of the Hebrew Uni- versity in Jerusalem. They re- ported that the high rate of inter- marriage "is particularly serious" for the future of the Jewish com- munity because 60 percent of the Jewish partners in mixed mar- riages are women. The researchers noted that in French society "it is the father who is the dominant note in the family's religious practices and cultural options." They predicted that there will be fewer Jewish males available for marriage in the years ahead, according to de- mographic trends in France, and that consequently an ever-larger proportion. of Jewish women will marry non-Jews. On the basis of current demog- raphic trends in Western Europe as a whole, and especialy in the European Jewish community, the study predicts "at the best" a stabilization of the French Jewish community and probably a drop in its numbers by the end of the cen- tury. The French Jewish commu- nity is the largest in Western Europe. Dela Pergola warned that the community's average age will continue to increase and this aging process will affect the number of active community members. This factor must be borne in mind by Jewish commu- nity leaders and organizations when they allocate resources and lay the groundwork for educa- tional institutions during the next ten-15 years, Dela Pergola wrote. So far, community leaders have had no comment on the study's findings. Most lay and profes- sional leaders said they have not yet had an opportunity to thoroughly study its hundreds of pages and dozens of tables and graphs.