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\F2\CSTANFORD ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE LABORATORY
\CDEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE
\CSTANFORD UNIVERSITY
\CSTANFORD, CALIFORNIA 94305
\F0


						

							July 8, 1974

Dr. Erik Sandewall
Datalogilaboratoriet
Institutionen for Informationsbehandling
Uppsala Universitet
Sturegatan 1
752 23 Uppsala, Sweden

Dear Erik:

\J	Thanks for your letter.  I trust you received my previous
letter.  It looks like the case reported in the Stanford Daily
is not exactly what it seemed to be, but is rather like the case
that happened with the Mathematical Theory of Computation conference
in Novosibirsk.  Namely, it was their conference, not an international
one, and they invited Zohar Manna under the impression that he was
an American.  When he turned out to be an Israeli, their scientists
were not able to get the Foreign Ministry to issue a visa.  Naturally,
they didn't say that, but merely delayed indefinitely and mumbled about
lack of accomodations.  The rest of us went to the meeting and I
have subsequently concluded that this was wrong.  When I saw that
Zohar had been invited, I wrote Ershov that he might have to make
special efforts to insure his presence, and he informed me that he
was optimistic, and he did make special efforts, unsuccessfully.
What I now think I should have done was to have written that there
would be no Stanford participants unless we all got to come.

	Your statement for the SIGART Newsletter seems ok to me,
and I substantially agree with it, but still want to monitor the
Israeli visa situation carefullly.  Zohar, who is visiting SRI
and will drop by this afternoon, has agreed to be the test case
for 4IJCAI.  He will also make inquiries to determine what the
present situation is with regard to Israelis getting Soviet visas.

	Let me say finally that I have no objection at all to the
Soviets being embarassed by an open discussion of the issues in
such publications as the SIGART Newsletter.  First of all, they
deserve it, and secondly I think the discussion will do some good
in persuading them to modify their policies.  Not a lot of good,
but some.  I don't think there is much to worry about with
regard to international understanding.  Russian scientists understand
our concern and many of them share it, and Soviet officials
will optimize according to whatever criteria they use.\.


							Best regards,



							John McCarthy
							Director, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
							Professor of Computer Science