President Nixon invited leaders of the major oil-consuming nations to meet in Washington in a joint effort to formulate a coordinated policy aimed at solving the growing energy crisis. Thirteen oil-producing countries have been asked to join a meeting with the consuming nations at a later date; the oil producers may be willing to attend.
After the oil producers’ meeting in Geneva, those countries decided to stabilize crude oil prices for three months. Iran’s financial minister Jamshid Amouzegar insisted that oil-producing countries don’t make tremendous profits from high oil prices. France reportedly made its own deal with Saudi Arabia for oil in exchange for arms. France claimed that Saudi Arabia’s capital city was teeming with representatives of other nations hoping to make similar deals.
West Germany said that despite the cutbacks in oil production announced by the Arab countries, it expected to have more gasoline on hand next month than in February, 1973. The government also decided that a ban on weekend driving was no longer necessary. But since demand has increased even more than the expected February supply, the government said it would keep lower highway speed limits.
Israeli and Egyptian generals suspended their deadlocked military talks in Geneva for six days to enable their governments to make new political decisions on the disengagement issue. The recess of the talks, which had begun after Christmas, will give the United States and the Soviet Union a chance to nudge the parties closer to an agreement on the issue.
Secretary of State Kissinger leaves Washington tomorrow night for talks in Egypt and Israel to help bring about an agreement on the separation of troops near the Suez Canal.
Representatives of the 12 member nations of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) concluded their three-day meeting in Switzerland at Geneva and voted for a three-month freeze on oil prices. Saudi Arabia had been willing to reduce crude oil prices but faced opposition from Algeria, Iraq and Iran.
Government troops opened a counteroffensive today aimed at trapping rebel forces who were believed to be gathering for an attack on Phnom Penh or its airport, according to reports from the field. The fighting is the heaviest and closest to the capital since August, when American bombing in support of the Cambodian government ended. About 600 Government soldiers and 50 armored personnel carriers reportedly struck out from a village five miles west of Phnom Penh and a mile north of Pochentong Airport. Reports from the field said the task force met heavy resistance from an insurgent force estimated at up to 1,000 men. “We have killed many enemy in the village,” said Brigadier General Sindy Yai, commander of the government force.
American sources said that the insurgents had about 18,000 troops within a 25‐mile radius of Phnom Penh and that their objective was a military take‐over. However; they said at least 132 rebels had been killed. Estimates of government casualties ranged up to 50 killed and more than 100 wounded. On the northern front, about 300 government troops made an amphibious assault on the eastern bank of the Tonle Sap, but reports from the field said that Government forces retreated from three different positions ranging from five miles to 11 miles north of Phnom Penh. they believed the government would hold. These sources said that the rebels might also be planning, an attack on Pochentong to destroy the small Cambodian air force on the ground, which would be a severe blow to the Lon Nol Government. The fighting erupted Sunday, after insurgent forces infiltrated the region and reports indicate that both sides have suffered substantial losses.
The Soviet Writers’ Union expelled novelist Lydia Chukovskaya after she had come to the defense of dissident physicist Andrei D. Sakharov, virtually preventing her from having future works published. Miss Chukovskaya, daughter of the late Kornei Chukovsky — one of the most revered figures in the older generation of Soviet writers — is best known in the West for her semi-autobiographic book “The Deserted House” which describes the purges of the 1930s. Sakharov immediately praised the ailing and almost blind novelist for her “fearless sincerity” in writing an open letter in his defense last September.
A top Soviet commentator went on prime-time television to denounce writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Western radio stations that broadcast to the Soviet Union. The denunciation came from Yuri Zhukov, a “political observer” for the Communist Party daily, Pravda. His TV appearance indicated the press was intensifying its campaign against the Nobel author for the publication in Paris of “The Gulag Archipelago,” documentary of the Soviet labor camp network from 1918 to 1956. The attack was designed partly to counter radio broadcasts from the West about the book.
Molotov cocktails set three Catholic homes ablaze in Belfast and bombs damaged two Protestant-owned small hotels in Cushendale north of the Northern Irish capital. would be all three homes hit by fire-bombers were adjacent to a predominantly Protestant neighborhood in a North Belfast suburb.
Seven people were sentenced to death in Tehran for plotting to assassinate the Shah of Iran and kidnap his empress, his son and his granddaughter. Five other defendants, including two women, received prison terms ranging from three to five years. An army tribunal was told that the kidnappers planned to fly their hostages out of the country before demanding the release of political prisoners. The plot was uncovered last April and the accused were arrested in October.
Turkey’s lingering political crisis took another serious turn when independent Premier Naim Talu failed in his second attempt to form a new government. Turkey has been without effective rule since October’s indecisive. elections and there are signs of mounting concern in the top ranks of the armed forces. Talu’s efforts to form a right-wing coalition were dashed when the Justice Party, the second largest group in parliament, turned down his offer. It was not clear who would be approached next to form a government. In the meantime Talu’s preelection coalition continues in office in a caretaker capacity.
Authorities in Australia ordered state emergency crews on full alert as rising floodwaters isolated towns in northern New South Wales and caused the evacuation of hundreds of persons from low areas. The heavy rains that have swamped much of the state were expected to continue three more days. Police said they believed a Sydney man drowned as he attempted to swim across a fast-running river on the north coast.
Paraguay granted political asylum to former Bolivian President Victor Paz Estenssoro who was deported from his own country along with five members of his Nationalist Revolutionary Movement. Paz Estenssoro said he would remain in Paraguay “for the time being.” He and his companions were accused of “subversive” attempts to create divisions among the Bolivian armed forces which support the right-wing regime of President Hugo Banzer.
In Colombia, all 32 people aboard a SATENA airlines flight were killed when the Hawker Siddeley HS-748 crashed into Gabinete Mountain shortly after departing Florencia as part of a multi-stop flight from Bucaramanga to Bogota. Police said first reports indicated no survivors. The Bogota airport control tower said at least some aboard apparently were employees of Texas Petroleum Co., returning from an oil drilling project. Authorities said the two-engine plane of Satena Airlines caught fire nine minutes after taking off from Florencia in the southern part of Colombia.
The American Petroleum Institute reported another substantial drop in refineries’ stocks of crude oil as criticism mounted that the government was wholly dependent on the oil industry for essential data.
Energy czar William Simon reported that much information regarding foreign oil comes from the CIA, but added that all government agencies are being used in order to get the correct facts and figures regarding the fuel shortage. Simon doesn’t think that rationing will be necessary, and he plans to order increased production of gasoline once heating oil supplies are built up.
Most gasoline station operators approved the unique rationing plan recently implemented in Oregon. The plan calls for motorists to only be able to purchase gasoline on certain days of the week, according to their license plate number.
Hearings regarding the possibility of drilling for oil in the Ocala National Forest in Florida have ended. Environmentalists object to any drilling at all. Amoco spokesman Wayne Blankenship stated that drilling is necessary, and the proposed type of drilling is an accepted process. Florida assistant Attorney General Pat Dunn said that all land and resources in Ocala National Forest belong to the state. Interior Secretary Rogers Morton will decide the drilling question.
A year after celebrating his 60th birthday with the prospects of wielding enormous political power, President Nixon entered his 62nd year with his ability to survive in office in doubt.
The White House explanation of President Nixon’s decision to raise milk price supports apparently contradicts a recent statement by Mr. Nixon that he refused to accept information about campaign contributions. The White House account disclosed for the first time that the President received information about campaign contribution pledges by milk producers before raising the support prices for milk.
The Solicitor General at the time of the antitrust case against the International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation disputed part of the White House account of how the case was handled. Erwin Griswold questioned the White House version of when he was authorized to appeal a court ruling. In addition, the White House account was considered open to criticism for omitting reference to a number of meetings between I.T.T. executives and administration officials.
Leaders of the nation’s baking industry said that the price of bread could rise to as high as $1 for a family-size loaf this spring unless the government restricts booming wheat exports.
The Ford Motor Company announced widespread layoffs, especially at plants which are cutting back on the production of large automobiles.
Michigan State Senator Charles N. Youngblood Jr. resigned after his conviction for conspiracy to accept a bribe.
Frank Sturgis, one of the convicted Watergate burglars, was sentenced in Miami to nine months in jail for his role in a stolen-car ring in 1968. Government witness Robert Curtis told the court during the trial that Sturgis and his co-defendants, Max Gonzalez and Jerry Buchanan, ordered him in 1968 to travel from Mexico to Texas to rent cars and drive them back to Mexico. Sturgis’ defense was that the plot was part of a military plan to invade Cuba. Buchanan received 18 months and Gonzalez four months recently for their involvement in the affair. Sturgis must serve his sentence after his March 7 parole on the 18-month Watergate sentence takes effect.
A controversial drug derived from apricot pits appears to have no beneficial effect on tumors, said Dr. Robert A. Good, president and director of the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research in New York City. The drug, called Laetrile, has long been advocated by some health faddists as a cure for cancer. They have claimed that the federal government was suppressing it. The drug is undergoing its first scientific tests at Sloan-Kettering and “at this moment there is no evidence that Laetrile has any effect on cancer,” Good said. A premature leak last fall of test information from the laboratory had given thousands of cancer victims false hope that Laetrile might work, Good said.
Joe Newton Kagebien, sentenced to die in the electric chair three years ago when he was 15, has been convicted of second-degree murder in a new trial in De Witt, Arkansas. He was given a 21-year sentence with 12 years suspended. Under state law, the youth will be eligible for parole in less than three years. His first trial and subsequent death sentence attracted nationwide publicity. He was charged in the shotgun killing of Jimmy Wayne Wampler, 27, a Wynne, Arkansas, rice farmer. Kagebien and three other De Witt teenagers said they killed Wampler in self-defense after he attempted to make them perform homosexual acts.
Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) charged that President Nixon’s proposed health insurance plan could funnel windfall profits into the private health insurance industry. The senator, chairman of a Senate Health subcommittee, is author of his own proposal for an all-government health insurance program to be financed from payroll taxes and general revenues. Mr. Nixon plans to introduce a new health insurance program this year which is expected to require employers to provide private health insurance for their workers. It also would include a plan to cover low-income families.
Robert L. White, president of Kent State University when a 1970 campus protest led to four deaths, said he hoped a federal grand jury probe of the incident would “clear up the record.” The grand jury in Cleveland is looking into the May 4, 1970, confrontation between Ohio national guardsmen and student demonstrators protesting U.S. military involvement in Cambodia. Four students died and nine others were wounded by gunfire. The 23-member jury, after hearing White, apparently spent a lot of time re-examining photos.
Mrs. Noah Greenberg, president of the board of the New York Pro Musica ensemble, announced that the group would disband at the end of its current season, with its final performance scheduled for May 16.
In the first leg of the two-game 1973 European Super Cup series, played at San Siro in Milan, Italy, A.C. Milan defeated Ajax Amsterdam by a score of 1–0. The second leg took place one week later at Olympic Stadium in Amsterdam, with the outcome determined by the aggregate of the two scores, with Ajax effectively winning 35 minutes into the match with the second of six goals.
Picking first in the January amateur draft, the Texas Rangers select shortstop Roy Smalley, Jr, son of 10-year Major League vet shortstop Roy Smalley, Sr., and nephew of manager Gene Mauch. Smalley, who dropped out of USC in the fall to make himself eligible, will sign for $100,000.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 834.79 (-26.99, -3.13%).
Born:
Farhan Akhtar, Indian actor, screenwriter, producer and director known for Dil Chahta Hai (as writer, 2001) (“What the Heart Desires”); Rock On!! (as director, 2008); and Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (“You Only Live Once”) (as producer, 2011); in Bombay (now Mumbai), India.
Nicole Johnson, Miss America 1999 and the first Miss America with diabetes, now an activist for the American Diabetes Association; in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Omari Hardwick, American actor, poet, rapper and producer known for “Dark Blue”, “Being Mary Jane”, and “Army of the Dead”; in Savannah, Georgia.
Jamain Stephens, American NFL tackle (Pittsburgh Steelers, Cincinnati Bengals), in Lumberton, North Carolina.
Justin Hocking, Canadian NHL defenseman (Los Angeles Kings), in Stettler, Alberta, Canada.
Died:
Frank E. McKinney, 69, American businessman, chairman of the Democratic National Committee 1951-1952.
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