President Reagan has reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to its European allies, saying “Europe’s security is indivisible from our own.” In written answers to questions from the French newspaper Le Figaro, he said that widespread protest in Europe against deployment of new U.S. missiles there has not weakened ties. He said the U.S. security commitment to Western Europe “remains completely unchanged: The United States would consider an attack against its… allies as an attack on itself.”
The Soviet Union may soon deploy the 42,000-ton aircraft carrier Novorssiysk in the Far East, a Japanese Defense Agency official speculated in a briefing for Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone. The redeployment of the ship, now on duty in the Middle East, would put two of Moscow’s three Kiev-class carriers with the Soviet Pacific Fleet, and would be in line with Soviet efforts to upgrade its Far East forces, an agency spokesman said.
Criticism of the Soviet fighter pilot who shot down a South Korean airliner four months ago was implicit in a Soviet Air Force magazine article. The article also appeared to express disapproval of the conduct of the officers on the ground who had supervised the airliner’s interception and destruction.
A West German general dismissed from a top-level NATO post said that photographs and other evidence indicating that he is an active homosexual were either forged or resulted from mistaken identity. Press accounts said that General Guenther Kiessling, 58, was ordered in October to retire as a security risk on the basis of a 50-page dossier compiled by detectives. Kiessling, who was the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s deputy supreme commander in Europe, said he has started proceedings to refute the evidence.
While talks were held in Damascus on a final agreement on a disengagement plan for the Lebanon war, heavy shelling between Druse militiamen and Lebanese soldiers broke out in the mountains east and south of Beirut. Despite the renewed fighting, Lebanese officials remained optimistic that the disengagement plan would soon be put into effect. Two United States Marines were slightly wounded when a shell exploded near their base, but they did not fire, a Marine spokesman said.
Iran said that its forces killed more than 230 Iraqi-backed rebels and captured 30 villages in the predominantly Kurdish border area of northwest Iran and northern Iraq during a week-long offensive. The Iranian national news agency said Tehran’s forces penetrated six miles into Iraqi territory to capture the rebel’s main munitions centers in the Mousk region, gained complete control of the Baneh border region and “liberated” 30 villages and two strategic roads. There was no comment from Iraq, and the Iranian report could not be checked.
Prince Talal ibn Abdulaziz, half-brother of Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd, arrived in Cairo on the first high-level visit to Egypt by a member of the Saudi royal family in six years. Diplomatic sources described the prince’s visit as a step toward reconciliation between Egypt and the rest of the Arab world. Talal, welcomed and embraced at the airport by Foreign Minister Kamal Hassan Ali, called Egypt a leader among nations and “the heart of the Arab world.” Talal will meet with President Hosni Mubarak during his five-day visit.
Chad’s foreign minister, Idriss Miskine, died two days after returning from Ethiopia, where he helped prepare peace talks between Chad factions. Official sources in the Chadian capital said the 35-year-old Miskine, President Hissen Habre’s closest associate, died after a violent attack of malaria. There was no word on whether the talks would open Monday as scheduled. They would be the first meeting in four years between Habre and Goukouni Oueddei, who with Libyan backing captured the northern half of Chad last summer.
As “the Supreme Combatant,” President Habib Bourguiba has been Tunisia’s most popular figure for more than 30 years and means to stay that way. Last week, after days of rioting had caused the death of perhaps 50 people, the President resorted to a tactic he has used before – disavowing the policy that triggered the unrest, in this case a 125 percent increase in the cost of bread. Immediately street demonstrators in Tunis changed their shouts from “Down with Bourguiba” to “Long Live Bourguiba.” He then dismissed Interior Minister Driss Guiga, who was in charge of the police, and temporarily assigned Mr. Guiga’s responsibilities to Prime Minister Mohamed Mzali.
Presumably the United States and the West were glad to have Mr. Bourguiba reassert control. A moderate Arab who has called for negotiations with Israel, Mr. Bourguiba has kept Tunisia a generally friendly and stable oasis in an often hostile and turbulent Arab world. But since independence from France in 1956, the country has had periods of unrest fed by problems of underdevelopment and a growing gap between rich and poor. Despite some progress in industrialization, Tunisia does not provide enough jobs for young people, who have benefited from the Government’s heavy expenditure on education but find few outlets for their acquired literacy and other skills. Although more westernized than most Arab states, Tunisia has also been affected by Muslim fundamentalism, particularly among students. Mr. Bourguiba instructed the Cabinet to write another budget with price increases on luxury goods. That policy, while it may be popular, is less likely to meet pressing financial needs.
Brunei becomes the sixth member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
A Central American peace plan drafted by El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Costa Rica calls for the creation of “freely elected” civilian governments throughout the region. The Honduran Foreign Minister, Edgardo Paz Barnica, said the plan was to be presented this weekend at a two-day conference of the so-called Contadora group, composed of the foreign ministers of Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia and Panama. Foreign ministers of the Contadora group and other Latin American nations gathered in Panama City to discuss a Central American peace plan emphasizing demilitarization of the area. In addition, El Salvador, Guatemala, Costa Rica and Honduras will offer a proposal calling for free civilian elections, excluding military-based political parties or militias such as exist in leftist Nicaragua. The Contadora group — Mexico, Panama, Colombia and Venezuela — has sought to mediate between the United States and Nicaragua on a peace plan.
Resuming the only trade the United States and Cuba have had for 20 years, President Fidel Castro and President Reagan last week exchanged accusations and insults that did nothing to foster a meeting of minds. Americans are governed by “Nazi-fascist barbarians,” Mr. Castro said; Cubans by leaders who have kept them in ignorance and poverty, Mr. Reagan asserted. The occasion was the 25th anniversary of the revolution that brought Mr. Castro to power. In Santiago where he began it, the Cuban leader devoted much of his speech to his favorite target, encouraged by an audience that chanted, “Hit the Yankees hard!” He accused the Reagan Administration of leading the world toward nuclear holocaust and of vainly trying to impede revolution in the third world.
Four days later, taking advantage of Cuba’s halt in jamming the air waves, Mr. Reagan jumped into a Voice of America broadcast beamed at Latin America for some refutation. I have kept all my promises, the Cuban asserted. The promises have been betrayed, Mr. Reagan answered. Cuba is “truly free,” Mr. Castro proclaimed. There have never been so many political prisoners as now, Mr. Reagan said. The invasion of Grenada was “a monstrous crime,” according to Mr. Castro. Lives could have been saved if the Cuban Government had respected the desires of the Grenadians and refrained from ordering its men to fight until death, Mr. Reagan argued. So it went and may go on as the President announced that a new radio system, Radio Marti, would begin in the spring to “tell the truth about Cuba to the Cuban people.”
A group led by former President Diosdado Macapagal has completed the draft of a constitution that is to be the basis of a shadow government aimed at ousting President Ferdinand E. Marcos. The document, made available for publication today, provides for a democratic government of the presidential type with a one-house legislature. Its economic platform is nationalistic and its foreign policy neutral.
Mr. Macapagal told reporters that the new charter was legally drafted by the steering committee and other officers of a constitutional convention elected in September 1972. “I recessed the convention but did not adjourn it,” he said. Senator Jose W. Dioko, whose group known as the Movement for Philippine Sovereignty and Democracy is leading the campaign, said in an interview that one of the first steps of the new government would be to negotiate the neutralization of the Philippines with the United States and the Soviet Union.
South Africa’s attacks in Angola appeared to have been stepped up since its campaign against insurgents in southern Angola began four weeks ago. It claimed a major victory in a three-day battle in which it had directly engaged Cuban troops.
The Agency for International Development has announced the approval of $32.7 million in food aid to seven African countries to combat malnutrition and starvation resulting from drought. This will provide an additional 73,000 metric tons of food, bringing 1984 food aid to Africa to 187,000 tons. It has been estimated that Africa’s food requirements for 1984 are 3.2 million tons, according to the agency. The new food aid is for Chad, Mozambique, Rwanda, Ghana, Sao Tome and Principe, Cape Verde and Somalia.
The 1984 campaign debate was joined by House Democrats with an attack on President Reagan’s record and a proposal for a detailed set of policy alternatives on major domestic and foreign issues.
Iowa’s Republicans and Democrats are preparing for the state’s party nominating caucuses that will get under way in six weeks. The focus in one city, Cedar Rapids, is on the economy, with Republicans stressing favorable statistics and Democrats citing the human costs of unemployment.
“Unruly behavior” in schools was discussed by President Reagan in his weekly radio address, in which he called for expansion of the rights of teachers and administrators to enforce school discipline. The President said the Justice Department would file court briefs on behalf of teachers and school officials.
The President and First Lady finish the day with a viewing of “To Be or Not to Be.”
As the election year dawned, there were clues aplenty that crime, a staple of most recent campaigns, was being readied as an issue for yet another Presidential race. Justice Department officials, who usually don’t volunteer much information, disclosed that the Administration would ask Congress for a $200 million increase (about 6 percent) in the department’s budget for fiscal year 1985, giving Justice more than $3.5 billion. Much of the increase, said Edward C. Schmults, Deputy Attorney General, would be used to hire 250 Federal Bureau of Investigation agents and a smaller number of drug enforcement officers. All in all, he said, there had been “a very significant increase in new resources for Federal law enforcement over the past several years.” Last year, Mr. Schmults noted, Congress approved 1,000 new agent jobs in the F.B.I. and the drug agency and in the Treasury Department’s law enforcement agencies.
The federal Bureau of Reclamation is dumping more water through the gates of three dams along the Colorado River to make room in reservoirs for expected heavy snowmelt and forestall a possible repeat of last summer’s devastating floods, federal officials said. The higher water releases through Hoover, Davis and Parker dams could raise the Colorado as much as three feet this week and flood some of the areas that were inundated between last June and September. “We’re right at the marginal point where it (flooding) may or may not occur,” said bureau spokesman Julian Rhinehart.
A Houston teenager was sentenced to death by injection for the stabbing deaths of four video-arcade employees during a robbery that prosecutors said was staged to get money to “buy new clothes.” The jury deliberated for two hours and 20 minutes before ordering the death penalty for Richard James Wilkerson, 19. The jury had convicted him after 30 minutes. Wilkerson’s 16-year-old cousin and a 20-year-old friend await charges in the same case. Wilkerson was fired from the Malibu Grand Prix arcade a week before the July 1 killings.
The staff director of the newly reconstituted U.S. Commission on Civil Rights proposed shifts in the agency’s agenda that could lead it to oppose such traditional civil rights remedies as school busing and affirmative action. In a memo to the panel, Linda Chavez recommended that the commission cancel a study on the effect of budget cuts on predominantly black and Latino colleges. She also recommended studying whether affirmative action adversely affects “members of Eastern and Southern European ethnic groups” and whether affirmative action is related to the “general decline in academic standards” in higher education.
Baby Jane Doe, the deformed infant at the center of a court battle over her parents’ refusal to approve life-extending surgery, was taken off the critical list. The infant, born with multiple birth defects last October 11, was classified as critically ill November 29 by doctors at University Hospital at Stony Brook, New York, after she developed meningitis and pneumonia. The baby’s parents, who have asked to remain anonymous, are locked in a court battle with the Reagan Administration, which wants access to the baby’s medical records to determine if her civil rights are being violated.
A federal appeals court barred the Washington Post from publishing confidential business information obtained from Mobil Oil Corp. in a libel case against the newspaper. The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, by a 3-0 vote, reversed a lower court order that would have allowed the paper to use thousands of Mobil documents reviewed, but never used as evidence, at the libel trial. The documents were made available to the Post to prepare a defense against charges it libeled Mobil President William P. Tavoulareas in 1979 news stories that said he helped his son, Peter, get started in the shipping business. A jury determined that the Post had libeled Tavoulareas and awarded him $2 million, but U.S. District Judge Oliver Gasch overturned the verdict.
Texaco Inc. and the Getty Oil Company are tentatively prepared to close the largest merger in American history, but a judge is delaying the estimated $10 billion agreement so that heirs of the oilman J. Paul Getty can study it. Judge Richard Byrne of Superior Court here has blocked the merger until Monday to allow lawyers for Claire E. Getty, a granddaughter of the oil tycoon, to review the transaction. Sidney Petersen, chairman and chief executive officer of Getty Oil, announced that the Los Angeles concern’s board of directors had approved the merger in principle. Judge Byrne on Friday empowered Claire Getty’s attorney, John Walker, to waive the order before Monday if he agreed with the details disclosed to his client. The proposed takeover of the nation’s 16th-largest oil company by Texaco, the third-largest, would kill a plan by Gordon P. Getty, the youngest son of J. Paul Getty, and the Pennzoil Company to take control of Getty Oil by buying up to 43 percent of the company’s stock at $110 a share.
A walkout by 50,000 oil refinery workers planned for midnight tonight was postponed after the president of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers International Union requested a three-day contract extension. About seven hours before the union’s contracts with major American oil companies were to expire, the union president, Joseph M. Misbrener, said he was asking all bargaining committees to ask employers to extend the contracts until 12:01 A.M. Wednesday. He noted that the union was bargaining on 331 contracts, most of which were to expire at midnight.
More than 2,000 students and faculty members at Harvard University have signed a petition asking that commencement be rescheduled because it conflicts with a Jewish holiday, but the university has declined to change the date. Commencement has been held on a Thursday in June, 38 weeks after the start of the academic year. This year’s is set for June 7, which coincides with Shabuoth, the Feast of Weeks, or Pentecost, celebrating the revelation of the Law of Moses on Mount Sinai. Rabbi Ben-Zion Gold of Harvard- Radcliffe Hillel and Jewish students had asked that the date be changed so Jews could observe Shabuoth and attend the graduation.
St. Louis Mayor Vincent Schoemehl has filed a $200 million lawsuit against the owners of The St. Louis Globe-Democrat and The St. Louis Post-Dispatch charging that they conspired to put The Globe-Democrat out of business. The Post-Dispatch prints The Globe Democrat under a joint operating agreement. They are separately owned. The mayor filed the suit late Friday after editorial employees at The Globe-Democrat rejected a contract proposal by a prospective buyer, the magazine publisher Jeffrey M. Gluck of Columbia, Mo. Mr. Gluck then withdrew his offer to buy the newspaper. The mayor’s suit also asked for a temporary restraining order prohibiting the newspaper from closing on Monday, the day Mr. Gluck said he was told the paper would close, and preventing The Post-Dispatch from switching from afternoon publication to the morning. Federal District Judge William Hungate refused to issue the order after receiving assurances from newspaper officials that the two papers would publish as normal.
Born:
Jon Lester, MLB pitcher (World Series Champions, Red Sox, 2007, 2013; Cubs, 2016; All-Star, 2010, 2011, 2014, 2016, 2018; Boston Red Sox, Oakland A’s, Chicago Cubs, Washington Nationals, St. Louis Cardinals), in Tacoma, Washington.
Carlos Corporán, Puerto Rican MLB catcher (Milwaukee Brewers, Houston Astros, Texas Rangers), in Hato Rey, Puerto Rico.
Adam Koets, NFL tackle (NFL Champions, Super Bowl 42-Giants, 2007; New York Giants), in Santa Ana, California.
Died:
Alfred Kastler, 81, French physicist (Nobel 1966 – Hertzian resonances within atoms).
History Diaries 