Secretary of State Henry Kissinger brought Egypt and Israel together on a troop disengagement agreement in the Suez. The troop disengagement plan looks good. Israeli Chief of Staff David Elazar and Egyptian Chief of Staff Gamasy will meet at kilometer 101 to sign the agreement tomorrow and discuss stages of withdrawal. Final details of the plan were reached in Jerusalem. Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir praised Kissinger for his work.
Specifics of the troop disengagement plan were not announced. President Nixon announced the agreement in his first personal appearance before reporters in six weeks.
President Nixon noted the significance of the Egyptian-Israeli pullback agreement after making the announcement. The President called the disengagement plan the first important step toward permanent peace in the Mideast, though he conceded that difficulties lie ahead. Nixon personally telephoned President Sadat of Egypt, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir and Henry Kissinger to congratulate them on reaching the agreement.
With this Mideast agreement, a shift in the balance of world power has occurred. The United States and the Soviet Union are the most important factors in the Mideast now. President Nixon’s announcement was brief and without expression because of his own domestic political war raging in Washington and around the United States.
Some opposition to the disengagement plan exists. Many Israelis believe that Mrs. Meir was pressured into the agreement by Henry Kissinger. Opposition party leader Menachem Begin declared that troop withdrawal marks the beginning of the end of the Jewish state. Opposition leader Shmuel Tamir stated that Kissinger used the disengagement agreement for his own gratification and that of the U.S.; Israel feels “used” by the United States. The opposition party holds one-third of the votes in the Israeli Parliament, so the agreement plan could be blocked there.
Many other problems remain between Egypt and Israel. Military disengagement doesn’t solve those other problems, including the Israeli occupation of Arab lands and the Palestinian issue. War could break out over any of these matters.
Troop pullback agreements must also be reached with Jordan and Syria. Kissinger meets with King Hussein on Saturday and Syrian President Assad on Sunday.
Prince Norodom Sihanouk, the exiled Cambodian chief of state, has told Senate leaders that the Lon Nol regime plans to ask the United States to resume bombing of insurgent forces in Cambodia. Sihanouk appealed in a radiogram to Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield (D-Montana) and Sen. J. William Fulbright (D-Arkansas), chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, to let Cambodians manage their own affairs and see to it that “the U.S. Air Force will not again be sent to Cambodia to destroy our poor little country and kill our people and the Cambodian patriots.”
The Laotian government and the Communist Pathet Lao announced final agreement on a military pact that assures neutralization of the cities of Vientiane and Luang Prabang. The agreement dealt with such questions as the size of the military forces each side could keep in the cities, their equipment and responsibilities.
Two men burst into a rural Catholic pub north of Belfast and opened fire with a machine gun, killing one man and wounding three. Another gunman killed a part-time soldier in a village south of Londonderry. The death brought to 938 the toll in four years of strife between Catholics, Protestants and British troops in Northern Ireland.
An open letter from three leading Soviet dissidents urged Western writers to protest the Kremlin’s refusal to allow poet-satirist Alexander Galich to visit relatives in the United States for a rest and cure of a serious heart ailment. The letter, from physicist Andrei D. Sakharov, his wife, and novelist Vladimir Maximov, said Galich was told he could not leave the country for “ideological reasons.” Galich was expelled from the Soviet Writers Union two years ago for allegedly urging Jews to emigrate to Israel and has since been living in poverty, Sakharov said.
The chief Czechoslovak delegate to the Vienna talks on cutting forces and armaments in Central Europe rejected the Western proposal to reduce American and Soviet forces first. Radolslav Klein of Czechoslovakia also made clear that the Warsaw Pact disagreed with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization proposal to establish a common ceiling on the ground forces of the two pacts in Central Europe, as a second step after initial U.S.-Soviet cuts.
Tests by infrared lamps have shown that some Italian banknotes confiscated in a series of raids are part of the nearly $3 million ransom paid for the release of J. Paul Getty III, police in Rome said. They said $35,000, which had been coated with an invisible paint that appears under infrared light, was found in the apartment of a man arrested for possession of drugs. Three other men have been charged with the actual kidnaping of the 17-year-old grandson of the U.S. oil billionaire.
The United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 345, making Chinese the Council’s fifth working language.
A Cessnyca Airlines Douglas DC-3, designated HK-1216, crashed shortly after takeoff from Chigorodó in the Antioquia Department in Colombia, killing all 12 people on board. The 36-year-old airplane was on its way to Medellin. The twin-engine plane of the Colombian domestic airline Cessnyca crashed near the village of Chigorodó in the mountainous northwestern region of Colombia, killing all 12 persons aboard. Radio contact with the plane was lost soon after it took off from Chigorodó, bound for Medellin. The pilot of another plane spotted its wreckage, scattered over a broad area.
Led by Álvaro Fayad, guerrillas from the M-19 (Movimiento 19 de Abril) terrorist group in Colombia stole the battle sword that had been worn by Colombian hero Simon Bolivar in the 19th century, after invading the historic Quinta de Bolívar in Bogota. Fayad left behind a note that said “”Bolívar, tu espada vuelve a la lucha.” (“Bolivar, your sword returns to the battlefield.”) The sword would be held for almost 17 years before its return by M-19 leader Antonio Navarro Wolff as part of the group’s peace negotiations with the government.
Pauline McGibbon of Ontario became the first female lieutenant governor of a Canadian province.
Floodwaters which have already claimed 17 lives in eastern Australia were threatening to inundate Walgett, a town of 1,700 people. The swollen Balwon River was expected to rise to about 45 feet at the northern New South Wales town. Air force planes were to drop sandbags into Walgett to try to stop the waters from reaching the town center.
The Skylab 4 crew got a go-ahead today to continue its record earth-orbiting mission for at least another week after experts reviewed the health of the crew and the condition of the spacecraft. Lieutenant Colonel Gerald P. Carr of the Marines, Lieutenant Colonel William R. Pogue of the Air Force, and Dr. Edward G. Gibson, a scientist, were in the 63rd day of their mission and will complete nine full weeks in space at 9:01 A.M., Eastern daylight time, tomorrow. The Skylab 4 crew established an endurance record for space flight Monday when they surpassed the Skylab 3 mark of 59½ days. Officials are making a go/no go decision on the Skylab flight a week at a time for the last month of the 84‐day mission. The astronauts are now in a medically unknown area because men have never before been subjected to the deconditioning effects of space for such a long time. Doctors said the astronauts’ health remained excellent.
The White House promised today to “cooperate totally” with the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s inquiry into the erasure of a key 18½-minute segment of a Watergate tape recording. The pledge came from President Nixon’s deputy press secretary, Gerald L. Warren, as the bureau’s agents interviewed White House staff members about the circumstances surrounding the erasure of the Presidential tapes. Leon Jaworski, the special Watergate prosecutor, ordered the bureau’s investigation yesterday after a court‐appointed panel of six technical experts reported to the Federal District Court here Tuesday on the 18½-minute gap. The panel said that the gap had been caused by at least five separate erasures and re-recordings, and not by a single accidental pressing of a wrong button on a tape recorder, as the White House had suggested. Mr. Warren refused to say whether the White House considered the investigation necessary. Nor would he answer a question about how Mr. Nixon would respond to a request by the bureau to interview him personally.
The Internal Revenue Service is auditing the tax returns of the Richard Nixon Foundation in addition to President Nixon’s personal tax returns, Arthur Blech, the President’s accountant, disclosed today. The foundation, created in 1969 to finance and construct a library to house Mr. Nixon’s Presidential papers, is a relatively small operation so far, according to its tax returns; Its net worth at the end of 1972, the latest year for which figures are available, was $114,076. Unlike individual returns, the tax returns of foundations are not completely confidential. One part is kept secret by the Internal Revenue Service, but another, containing information about income and outgo, is available for public inspection at Internal Revenue offices. The public portions of the tax returns of the Richard Nixon Foundation raise a number of questions about its operations. The returns also appear, on their face, to contain errors and to omit a considerable amount of information required by law to be included.
The White House asked a federal court for a second time to dismiss the Senate Watergate Committee’s civil suit against President Nixon. The committee is seeking a court order affirming its right to subpoena White House documents and directing the President to obey. The White House in its response said the court “lacks jurisdiction over the person of Richard M. Nixon in this action, either individually or as President of the United States.” U.S. District Judge John J. Sirica dismissed the committee’s original suit on the ground that it had failed to establish that the courts had jurisdiction in the matter.
President Nixon will appear before Congress January 29 to deliver his annual State of the Union address, White House officials said. Sources said the President would propose an expanded health insurance plan and some form of income maintenance for the poor. He also is expected to touch on foreign policy initiatives. Mr. Nixon has spent most of the week conferring with aides on subjects to be included in the address. Mr. Nixon’s appearance also is aimed at displaying him as a vigorous leader despite his Watergate problems, sources said.
A jury in Donalsonville, Georgia, convicted Wayne Carl Coleman on six counts of murder in the slayings of six members of the Alday family last May 14. The jury will consider the penalty later today. Coleman, 27, of Parkville, Maryland, could be given the death penalty. It already has been handed down in the cases of his half-brother, Carl Isaacs, 19, and George Dungee, 35, of Baltimore. They were convicted of the same crimes earlier in separate trials. All three were fugitives from a Maryland prison.
H. R. Gross, who has haunted the House with his “nay” for a quarter of a century, says he won’t come back next year. A conservative Iowa Republican who waged a classic but frequently lonely battle against what he called spending “squandermania,” Gross announced he would not seek reelection. Now 74, Gross has held the seat since 1949.
A 9-day-old girl, allegedly denied food and water by agreement of her doctor and parents, died of natural causes resulting from birth defects, a coroner’s jury in Scottsdale, Arizona, has ruled. The child was born December 10 in a Mesa hospital and transferred to Scottsdale Memorial Hospital where she died December 19. Dr. Fred Christensen testified that the infant had birth defects “incompatible with life.” He said he and the parents, Gordon and Kathleen Gesner of Mesa, made a written agreement to withhold sustenance from the baby. Testimony disclosed that defects included a large open lesion on the back, deformed limbs and fluid on the brain.
Larry E. Williams, a former fundraiser for Senator Edward J. Gurney (R-Florida), was indicted by a federal grand jury in Miami for allegedly channeling a $10,000 illegal payment to a federal housing official. Williams, 29, of Orlando, was accused of helping William Pelski, then Miami director of the Federal Housing Administration insurance office, “in the acceptance and receipt of $10,000” from builder John J. Priestes in December, 1971. Priestes, 37, is serving a one-year sentence after pleading guilty to filing a false income tax return and falsifying FHA documents.
California Governor Ronald Reagan embarks tomorrow on a national tour that will test his chances of survival as a national political figure after he leaves office at the end of this year. The conservative Republican, now in his second four‐year term, could run again but he has said repeatedly that he will not. He has suggested several times that he may return to what he calls “the mashed potato circuit” — a series of speeches on successive nights before banquet audiences. After Mr. Nixon became President, Governor Reagan’s visible national following among Republicans diminished, although he has continued to be in demand as a speaker at party functions around the country. His strength has remained as it was before, greatest among conservative Republicans.
Growth of the nation’s economy slowed markedly in the final quarter of 1973 and housing starts plummeted in December, the Commerce Department reported today.
Asylum Records releases “Court and Spark”, Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell’s 6th studio album; features the songs “Help Me” and “Free Man in Paris”, it becomes her biggest seller.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 872.16 (+16.07, +1.88%).
Born:
Marco Antonio Barrera, Mexican boxer who held the world super bantamweight champion (WBO, 1995-1996 and 1998-2000), world featherweight champ (IBO 2001-2003), and world super featherweight champ (WBC 2004-2007); in Mexico City, D.F., Mexico.
Derrick Mason, NFL wide receiver and punt and kick returner (Pro Bowl, 2000, 2003; Tennessee Oilers-Titans, Baltimore Ravens, Houston Texans, New York Jets), in Detroit, Michigan.
Jaakko Kuusisto, Finnish violinist, composer, and conductor, in Helsinki, Finland (d. 2022).
Died:
Clara Edwards, 93, American singer, pianist and composer known for “By the Bend of the River.”
History Diaries 