Soviet high-level talks will resume on January 18 in Stockholm, the State Department announced. Department officials said they expected the discussions to include arms control and all other outstanding issues. Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko have agreed to meet that day while they are both in the Swedish capital.
The head of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization expressed regret today at the decision of the United States to withdraw from the agency, which is based here. The United States, which provides one quarter of the UNESCO budget, served formal notice of withdrawal Thursday. It will become effective December 31, 1984. In a first official reaction, a communique published here tonight said the Director General of UNESCO, Amadou-Mahtar M’Bow, was studying a communication from Secretary of State George P. Shultz in order to reply to it. The statement said the Director General could only regret a decision that, if put into effect, would be prejudicial to the principle of the universality of the 161-member organization.
Full diplomatic ties with the Vatican are expected to be established by President Reagan, who will “in all likelihood” send a representative there with the rank of ambassador, an Administration official said.
President Hafez al-Assad of Syria has agreed to meet Saturday with the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the civil rights leader and candidate for the Democratic Presidential nomination, who arrived here tonight to seek the release of a captured United States flier. Mr. Jackson and his delegation of five clergymen and several campaign aides were met by the United States Ambassador and Syrian Government officials. Within hours of his arrival, Mr. Jackson was told that meetings had been arranged with Mr. Assad, Foreign Minister Abdel Halim Khaddam and the flier, Lieut. Robert O. Goodman Jr. Mr. Jackson said in an interview that his success in arranging these meetings so shortly after arriving meant that the flier was now being thought of as beyond “linkage” to the political and diplomatic tangle that the United States and Syria are in over Lebanon.
“We are going to meet with everyone we wanted to meet with and we have heard some unlikely people talk about Lieutenant Goodman and his situation totally apart from his being ‘war bait,’ ” Mr. Jackson said. The lieutenant, a bombardier, was captured December 4 when his plane was shot down during a 28-plane United States air strike against Syrian antiaircraft positions west of Beirut, Lebanon. The pilot of the A-6E Intruder, Lieut. Mark A. Lange, was fatally wounded and his body was returned by Syria. Others in the delegation joined Mr. Jackson in his optimism about securing Lieutenant Goodman’s release.
Israel closed the crossing points between northern Lebanon and the Israeli-occupied south. No explanation was offered for the closings, which, Israeli officials said, would remain in effect until Monday. The closings coincided with Muslim protests against Israel’s 18-month-old occupation of southern Lebanon. Anger is rising, particularly among militant Shiite Muslims.
Lebanon’s Government might fall if the United States Marines were withdrawn, Lebanon’s Ambassador said in Washington, prefacing his remarks with the statement that his government wished the marines had never been sent to Beirut.
Yasser Arafat arrived here today for the first of a series of meetings intended to redefine policy. Speaking at an airport news conference, the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization said, “Our revolution is like a phoenix which, each time it is thought to have died, rises from its own ashes, more solid, more firmly and with greater strength.” Mr. Arafat arrived from Sana, Yemen, for a meeting of the central committee of Al Fatah, his own guerrilla group, which is the main faction of the P.L.O.
The Polisario Front said today that its guerrillas attacked Moroccan forces in the Western Sahara on Thursday, killing more than 100 men and destroying 60 vehicles. A communique issued by the Algerian press agency did not mention casualties among the guerrillas, who have fought an eight-year desert war for the independence of the territory. The daylong battle reportedly took place in Khechbiyine, 45 miles east of the phosphate mines at Bou Craa, outside the main permanent Moroccan defense lines. The Polisario Front said last week that 25,000 Moroccan troops had launched a major offensive in the same area.
Nine of the 108 Pershing missiles to be deployed in West Germany are fully operational, the Defense Ministry announced in Bonn, but the United States Army refused to confirm or deny the announcement.
The Polish Government has decided to delay and perhaps modify planned food-price increases because of sharp public opposition, officials said today. A Prices Ministry official said the increases, averaging 10 to 15 percent and due to be imposed next month, had been postponed at least until February. The official press agency said the Politburo had re-examined the increases and would discuss them with trade unions “whose opinions will be taken into the widest possible consideration in work on a modified concept of price rises.”
France expelled five Iranians on Thursday, and diplomats here said they were trained terrorists who had long been under the surveillance of French counterintelligence units. The expulsion of the five, who were in France as students, came less than a week after three Iranian diplomats were asked to leave the country and an Iranian cultural center was closed. According to a report on the activities of the Iranian Embassy in Paris that was prepared this year by the Division of Territorial Surveillance, France’s counterintelligence service, 150 to 300 trained militants operate in France posing as students. The embassy directs the clandestine activities and the cultural center was the operating headquarters of the propaganda and terrorist organization, said the report, which was obtained by the newspaper Liberation. It said the militants worked directly under specific diplomats charged with terrorism and subversion.
Increased Iranian surveillance flights over the Persian Gulf have created concern in the Defense Department that Iran may be preparing for aerial suicide attacks against American warships, Pentagon officials said today. The officials stressed that there was no hard evidence linking the the reconnaissance flights to possible attacks, but they said intelligence reports had described the Iranian air activity as a troubling development. The Iranian Air Force, although in poor repair, includes several dozen advanced American fighter planes that remain in operating condition, according to Pentagon officials. The planes were acquired before Shah Mohammed Riza Pahlevi was overthrown by Moslem fundamentalists in 1979.
The reconnaissance activity, the officials said, could be related to the war between Iran and Iraq, but they said the Navy was concerned about the possibility that the flights might be preparation for suicide attacks with small aircraft against American ships in the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea. A Navy spokesman said there were now 5 American warships in the Persian Gulf and 10 in the Arabian Sea.
The officials reported that there was also intelligence information suggesting that Iranian agents had stolen United States Army trucks in West Germany, possibly in preparation for attacks against American bases there. One intelligence official said that because of recent attacks on Americans in the Middle East, including the truck bombings of the Marine headquarters in Beirut and the American Embassy in Kuwait, the Pentagon viewed any unusual Iranian military activity with alarm. “There may or may not be something there,” the official said, “but everyone would rather be too sensitive than not sensitive enough.”
Salvadoran guerrillas overran an army base 40 miles north of the capital and held it for six hours before withdrawing. The attack, the first time in the four-year-old civil war that the insurgents had overrun an army base, was described by an American official as a “serious defeat” for Government troops.
Riot troops and mounted policemen charged into a crowd demonstrating against Uruguay’s 10-year-old military Government on Thursday night and arrested about 100 people, witnesses said. Several demonstrators were kicked, punched and hit with riot sticks, they said. One man was beaten by several policemen and then dragged to a building site, where witnesses said an officer kicked his head. Motorists on Montevideo’s main avenue blew their horns and neighbors banged saucepans on their balconies in protest during the charge. The demonstration in support of the owner of an independent radio station shut down by the Government was staged outside the apartment where he has been on hunger strike.
Three white Zimbabwean Air Force officers released from detention in Harare a week ago flew into Britain today, and one said he had been tortured. The three were the last of seven officers who were cleared of sabotage charges in August but immediately detained again under Zimbabwe’s emergency laws. The other four were released and also went to Britain. The seven were cleared when a judge ruled that the confessions they had made were extracted under torture.
Air Lieutenant Barrington Lloyd, 32 years old, said he had been tortured with electric charges in a session lasting more than two hours and had suffered nightmares for months afterward. “The torture consisted of a generator, hand-operated, with terminals connected to various parts of the body,” he said. “It caused convulsions and they were attached in every way, including to the genitals.”
Release of Nixon White House papers was blocked by a federal district judge. The Government had planned, beginning Tuesday, to release the 1.5 million confidential documents that were in the White House when President Nixon resigned in 1974. Public release of the documents could theoretically have begun this Tuesday under regulations issued by the General Services Administration. But Judge Thomas F. Hogan held the regulations were invalid because they had been promulgated under a 1974 law that authorized either house of Congress to veto them. This section of the Presidential Recordings and Materials Preservation Act of 1974 was unconstitutional, Judge Hogan said, under the Supreme Court’s sweeping decision last June striking down all such “legislative veto” provisions.
President Reagan plays golf in Palm Springs, California during the Christmas Holiday.
Poor black men are getting more attention as sociologists, civil rights leaders and government planners focus on the tremendous growth in the number of households headed by black women, nearly 50 percent of all black families. Experts agree that an unchecked decline of black men as heads of households could be devastating for future generations.
Senator Ernest F. Hollings, in an interview, said federal deficits must be cut to encourage private investment, capitalization and re-employing workers. He urged more day care centers and enforcement of trade laws. He called for freezing spending on military programs, social programs and automatic benefit programs except for Supplementary Security Income.
A federal district judge today struck down a state law requiring pharmacists to notify parents of teenagers who try to buy contraceptives. Judge David K. Winder ruled the law unconstitutional, saying it would increase the risk of pregnancy and would not, as the state contended, limit sexual activity. “The facts demonstrate that minors seek contraceptives after becoming sexually active, not before,” Judge Winder wrote. Planned Parenthood of Utah had filed a lawsuit contending that the law, passed by the Legislature earlier this year, violated Federal laws and restricted minors’ constitutional rights to privacy.
A historic event in Chicago occurred when Mayor Harold Washington and a hostile City Council agreed on a compromise budget. It was the first time in 50 years that a Chicago mayor has had to engage in give and take on a budget. In the past, a mayor told the Council what he wanted. and the Council complied.
Massachusetts health officials, following Florida’s lead, say they will begin testing grain-based foods next week for contamination with the cancer-causing pesticide ethylene dibromide. Public Health Commissioner Bailus Walker Jr. announced the decision Thursday after conferences including a consultation by telephone with Stephen King, the Florida Health Officer. Florida banned the sale of more than 70 food items after tests indicated they could be tainted with the pesticide, known as EDB. It has been used to fumigate harvested wheat and corn.
The Vought Corporation, a subsidiary of the LTV Corporation, received an $82.7 million Army contract for parts for a multiple-launching rocket system, the Defense Department said. In addition, it said The United Technologies Corporation’s Sikorsky Aircraft division had been given a $30.4 million Navy contract for 11 helicopters.
The dollar turned in a mixed performance in light foreign exchange trading yesterday, closing out a year in which it rose 12.2 percent in relation to the currencies of major United States trading partners. Prices of precious metals were mixed in Europe and edged higher in the United States. Gold’s price fell 15.1 percent in the year and silver, 18.6 percent. The dollar, buoyed through much of 1983 by the high level of American interest rates relative to those in other major industrial nations, drifted lower in the final days of the year as United States economic signals seemed to point to lower interest rates.
The stock market ended one of its best years in history yesterday with minor price changes in less active trading. The Dow Jones industrial average, which moved in a narrow range throughout the day, fell 1.52 points, to 1,258.64. In the overall market, advancing issues on the New York Stock Exchange outscored those that declined by 959 to 676. For the entire year, the Dow average, which is made up of 30 major companies, soared 212 points, or 20.3 percent. Volume on the exchange climbed to 21.6 billion shares, eclipsing the former high of 16.5 billion posted in 1982. Analysts attributed the market’s performance this year mostly to the stronger-than-expected recovery and the decline in interest rates in the first half of the year. As a result, by June 16, the Dow average had set 23 new closing highs.
Peach Bowl, Atlanta, Georgia: Florida State 28, North Carolina 3. Eric Thomas of Florida State, a sophomore making his first collegiate start, stunned North Carolina with a pair of first-quarter touchdown passes to Weegie Thompson and led the Seminoles to a 28—3 victory over the Tar Heels today in the 16th annual Peach Bowl. Thomas hit Thompson on an 18- yard toss in the end zone to cap a 69-yard drive in nine plays after the opening kickoff. He connected with Thompson again on a 15-yard scoring pass less than four minutes later. Florida State, which finished at 7-5, scored a third touchdown before halftime and led, 21—0, at the half. Roosevelt Snipes dived into the end zone from the 1 after a fumbled punt was recovered by the Seminoles on the North Carolina 16. North Carolina’s only scoring came on a 36-yard field goal by Brooks Barwick early in the fourth quarter after the Tar Heels marched 71 yards to Florida State’s 20. Thomas closed out the scoring by sneaking over from 1 yard out with 31 seconds to play. He was named the game’s most valuable offensive player after completing 7 of 13 passes for 99 yards and rushing 13 times for 41 yards. He was playing in place of the injured starter Kelly Lowery and his backup, Bob Davis, who was passed over in favor of Thomas by Coach Bobby Bowden. The Tar Heels were held to 182 yards in total offense, including only 32 yards on the ground in 26 attempts.
Gator Bowl, Jacksonville, Florida: Florida 14, Iowa 6. Neal Anderson’s 1-yard touchdown run capped an 87-yard drive in the first quarter and Doug Drew recovered a fumbled snap by the Iowa punter for a second-period score to help Florida win a chilly Gator Bowl game, 14—6, tonight. It was the lowest-scoring Gator Bowl game since Maryland defeated Florida by 13—0 in 1975. Iowa’s Chuck Long, the nation’s No. 2-ranked passer and leader of the nation’s third-best offense, had 4 passes intercepted after having had only 8 intercepted in 236 passing attempts all season. The Gators turned the first interception, one of two by the free safety Tony Lilly, into the 87-yard touchdown drive. Anderson started it with a 47-yard run and finished it by taking a pitchout for the final yard that helped provide a 7-0 lead at 14:20 of the first period. An interception by the linebacker Mark Korff at Florida’s 23 stalled the Hawkeyes. But Tom Nichol’s 32-yard field goal after an 88-yard march made the score 7—3 with 5:45 remaining in the half. When Nichol was trying to punt from the end zone, he bobbled Joel Hilgenberg’s snap. The ball hit the ground and rolled between the legs of Norm Granger of Iowa before Drew, a reserve linebacker, pounced on the ball with 1:08 left in the half for a touchdown. Bobby Raymond’s conversion made the score 14—3.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1258.63 (-1.53).
Born:
Paul Soliai, Samoan-American NFL defensive tackle and nose tackle (Pro Bowl, 2011; Miami Dolphins, Atlanta Falcons, Carolina Panthers), in Santa Ana, California.
Kevin Systrom, American entrepreneur, computer programmer and co-founder of Instagram, in Holliston, Massachusetts.
History Diaries 