The terrorist threat in Beirut continued to be underestimated by the American marines after a bomb-laden truck destroyed the United States Embassy there on April 28. This was one of the reasons why they were unprepared for the terrorist attack on their headquarters on October 23 that killed 240 men, according to an inquiry by reporters.
The American-Israeli partnership was defended in blunt terms by Secretary of State George P. Shultz against strong Arab criticism expressed in Rabat, Morocco, where Mr. Shultz met with Arab leaders who rebuked him publicly and privately for the increased political and military cooperation plans with Israel.
President Reagan makes a Radio Address to the Nation on the situation in Lebanon. President Reagan, in the face of continuing Marine casualties, defended his Lebanon policy today, saying American troops would remain until “internal stability is established” and the withdrawal of foreign forces is “assured.” Mr. Reagan said in his weekly radio address that “success in Lebanon is central to sustaining the broader peace process.” He also said America’s “vital interests in the Middle East” require that the marines remain. “Indeed, the entire world has vital interest there,” Mr. Reagan said. “The region is central to the economic vitality of the Western world.” The President’s remarks came at the end of a week in which misgivings over the American presence in Lebanon increased in Congress and the Joint Chiefs of Staff were reported to have begun drafting plans for moving the marines to safer ground.
The President spoke as the bodies of nine servicemen – eight marines killed last Sunday and a Navy pilot who died of wounds after his plane was shot down the same day in a raid against Syrian antiaircraft batteries east of Beirut – were arriving back in the United States. “The loss of even one of our splendid young Americans is an enormous price to pay,” Mr. Reagan said. “The number of dead and wounded is a terrible burden of grief for all Americans.” Mr. Reagan was again critical of the Syrian Government for not removing its forces from Lebanon. He contended that the Syrians knew that the mission of the American planes was not aggressive and was limited to protecting Marine positions.
In defending the marines’ presence in Lebanon, Mr. Reagan noted that American forces had been sent there in 1958 by President Eisenhower. The difference that complicates the current situation, he said, includes the Syrians’ refusal to withdraw and the presence of 7,000 Soviet military advisers and technicians in the region. Mr. Reagan said there had been some progress in the “slow and painful” peace process. The Lebanese reconciliation talks in Geneva “have begun to broaden the base” of the Lebanon Government and “satisfy the legitimate grievances of all the people,” he said, although news reports from those talks in Geneva were not so optimistic. “We’ve acted with great restraint despite repeated provocations and murderous attacks,” the President said of the mission in Lebanon. “We will continue to do whatever is needed to assure the safety of our forces.”
Former President Gerald R. Ford said today that the United States should withdraw the marines if leaders of Lebanon’s warring factions cannot agree on steps to establish a viable government within a “reasonable time.” In a Cable News Network interview, the former President said he was disappointed that the Geneva talks on reconciliation in Lebanon had not done more toward resolving factional differences. He said: “Now the time has come for the United States to tell them in Geneva, ‘You solve your problem. If you don’t get going and come up with a viable government in a reasonable time, we’re going to withdraw our U.S. Marines.’ It’s just that hard-nosed.” He added: “I do not believe it’s in our national interest at this time to withdraw our forces from Lebanon. But I do believe we have to lay down some kind of reasonable deadline for action in the establishment of a government in Lebanon and some overall progress in the negotiations for a broader peace in the Middle East.”
President Reagan calls King Hussein I of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan to discuss relations with Israel.
A key Afghan guerrilla group pulled out of the main alliance of Muslim insurgents fighting the Soviet- backed Government in Kabul today and denounced its president. Yunis Khalis, the leader of a faction of the Islamic fundamentalist Hezb- i-Islami Party, which has been successful in eastern Afghanistan, said in a statement that Abd-i-Rab Rasoul Sayaf, the president of the seven-party Islamic Alliance of Afghan Mujahedeen, was using its money to fight rival resistance groups in the country. Mr. Khalis’s decision, appeared to be intended to undercut the near monopoly the alliance president has on money from Middle Eastern countries that support the Islamic resistance, Western diplomats said.
Kurdish rebels in Iraq have seized three French technicians and are demanding as ransom the release of 57 Kurds held by the Iraqis, the rebels announced. In a statement in Paris, the Democratic Party of Kurdistan said it captured the employees of the French electronics firm Thomson in the western Iraqi town of Dohok. The rebels also demanded that Iraq return to their homes 8,000 Kurdish families that were resettled in southern Iraq.
The Nobel Peace Prize was accepted by Danuta Walesa on behalf of her husband Lech in ceremonies in Oslo, Norway. Mr. Walesa, in a statement read by his wife, said the award confirmed “the vitality and strength” of the outlawed Solidarity union movement. At the ceremony, in the flower-bedecked Old Hall of Oslo University, Mrs. Walesa solemnly received the diploma and gold medal emblematic of the prize from Egil Aarvik, chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee. He described Mr. Walesa, the 69th individual Nobel Peace laureate and the founder of the outlawed Polish union movement, as “one of the great spokesmen in the world today for the longing for freedom that can never be silenced.”
Her cheeks flushed with excitement, the 35-year-old woman, who has described herself as a “kitchen manager,” then read a brief speech written by her husband, in which he said that “on this solemn day my place is among those with whom I have grown and to whom I belong – the workers of Gdansk.” ‘Dignity of Human Labor’ “We are fighting for the right of the working people to organize and for the dignity of human labor,” he declared. “We respect the dignity and the rights of every man and every nation. The road to a brighter future for the world leads through honest reconciliation of conflicting interests and not through hatred and bloodshed. To follow that road means to enhance the moral power of the all-embracing idea of human solidarity.”
Smiling broadly, Lech Walesa, founder of the outlawed Solidary union movement, stood in a crowded church rectory near the Gdansk shipyard this afternoon, listening to a broadcast over Radio Free Europe of the ceremonies in which his wife accepted his Nobel Peace Prize. Surrounded by foreign journalists and well-wishers at St. Bridget’s Church, Mr. Walesa offered a toast at the end of the ceremony with champagne sent by workers in Poznan “for the victory of the ideas of Solidarity.” Not all who tried to listen to the Nobel ceremony were successful. BBC transmissions to Poland were being jammed, and Poles who tried to listen to the Voice of America broadcast in the Warsaw area said it was jammed, too.
Leftists and people attending a civic ceremony in Nice, France, threw tear gas and cafe chairs at each other today at the end of a ceremony that officially renamed part of Boulevard de Stalingrad for Lech Walesa, a police spokesman said. Most of the ceremony installing a new street sign in honor of the Polish labor activist took place without incident, the spokesman said. Near the end of the observance, however, about 200 leftists marched on the site with the intention of re-erecting a “Boulevard de Stalingrad” sign.
Moscow police detained at least 16 people who tried to gather on one of Moscow’s main squares to mark United Nations Human Rights Day. One of those detained was identified as Boris Begun, son of Josef Begun, the longtime Jewish dissident jailed for seven years and sentenced to five years of internal exile last October for anti-Soviet slander. Western observers, viewing the arrests in Pushkin Square, said that there were fewer people gathered to mark Human Rights Day than in previous years. In Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria, meanwhile, the official news agencies attacked the West and said that Communist countries are the real champions of human rights.
Russians claim to fear nuclear war as much and possibly more than most Americans. They have received a supposedly more realistic appraisal of what nuclear war might mean from the Soviet leadership, which warns daily that the United States is preparing for a pre-emptive nuclear strike. Much of the official antinuclear warnings are being made to fan public opposition in the West to the American weapons programs, including the deployment of Pershing 2 and cruise missiles in Western Europe.
An estimated 15 million British television viewers watched the ABC-TV movie “The Day After,” and afterward Defense Secretary Michael Heseltine said it “has a message of propaganda.” Heseltine, who provided British television with a statement for airing after the film, said, “We have actually lived at peace because everybody understands-those in the Soviet Union, in the NATO alliance — that there could never be a winner in any war of that sort.” David Owen, leader of the Social Democratic Party, said he thought the film was realistic. TV officials had no immediate estimate on the number of viewers, but newspapers put it at about 15 million.
Five people were injured when a bomb exploded at a barracks of Britain’s Royal Artillery in Woolwich. Scottish nationalists claimed responsibility for the attack and warned “more will follow.” The blast blew a 15-foot crater in a room. The injured-four soldiers and the wife of one of them-were treated at nearby hospitals for minor injuries. A telephone caller to Britain’s domestic news agency, Press Association, said that the Scottish National Liberation Army was responsible for the blast.
Leaders of Britain’s most powerful print union called a one-day national strike for next Wednesday in what it views as a fight for survival against new laws curbing union activities. The National Graphical Association, which has been fined almost $1 million for contempt of court in cases involving employment laws, decided to call the walkout after a meeting of its 30-member council.
A Greek military court has sentenced 28 members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses to prison terms ranging from two years to four years because they refused to serve in the armed forces, a court spokesman said. “We are conscientious objectors and the state shouldn’t court-martial us,” the Jehovah’s Witnesses said in a statement before the sentence was passed. The defendants, all Greek, failed to show up at training camps and refused to bear arms and carry out military orders.
Argentina’s military rule ended with the inauguration of Raul Ricardo Alfonsin as President amid joyous celebrations. Thousands of people gathered in the streets of Buenos Aires to cheer the President, a political moderate and leader of the Radical Party, whose election has given the country hope for a new beginning.
The chairman of the Organization of African Unity has postponed peace talks between Chadian President Hissen Habre and rebel leader Goukouni Oueddei until January 9, French government radio reported. OAU Chairman Mengistu Haile Mariam of Ethiopia decided to postpone the December 21 talks to give each side more time to prepare for the meeting. Each Chadian leader has said he would attend the talks only if his side was recognized as the sole legitimate government of the central African nation.
A contingency tax increase is expected to be included in the final version of the President’s 1985 budget, according to Administration officials working on the final draft. Other proposals include a cut of about $8 billion in nonmilitary domestic spending for 1985 and cuts in Medicare and other benefit programs of about $4 billion.
Walter F. Mondale won the backing of the nation’s largest feminist group in his campaign for the Democratic nomination for President. The endorsement by the National Organization for Women, which has 250,000 members, followed intense lobbying efforts by Mondale supporters as well as those of three other Democrats seeking the nomination. This was the first time in the organization’s 17-year history that it endorsed a Presidential candidate.
40 recent fires on the campus of the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, though small, have gradually interrupted the work of its 12,000 students. A third student was arrested Thursday, but evidence of another fire was found the next morning in a residence hall, where most of the fires have been set.
The amount of electricity generated by nuclear power plants in the United States will double in the next seven years, the government’s Energy Information Administration said, but after that the future of the atom as a major energy source is clouded by financial uncertainty. A report from the Worldwatch Institute said nuclear reactors slated for completion in this decade will produce electricity at rates much higher than new coal- or oil-powered plants. The institute blamed the situation on huge cost overruns, high interest rates, haphazard government regulation and construction contracts that discourage efficiency.
The combat readiness of aircraft carrier battle groups is suffering from a shortage of spare parts and ammunition that will take several years to remedy, Congress has been told. The Navy has been forced to use “cross-decking,” a practice in which supplies are transferred among ships at sea to keep them adequately supplied, investigators for the General Accounting Office recently reported to the House Government Operations Committee. The report suggested that the Navy’s chief problem in failing to meet shortages has been its concentration on buying new ships and not spending enough on operations and maintenance.
A 21-year-old man convicted at age 15 of killing two subway riders “for the experience” has been freed from McCormack Secure Center in Brooktondale, New York, after five years in custody, the New York Daily News reported. The five-year sentence that Willie Bosket Jr. received in 1978, then the maximum for a juvenile, led to a public outcry and tougher juvenile justice laws. In 1978, then-Governor Hugh L. Carey said Bosket’s five-year term “clearly shows the system has failed.”
A Cook County grand jury investigating Chicago’s purchase of nearly $2 million in street sweepers without soliciting bids may summon former Mayor Jane M. Byrne, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. The newspaper said the city bought the 25 diesel-powered sweepers for $1.8 million from firms that contributed to Byrne’s campaign fund. The newspaper said the Byrne administration bought the sweepers in May, 1982, from Standard Equipment Co. and Schuster Equipment Co. The state’s attorney’s office may consider charges of official misconduct if it is determined that Byrne was personally involved in the purchase, the newspaper said. Howard Henneman, a senior engineer involved in the purchases, said the sweepers were bought without bids because the street sweeping situation was considered an emergency when it was discovered that more than half of the city’s nearly 100 sweepers were out of service.
The son of a slain mob leader escaped harm today when he was ambushed by members of a rival faction, only four days after a relative of another reputed underworld boss was slain in his mother’s back yard, the authorities said. No injuries were reported in today’s incident. Salvatore Testa, the 26-year-old son of Philip Testa, and three bodyguards were driving in a warehouse-residential area of south Philadelphia when their car was blocked by a second car carrying four men, according to Sgt. Joseph Strausser of the Philadelphia police. Gunshots erupted, but officers had not determined whether the two factions exchanged gunfire, the sergeant said.
Giant panda Ling-Ling, suffering from a potentially fatal kidney ailment, was reported 100% better, although her recovery remained uncertain. Meanwhile, Chinese zookeepers said they had a panda in Peking with a similar disorder, but could not say how to treat it. Doctors at the National Zoo in Washington have been injecting Ling-Ling with antibiotics and steroids and said they believe the drugs have had a positive effect.
A federal judge in Kansas City ordered the distribution of $600,000 from a settlement fund to two Kansas City agencies, one of several steps winding down litigation stemming from the 1981 Hyatt Regency hotel disaster. U.S. District Judge Scott O. Wright directed Crown Center Redevelopment Corp., a Hallmark Cards Inc. subsidiary that owns the hotel, to contribute $500,000 to the Rehabilitation Institute and $100,000 to the Community Blood Bank of Greater Kansas City. Crown Center set up two funds in January as part of a federal class-action settlement of the July, 1981, collapse of two skywalks in the hotel lobby that left 114 persons dead and more than 200 others injured.
Indiana’s law requiring asbestos workers to file lung ailment claims within two years of their last exposure is constitutional, even though it may take 20 years for symptoms to appear, a federal appeals court has ruled. But a minority opinion in the case called the decision “a mockery of justice.” In a 2-to-1 decision handed down Friday by the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, the majority upheld a ruling on the deadlines for filing damage claims. Seven people employed by the World Bestos Division of Firestone Tire and Rubber Company in New Castle, Indiana, had filed suit based on the Constitution’s due process provisions.
A federal appeals court Friday upheld a lower court’s rejection of the Oglala Sioux tribe’s claim to the Homestake Mine, the largest gold mine in the Northern Hemisphere. The tribe, asserting that its land in the Black Hills of South Dakota had been trespassed on for 106 years, had asked a federal District Court to bar the mining company from interfering with the lucrative mine and to award them compensatory and exemplary damages. But Judge Andrew Bogue refused the tribe’s request, and a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit upheld the decision.
Distribution of income in the U.S. has become more unequal and the middle class has shrunk as many families sank into poverty or near poverty in the last few years, according to two studies. The studies reached a similar conclusion, though based on different sources of income data and different statistical methods.
American cytogeneticist Barbara McClintock, aged 81, is the first woman to be solely awarded Nobel prize for Physiology or Medicine for her discovery of genetic transposition in maize.
Australian Open Women’s Tennis: Martina Navratilova wins 8th career Grand Slam singles event; beats Kathy Jordan of the US 6-2, 7-6.
NFL Football:
Don Strock threw two touchdown passes today to lead the Miami Dolphins to a 31—24 National Football League victory over the Atlanta Falcons. Dan Marino, Miami’s rookie starting quarterback who sprained his knee last week, watched and cheered from the sidelines as Strock led the Dolphins to 4 touchdowns, completing 18 of 23 passes for 229 yards. Strock was making his 19th start in a 10-year career in which he has served mainly as Miami’s “relief pitcher.” He threw scoring passes of 7 yards to tight end Joe Rose and 15 yards to halfback Tony Nathan. Miami, the American Conference Eastern Division champion, improved its record to 11-4 and continued its quest for the home-field advantage for its first playoff game. Atlanta fell to 6-9 with its second straight loss. The Atlanta quarterback Steve Bartkowski, the league’s second- rated passer, returned from a two- game layoff because of a knee injury to complete 15 of 26 passes for 175 yards and a touchdown to Floyd Hodge. The Falcons, who were behind by 17—3 at halftime, pulled within a touchdown on Gerald Riggs’s 2-yard run 4:27 into the second half. But Miami scoring runs of 1 yard by the fullback Andra Franklin and 13 yards by the halfback David Overstreet put the game out of reach.
In the last NFL game at Shea Stadium, the Pittsburgh Steelers beat the New York Jets, 34—7. The loss, which dropped the Jets to a 7-8 mark with one game remaining, ended with hundreds of young fans rushing the field and tearing up the sod for souvenirs. The Steelers, who clinched a playoff berth with the victory, did it with two names that evoked memories of Super Bowls past: Terry Bradshaw, the 35-year-old quarterback, and Franco Harris, the 33-year-old fullback. In his first appearance in 11 months following elbow surgery, Bradshaw threw for two touchdowns before reinjuring his right arm, and Harris produced the 47th 100-yard game of his career. Thus, the Jets expired before their Shea Stadium lease, which runs out after 20 seasons on January 31. Next year the Jets will play their home games at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, a place where many cynical banner-wavers at Shea yesterday told them they should already be.
As the game ended, a line of helmeted New York City police officers appeared under one goal post and the fans dashed to the other side of the field, toward the open end of the stadium. There, they tore down the goal post, then returned to the opposite end and tore down the other one. After the goal posts were torn down, many fans pelted the police with clumps of sod, backing the officers to the safety of the protective glass behind the home-plate end. Although none of the players was injured, Todd was pelted with beer and paper cups in the exit in front of the stands when he was escorted from the field by security guards with about two minutes to play. According to Lieutenant Robert Becker of the New York Police Department, about 15 people were arrested.
Atlanta Falcons 24, Miami Dolphins 31
Pittsburgh Steelers 34, New York Jets 7
Born:
D’Brickashaw Ferguson, NFL tackle (Pro Bowl, 2009-2011; New York Jets), in New York, New York.
Brandon Jones, MLB outfielder (Atlanta Braves), in Panama City, Florida.
Christian Proulx, Canadian NHL defenseman (Montreal Canadiens), in Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada.
Died:
Dorothy Cummings, 84, actress (“Dancing Mothers”).
Patrick O’Moore, 74, actor (“Jungle Gents”).
History Diaries 