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Jerusalem (JTA) — Activists marking the anniversary of U.S. legislation that helped open the emigration gates for Soviet Jew- ry say there is still much work to be done for those in the former Soviet republics, as well as for those who left. Some 500 former refuseniks, Prisoners of Zion and Western ac- tivists were gathered in Jerusalem to mark 20 years since the Jackson-Vanik Amendment was signed into law on Jan. 10, 1975 as part of the Trade Reform Act. Sponsored in the Senate by Henry Jackson, D-Wash., and in the House by Charles Vanik, D- Ohio, the amendment made the granting of most-favored-nation trade status conditional on poli- cies of free emigration. Participants at the three-day conference agreed that the amendment, which was mostly the work of Jackson, was an im- portant landmark, if not the turn- ing point, in the struggle for Soviet Jewry. It came as the Nixon and then Ford administrations were seek- ing detente with the Soviet Union. And it put the muscle of American law behind the efforts of a number of grass roots organizations seeking to keep the issue of free emigration alive. Activists say it was Jackson- Vanik which made the Soviets backtrack on crippling taxes de- signed to keep Jews from leaving. Natan Sharansky, perhaps the most famous Prisoner of Zion and chairman of the conference, was jailed in the 1970s after being convicted of high treason and anti-Soviet activities. At the conference, Mr. Sha- ransky said the charge of high treason was for helping fellow dis- sidents communicate with Mr. Jackson. "One of my interrogators claimed that the Jackson-Vanik Amendment had cost the Soviet Union $20 billion, and rhetori- cally asked me, Do you think you can pass this amendment and not suffer?' " Organizers say the gathering was not only an opportunity to commemorate the efforts of a friend of Israel and the Jewish people, but also to discuss the lessons learned from Jackson- Vanik and whether they can be applied to present and future is- sues. Glenn Richter, head of the Stu- dent Struggle for Soviet Jewry, said Jackson-Vanik taught young activists how to lobby Congress, and alluded to one area in which this knowledge could be put to further use. `There are presently 56 in- stances in the [former Soviet Union] where Soviet Jewish cit- izens are being denied the right to emigrate because they had ac- cess to state secrets," Mr. Richter said. "We learned from Israel that you don't abandon your soldiers on the battlefield." Susan Green, of the New York Coalition for Soviet Jewry, said a by-product of the collapse of the Soviet Union is anarchy in some of the republics. She warned that some people in those republics believe that the only way to restore order is to go back to old repressive ways, and that the ones who suffered from repression most were the Jews. "We must hope for the best, but be prepared for the worst," Mr. Green said. It is estimated that some 2 million Jews remain in the former Soviet Union. Mr. Sharansky criticized Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Elena Bonner, widow of dissi- dent physicist Andre Sakharov, used the plenum to call for world condemnation of Russian attacks in Chechnya, the break- away republic currently em- broiled in an armed rebellion against Moscow. Other participants talked of the approximately 800,000 Sovi- et Jews who have emigrated to Israel. More than a half-million have arrived in the past five years, and their absorption has been problematic. "Our real challenge now is to absorb the Soviet Jews here," said Amos Eran, who as a diplomat at Israel's Embassy in Washington 20 years ago, became a close friend of Jackson. While former refusenik Yuli Edelstein believes most of the re- cent arrivals have put their lo- gistical problems behind them, he doubts they have become an integral part of Israeli society. "This is true not only for the most recent arrivals," Mr. Edel- stein said, "but also for some of those who came in the 1970s." Mr. Sharansky criticized Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin for failing, in his address to the con- ference, to acknowledge the dif- ficulties faced by Soviet immigrants.