TBILISI, Soviet Union -- British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, leaving behind the serious business of dissidents and arms control, arrived in the Soviet republic of Georgia today for an eight-hour whirlwind tour.
As she stepped from the ramp of an Aeroflot TU-154, she received a warm handshake from Georgian Prime Minister Otar Cherkhezia and a smart peck on the cheek and a bouquet of roses from two youngsters in traditional Georgian dress.
Eight women dressed in white and eight men in black riding boots and maroon jackets with daggers tucked in their belts served as her official honor guard.
'This is the easy part of the trip. We decided to leave politics behind on this leg. We just wanted to relax a bit,' a British official said.
Thatcher held a breakfast meeting at the British Embassy with dissident Josef Begun, his wife, Inna, and Rose Ioffe, whose husband, Alexander, is staging a hunger strike to press for permission to leave the Soviet Union.
Thatcher told a news conference Tuesday that in her meetings with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev she raised the issue of Jews' rights to emigrate, to practice their faith and to teach Hebrew.
Begun emerged from today's breakfast meeting saying Thatcher told him Soviet leaders seemed reluctant to discuss the matter.
'She said she raised the problem of Soviet Jews in her discussions, but the authorities were very nervous about this problem,' Begun said. 'They said it is an internal affair of the Soviet Union.'
He said Thatcher told him Gorbachev used 'only very general words' in discussing the issue.
The Beguns and Ioffes typify the problems facing thousands of 'refuseniks,' Soviet Jews refused permission to emigrate. The Beguns have waged a 17-year struggle to go to Israel. Ioffe and her husband, a mathematician, have been refused permission to emigrate since 1976.
Begun was recently released after serving four years in prison and labor camps -- part of a 12-year sentence for anti-Soviet agitation.
Thatcher, dressed in a bright blue dress and coat, emerged from the breakfast meeting without comment and was whisked off in a black ZIL limousine to the Kremlin to bid farewell to Gorbachev.
After the brief farewell ceremony, she departed for a brief visit to Tbilisi, capital of the southern republic of Georgia. She was to return to London later today.
Thatcher had lunch Tuesday with dissident physicist Andrei Sakharov, who said he told her the process of democratization is very important to the Soviet Union and must continue.
'Without it, further development is impossible,' said the 65-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner.
In an interview with three Soviet journalists Tuesday, Thatcher praised Gorbachev's campaign for glasnost -- or openness -- in Soviet society.
'I think that Mr. Gorbachev's new proposals are the most exciting that I have heard for a very long time -- a more open society, new incentives, restructuring. This is a challenge I think is fantastic.'
Earlier, she told reporters she was 'very well satisfied indeed' with her nine hours of talks with Gorbachev.
'Mr. Gorbachev and I have achieved a very good relationship,' she said.
But throughout her visit Thatcher has made clear that she cannot back Gorbachev's latest proposal for eliminating intermediate-range missiles from Europe.
Gorbachev has dropped a demand that any agreement on medium-range missiles include limits on development of the U.S. Strategic Defense Initiative -- the so-called Star Wars missile defense system. But he has resisted Western demands that an agreement include guarantees to eliminate the Soviet advantage in shorter-range missiles.
