Fighter jets scream over the rooftops of the Turkish quarter in Nicosia, Cyprus, early today. It is the third time in four days that jets have swooped low over Cyprus. The new buzzing comes after the United Nations Security Council, in New York, hears the issues in the Greek-Turkish Cypriot dispute at a midnight emergency meeting. The Security Council adjourns without taking action when Turkey denies her warships are massing off the Mediterranean island.
Cyprus charged early today that Turkish warships were maneuvering in its vicinity and might have invaded it but for a midnight meeting of the Security Council of the United Nations. The council met at 11:45 o’clock last night and adjourned 90 minutes later without action after Turkey gave assurances that its warships were not bound for Cyprus but had to pass through adjacent waters to get from one Turkish port to another. No date was set immediately for another meeting. Cypriot Ambassador Zenon Rossides charged that Turkish residents of Cyprus’ capital city of Nicosia, which is divided into Turkish and Greek communities, began fighting last week and continued despite formal Christmas eve agreement on a cease-fire.
Turkish Ambassador Adnan Kural counter-charged that the Greek community started a campaign on December 21 to wipe out the Turks on the island. Replying to Rossides’ assertion that there was no firing from the Greek side of the dividing line, he said he could produce pictures of “children lifted up by the ears and shot and killed.” Kural said no Turkish troops took part in the fighting. “They are disciplined troops and they remain so. When these soldiers saw others being massacred around them and Turks being slaughtered, it must have been difficult for them to obey orders and refrain, but they did,” he said. Kural said Turkey had given assurances that no Turkish ships were heading for Cyprus. He asked for assurances that Greek terrorists “would be willing to respect the ceasefire and stop the massacres and slaughter.”
Western allied officials were taken by surprise today when the West Berlin city government broke precedent and communicated with the East German communist government about the slaying of a refugee on the Berlin Wall Christmas day. American, British and French officials feared that the West Berlin regime’s action had introduced a dangerous new element into the east-west relationship over Berlin. Neither the western allies nor West Germany, recognizes the East German government. The allies have held firmly to the position that they alone must deal with the east over incidents in the divided city. The allies have dealt only with the Russians, the occupiers of East Berlin and East Germany. This has led to confrontations at gunpoint particularly when access rights in the air and on the ground between West Germany and Berlin are involved. But today, Horst Korber, councilor in the West Berlin city government, met in East Berlin with Erich Wendt, East German state secretary, in the name of governing Mayor Willy Brandt. Korber told Wendt that the “inexcusable incident” at the wall had betrayed the aim of the visitors permit agreement that allows West Berliners to see close relatives in East Berlin during the current 18-day holiday period.
Brandt and his West Berlin government had stirred speculation over their negotiations with the East Germans for the Christmas passes permitting the West Berliners to visit relatives in East Berlin. Many Germans expressed fear that the pass agreement paved the way for East Germany to claim de facto recognition by West Berlin. Indeed, the communist press was quick to state this claim publicly. Brandt’s complaint was delivered to East Germany after Ernst Lemmer, a former West German cabinet minister, accused the West Berlin city government of trying to play down the shooting.
President Johnson said today that present and future relations between the Soviet Union and the western world will be “the most important part” of his talks this weekend with Chancellor Ludwig Erhard of West Germany. The President asserted the United States is willing to “go down any road” — explore any approaches or avenues — which can lead to permanent peace. The United States, he said, is willing to do its part in this effort. He said relations can be improved between the communist and non-communist worlds.
Erhard, who arrived in Houston today, will go to Austin tomorrow morning for discussions tomorrow and Sunday at President Johnson’s Texas ranch. The President said today he knows the West German chancellor and the government leaders of other allied nations share his views regarding the paramount importance of peaceful relations between the east and the west. “I don’t know of any world leader who doesn’t want peace,” the chief executive commented. “The question is which road to follow.” Johnson discussed his forthcoming meeting with Erhard at an impromptu news conference during a barbecue he gave on his ranch today for 150 reporters and photographers covering his Christmas-New Year holiday stay in Texas.
The United States lodged a strong protest with the Bulgarian communist government tonight after an organized riotous attack by 3,000 shouting Bulgarians on the American legation in Sofia. Richard Johnson, acting charge d’affaires, made the protest when he called on Deputy Foreign Minister Lubomir Angelov to discuss the damage to the legation building, a United States official said. The United States is demanding compensation for the damage. The Bulgarians pelted the legation with missiles, smashing windows, and overturned four American diplomatic cars during the demonstration.
Tunisia, North Africa’s chief beneficiary of United States foreign aid, will recognize Red China. A formal announcement is expected next week when Chou En-lai returns to Africa from a trip to Albania, one of the few communist bloc nations to go along with the “hard line” of communist ideology.
An important Islamic holy relic for Muslims in India, a 600-year-old strand of hair from the prophet Muhammad, was stolen from the Hazratbal Shrine in Srinagar, the summer capital of India’s Jammu & Kashmir state, leading to riots throughout the city and the deaths of two rioters. State Premier Khwaja Shams-ud-Din announced a $21,000 reward and a $105 annual stipend for the recovery of the relic, referred to as the “Mu-i-Mubarak, which had been brought to the Hazratbal in 1699. The relic — a brown hair, encased in a small glass tube, in a green bag in a silver box that had been locked inside the shrine — would reappear just as mysteriously on January 4.
It was announced that the number of Regions of Italy would go from 19 to 20, as the region of Abruzzi e Molise was divided into two new regions, effective 1970 with the approval of the new article 132 of the Italian Constitution. The 20th region, Molise, was created from the provinces of Campobasso and Isernia, while the provinces of Chieti, L’Aquila, Pescara and Teramo were to constitute Abruzzo.
President Johnson, in a major diplomatic shake-up, continued his efforts to shore up faltering U.S. policy in Latin America by announcing the removal of Teodoro Moscoso as the coordinator for the Alliance for Progress.
Senator Barry Goldwater’s prospects plummeted and Richard M. Nixon’s surged upward in the last two months, an Associated Press Republican Presidential poll revealed. Goldwater is still leading, but his lead is not as large as in October.
Food prices, which usually decline in November, went up instead this year and helped boost living costs to another record high. Higher housing costs also were a major factor in sending the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ consumer-price-index up 2 of 1% over October -to 107.4% of the 1957-59 average. Commenting on the monthly report released Friday, Arnold Chase, assistant commissioner of the BLS, predicted another increase in the index for December.
In November it stood 1.3% above a year earlier. Chase said the increase for the entire year might be in the area of 1.6%, one of the largest in recent years. Consumer prices went up 3% in 1957, 1.7% in 1958 and only .6 of 1% in 1961, which is regarded as a recession year. An increase of 1.6% this year would equal that of 1960. Chase said about one-third of the 1.3% increase so far this year could be attributed to higher state and local taxes.
John Kenneth Galbraith, the Harvard economist, told the nation that it has enthroned economic goals at the expense of aesthetic needs.
Major George Stewart, head of selective service in Illinois, says Eugene Keyes, 22-year-old pacifist, violated federal statutes when he burned his draft card on Christmas eve as a protest against compulsory military service. Keyes set fire to his draft card outside the Champaign selective service office and used the flaming card to light a candle as a “symbol of vigilance” and “a prayer for peace on earth.”
The Fair Play for Cuba committee is going out of business as a national pressure group, sources in New York City disclose. They say V. T. Lee, the group’s third national chairman in 27 turbulent months, has resigned. Federal agents have discovered correspondence between Lee and Lee Harvey Oswald, President Kennedy’s accused assassin.
James Francis Burns, an unemployed kitchen worker of Hartford, Connecticut, is arrested on a federal warrant, charged with threatening the life of President Johnson. Federal agents say Burns threatened to “pull an Oswald” if he didn’t get satisfaction on a claim for revision of his undesirable discharge from military service.
The U.S. Department of Justice accused Max Factor and Co. of Los Angeles with fixing retail prices on cosmetics since 1959.
A California biologist said that his experiments with mice indicate that humans probably are wilder and less domesticated than psychologists believe.
The stock market weathered a late day decline and closed with most issues somewhat higher, despite year-end profit taking.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 762.95 (+2.74).
Born:
Gamal Mubarak, Egyptian politician, to Hosni Mubarak and his wife Suzanne, in Cairo, Egypt.
Dana Chladek, Czech-American slalom kayaker (Olympics, bronze 1992, silver 1996), in Děčín, Czechoslovakia.
Jim Leyritz, MLB catcher, first baseman, and third baseman (World Series Champions-Yankees, 1996, 1999; New York Yankees, Anaheim Angels, Texas Rangers, Boston Red Sox, San Diego Padres, Los Angeles Dodgers), in Lakewood, Ohio.
Mark Pike, NFL defensive end and linebacker (Buffalo Bills), in Elizabethtown, Kentucky (d. 2021).
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