After two days of detailed talks in Washington with Secretary of State Kissinger, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan of Israel said that he hoped his country was now ready to take “the first step” toward peace with Egypt by reaching an accord on the separation of Israeli and Egyptian forces. Both Mr. Kissinger and General Dayan stressed that the purpose of the visit to Washington was to outline Israeli views on how to accomplish the disengagement of forces and to listen to American advice before making a specific proposal at the current talks on disengagement in Geneva.
Heavy outbreaks of fighting between Israeli and Egyptian forces in and around the city of Suez were reported by the headquarters of the United Nations Emergency Force in Cairo, which described the situation as “tense.” Artillery and machine-gun fire and shrapnel were reported to have struck buildings occupied by a Finnish contingent of the United Nations force, and a Finnish platoon doing exercises on a road at Suez reportedly came under direct fire, though no one was hit.
The Viet Cong charged today that the United States was continuing to fly unpiloted reconnaissance aircraft over Communist‐held territory in South Vietnam in violation of the Paris cease‐fire agreement. At the weekly news conference of the Viet Cong’s Provisional Revolutionary Government, Major Ngo Thanh accused the United States of carrying out missions with the pilotless SR‐71-launched drone on December 26, 27, 29 and 31, and January 2. The charge was in line with the Viet Cong’s continuing effort to link the United States directly with the increased fighting in South Vietnam. One of the main targets of Viet Cong accusations, both in this morning’s session and during the previous several months, has been the South Vietnamese Air Force, which the Communists say has staged intense bombing and strafing attacks on Communist troops and areas under Viet Cong control.
A Pentagon spokesman, asked about the Viet Cong charge, said today: “We never discuss reconnaissance flights.”
The Nixon Administration is moving ahead with plans to ask Congress for increased arms aid to South Vietnam during the current fiscal year, according to number of Administration officials. President Nixon, Secretary of State Kissinger and Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger are known to have approved the general planning, but have not yet decided on the total aid package or how it will be presented to Congress. Sources throughout the Administration say that serious differences have developed among the planners. One group, led by the American Ambassador to Saigon, Graham A. Martin, and supported by the staff of the National Security Council, wants to provide Saigon with modern sophisticated weapons in a total aid package of about $1‐billion. A second group, consisting of key elements in the Pentagon and State Department, is hesitant about giving Saigon new weapons and wants to keep the total arms aid down to about $400‐million.
Terrorists attacked the home of the Cambodian Army commander with rockets and grenades today, the military police reported. They said the commander, General Sosthene Fernandez, was not hurt, but a guard was wounded. Two rockets were fired at the house, but they exploded in a tree, the military police said. Two grenades were also hurled at the house. One landed in the front yard, wounding a guard. The terrorists escaped in three-wheeled taxi that met them after the attack, the report said. The authorities said the terrorists left behind ammunition and a rocket launcher.
On the diplomatic front, government official said yesterday that rebel forces had agreed to exploratory peace talks. Other officials said the report was inspired by a one‐man gesture with no official status and little chance of success.
The sinking of a ferryboat in strong winds and high seas in the central Philippines may have left as many as 82 persons drowned. At least 37 bodies were recovered, including those of 11 children. Still missing were 45 others. The ferry sank off Bagacay Point in Cebu province, 330 miles south of Manila, on a return trip from Baybay town in Leyte province. Most of the passengers were believed to be returning from Christmas holidays. Officials said the ship was not overloaded.
The Worli riots began in the chawl of the Worli neighborhood of Bombay when the police attempted to disperse a rally of the Dalit Panthers that had turned violent.
Extremists bombed a paint shop in the Roman Catholic Ardoyne area of Belfast and in another part of the city an assassin’s bullet killed a Catholic when he answered a knock at his door. In Londonderry, British troops fired rubber bullets to disperse stone-throwing youths in a Catholic area of the city. The new violence came as Brian Faulkner, leader of Northern Ireland’s new Protestant-Catholic coalition government, vowed to defy his Unionist Party’s rejection of cooperation with the Irish Republic.
French police arrested three men who, they said, were involved in a clandestine press conference at which Basque separatists gave details of how they allegedly assassinated Spanish Premier Luis Carrero Blanco. Two of the men were picked up in a car outside Bordeaux, while the third was arrested in town. Police did not specify the men’s exact role in the December 28 press conference at which four hooded men told of the assassination.
Spain’s newspapers welcomed a pledge by the new premier, Carlos Arias Navarro, to develop rights and liberties and agreed the promise may be the start of gradual political reform. The feeling was expressed by papers representing the three main trends in Spanish politics-the monarchist ABC, the Catholic Ya, and the Falangist Arriba. Arias had outlined his new government program in a statement viewed as one of the most liberal ever made in the 34 years of General Francisco Franco’s regime.
Romania has put a virtual stop to the emigration of Jews, according to reliable sources in Vienna. Bucharest authorities reportedly have refused even to accept, let alone handle, applications for exit permits to Israel from Jews under pension age. Jewish emigration from Romania, the only Communist country to maintain diplomatic relations with both Israel and the Arab states, has been severely restricted since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
U.S. Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger plans a diplomatic offensive to invigorate U.S. relations with Latin America. He was overheard telling the Argentine ambassador to the United States that he expects to tour several South American capitals during the first half of April prior to a meeting of Organization of American States foreign ministers in Atlanta. He also plans to attend a February meeting of hemispheric foreign ministers in Mexico.
An earthquake in Lima, Peru, kills six people, and damages hundreds of houses.
Grenada, southernmost of the Windward Islands, is moving uneasily but on schedule toward independence on February 7, according to reports reaching here from the Caribbean. For more than three months the lush island, covering about 250 square miles, has been beset by political violence centered on Grenada’s controversial Prime Minister, Eric M. Gairy. Since November there have been repeated strikes, provoked, Mr. Gairy’s political opponents say, by the harsh practice of his private armed guard, group of about 20 men known as the mongoose gang. About 50 percent of Grenada’s well‐organized labor force is unemployed, and inflation is rampant in an economy where the per capita income is well under $300, according to diplomatic sources here.
Rescue workers at St. John, New Brunswick, recovered two bodies from the rubble of a filling station demolished by a massive explosion and fire. Police said that at least three others may have died in the blast, which was apparently touched off by a gas pump knocked over by a truck. Names of the dead and missing were not released pending notification of next of kin.
Divers found three bodies in the wreckage of a fuel oil barge that exploded and burned in the Vancouver, British Columbia, harbor while carrying about 25,000 gallons of gasoline, diesel and heating fuel. A harbor police spokesman said no one else was reported missing in the blast, which demolished the barge and a pleasure craft it was refueling, but divers continued the search. The barge was used as a floating gas station for boats in the harbor.
Liberia’s national airline system has been reorganized under the name Air Liberia with the participation of Howard Hughes’ Air West, according to the newspaper Liberian Age. The news report from Monrovia, the African nation’s capital, said the new airline will have about 15 aircraft flying regional and international routes and that Hughes Air West will provide management for the firm.
An extensive poll of public reaction to discussion of the possible impeachment of President Nixon shows that 79 percent of those polled believe one or more of the most serious charges against the President are justified. While the poll, conducted by the Roper organization, shows a slim majority against impeachment, by 45 percent to 44, indications are that opposition stems not from belief in the President’s innocence, but from fear of the destructive effect of an impeachment proceeding. Only 11 percent of those opposed to impeachment said they took that position because they believed the charges were unjustified. The poll led Roper analysts to conclude that “the President would seem to have a thin hold indeed on his office in the court of public opinion.” Roper polled 2,020 persons.
A previously undisclosed reason for the abrupt dismissal last fall of Archibald Cox as the special Watergate prosecutor was the White House fear that a grand jury would name President Nixon as a co-conspirator, but not as a defendant, for his role in the Watergate cover-up, according to well-informed sources. Such an approach had been discussed by Mr. Cox and his immediate staff as a solution to the constitutional restraint against indicting an incumbent President, the sources said, but no serious consideration was given then to the concept. The naming of a co-conspirator is usually reserved for those participants in a criminal activity who agree to aid the prosecution by testifying against others involved.
Under the influence of rising jet fuel prices and federal regulatory policies, the cost of air travel is increasing at the fastest rate in more than a decade and threatening the mobility of millions of middle-class Americans who have learned to take trips around the world or across the country as a routine part of life. For students, for families traveling together and for many vacationists, the era of special cut-rate fares seems to be coming to an end.
At 2 A. M. tomorrow the United States will begin a nearly nationwide experiment to find whether pushing back nightfall by an hour will help reduce the winter consumption of fuel. The nation will be on daylight saving time until April, 1975.
Many service stations were closed by nightfall in preparation for the nation’s fifth gasless Sunday.
Former Labor Secretary James D. Hodgson predicted an economic decline during the first half of 1974 but forecast a recovery during the last half if the Arab oil boycott were lifted. He predicted an unemployment rate of 6% and a slight drop in the gross national product by the end of June. He said, however, that the Nixon Administration would not allow a full-scale recession. He made his remarks before the Southern Assembly in Biloxi, Mississippi.
A crude oil fire continued to burn out of control at a Texaco oil-producing facility in Dale, Illinois, after an explosion that killed two workmen. An official of one of six fire companies called to the scene said firefighting equipment had been pulled back for fear of another explosion. A Texaco spokesman said no homes or other structures were endangered by the fire. Cause of the explosion, in a storage tank, was under investigation.
A young soldier was charged with murder after a sheriff’s deputy was shot to death as he sat in his patrol car giving directions to a truck driver in Fayetteville, North Carolina Officers said the deputy, Joe Smith Jr., 40, was killed by a hitchhiker who quietly stepped from the truck Smith was directing, walked up to the patrol car and fired a single shot. The gunman then yanked Smith’s body from the car, leaped in and sped away. The patrol car was found wrecked a short time later. Fayetteville policemen arrested John F. Blair, 20, a soldier stationed at Fort Bragg, at a shopping center about a half mile from the wreck and charged him with the slaying.
A judge in Jacksonville, Florida, dismissed a $1 million suit that had been filed against the Florida Times-Union because the newspaper had published a picture related to the death of a girl. The judge ruled that the newspaper had not exceeded its rights in printing a photograph showing an outline that the body of Cindy Fletcher, 17, had left on a charred floor after she was killed in a fire at her Jacksonville home in 1972. The dead girl’s mother, Mrs. Klenna Ann Fletcher, had charged in the suit that a reporter had trespassed in the home and that publication of the photograph was an invasion of privacy and a cause of emotional distress.
The American Newspaper Publishers Association asked the Cost of Living Council to exempt the industry from wage and price controls on the ground that competition makes controls needless. “Natural competitive forces exert efficient and effective control and have done so for many decades-even during two previous control periods when newspapers were exempt,” the association said. It said publishers were squeezed by competitors who were “effectively exempt from controls or enjoy exclusive price flexibilities” and by the cost of Canadian newsprint, also uncontrolled.
Seven naked women screaming from the upper floors of a New York City hotel led police to one of three gunmen who had just robbed the women of cash and jewels, authorities said. Police said three of the victims had been raped by one of the robbers. One suspect was arrested only blocks away from the Bowery area hotel after the women, leaning from windows, pointed him out to officers below. Police said the bandits had ordered the women out of their hotel rooms and forced them to undress and lie on the floor. They then ransacked the rooms for money and jewelry.
Mayor Beame plans to name David Dinkins to a post in his administration if Mr. Dinkins can settle his tax problems soon. The mayor has promised that the person chosen for the job will be Black, and he will be the first Black Deputy Mayor of New York City.
Raul Julia appears on “The Bob Newhart Show” in the episode “Oh, Brother.”
Due to heavy financial losses, Rheingold Beer announces it will close its Brooklyn-based plant. As a result, the brewery will be forced to end its 13-year relationship with the Mets as the team’s primary radio-TV sponsor.
Born:
Mark Redman, MLB pitcher (World Series Champions-Marlins, 2003; All-Star, 2006; Minnesota Twins, Detroit Tigers, Florida Marlins, Oakland A’s, Pittsburgh Pirates, Kansas City Royals, Atlanta Braves, Colorado Rockies), in San Diego, California.
Damon Minor, MLB first baseman and pinch hitter (San Francisco Giants), in Canton, Ohio.
Ryan Minor, MLB third baseman and first baseman (Baltimore Orioles, Montreal Expos), in Canton, Ohio.
Calvin Collins, NFL guard and center (Atlanta Falcons, Minnesota Vikings), in Beaumont, Texas.
Died:
Vincent Starrett, 87, Canadian-born American writer and columnist known for the novel “The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes” and for the “Walter Ghost” mysteries.
J. Pius Barbour, 79, American Baptist pastor, died of gastroenteritis following a cerebral hemorrhage.
Denis William Brogan, 73, Scottish author and historian.
Tay Hohoff (Therese von Hohoff Torrey), 75, American author and literary editor (J. B. Lippincott & Co.)
Lev Oborin, 66, Soviet pianist and music educator.
History Diaries 