The World - News from March 8, 1988

The Soviet Union has invited Eskimos from Alaska, Canada and Greenland to visit Siberia for the first time since the border was closed four decades ago, an Eskimo leader said in Anchorage, Alaska. The Soviets invited the Eskimos to Uelen, across the Bering Strait from Alaska, said Dalee Sambo, who runs the Anchorage office of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, an international organization of Eskimos that has long sought contacts with the Soviet Union. At the same time, the mayor of the Siberian city of Provideniya has written the Chamber of Commerce in Nome, Alaska, agreeing to the chamber’s request to help reunite long-divided Eskimo families.