The biggest battle in four months raged around Beirut as a vast tank, rocket and artillery battle erupted between Lebanese Army and anti-Government Druze and Shiite militiamen in the capital and across the surrounding hills. In many outlying villages, shells crashed into populated areas.
U.S. policy in Lebanon was defended by Lawrence S. Eagleburger, the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. He told a House hearing that passage of a Democratic-sponsored resolution calling for a “prompt and orderly” withdrawal of the American Marines from Beirut would embolden “the forces of radicalism and extremism” in the Middle East.
No major change in foreign policy by the Reagan Administration is expected this year, according to a consensus of a range of White House, Defense and State Department officials. In interviews, they say they doubt that President Reagan will seek face-saving pretexts to withdraw the Marines from Lebanon, despite the risks of further casualties.
Iraq warned residents of seven towns in southwestern and northern Iran to flee because it plans missile and bomber attacks against targets in them next week in retaliation for recent Iranian artillery shelling of Iraqi border towns. The towns included the oil center of Abadan. Tension mounted in the Persian Gulf war, with Iraq claiming to have sunk eight ships in Iranian waters this week and Iran reporting Iraqi jets flying over Tehran, the capital. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabian moves to stockpile crude oil outside the gulf have renewed speculation that an Iranian offensive is imminent.
President Reagan holds a meeting with Director of CIA, William Casey. Covert operations in Central America are on the agenda.
Nicaraguan leaders are ready to guarantee television and radio time and even grant subsidies to opposition parties in presidential elections promised for next year, according a high-ranking Nicaraguan official. The official, Tomas Borge, also pledged that the army would accept the authority of the winner, even if from an opposition party.
Robert E. White, former U.S. ambassador to El Salvador, charged that the Administration has covered up evidence that Salvadoran rightist leader Roberto D’Aubuisson helped plan the 1980 assassination of Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero. White reiterated earlier assertions that D’Aubuisson supervised the drawing of lots for the right to carry out the murder. White said in testimony prepared for a House subcommittee that evidence of D’Aubuisson’s role was sent to Washington by embassy cable shortly before White was replaced by President Reagan in 1981.
Lieutenant Colonel Aristides Marquez, a Salvadoran army officer linked to rightist death squads, has entered the United States and is studying at a university at San Jose, according to Colonel Adolfo Blandon, chief of staff of the Salvadoran armed forces. Blandon did not identify the school, and a spokesman for San Jose State said he did not know whether Marquez was enrolled. Marquez, former intelligence chief of the National Police, is one of about 20 people cited in December by the Reagan Administration as undesirables who should be expelled from El Salvador or investigated for death squad activities.
Britain rejected Argentine President Raul Alfonsin’s proposal for a U.N. peacekeeping force on the disputed Falkland Islands. The British Foreign Office said that the islands are “a clear British responsibility” and, therefore, no U.N. troops are needed. Alfonsin had indicated that his nation might sign a formal cessation of hostilities if a U.N. force is formed. The British Foreign Office also disclosed that the two nations have been conducting talks on the future of the islands through Swiss and Brazilian mediators for nearly two months.
A labor dispute at The Times of London was settled today and the paper will reappear on Saturday after seven days off the streets, unions and management announced. They said both sides made concessions in a dispute that arose when the paper hired a librarian without consulting the union, which in Fleet Street tradition has a right to say which jobs its members do. After protest walkouts, The Times locked out 750 workers and shut down the paper. Seven issues, including Friday’s, have been lost, along with one edition of The Sunday Times.
It was the fifth shutdown at The Times since Rupert Murdoch, the Australian publisher, bought the paper three years ago. Union leaders today accepted the library appointment and the management’s right to consider outsiders for 40 other jobs. The Times agreed to reinstate the 750 workers who were locked out and that successful applicants must become union members.
The Polish Government, responding publicly to a letter from Lech Walesa complaining of harassment, today accused the founder of Solidarity of arrogance and financial misconduct. “You show a persistent tendency to put yourself above the law,” the Government said in replying to a private letter sent by Mr. Walesa to Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, the Polish leader. In the letter, sent December 29, Mr. Walesa complained of systematic harassment. It was written after he had been summoned for questioning about a meeting with underground leaders of the now-banned Solidarity union.
Shipyard workers battled riot policemen today in Gijon, Spain, a northern coastal town hit by a general strike over Government plans to eliminate several thousand jobs. An estimated 300,000 people nationwide joined similar strikes. Government plans to streamline steel and shipbuilding industries will leave several thousand workers without a job.
Riot police in Gijon dispersed some 300 striking shipyard workers who had disrupted traffic on several roads. The demonstrators set an empty bus afire.
The family of Raoul Wallenberg filed a $39-million suit against the Soviet Union and demanded that the Kremlin reveal what happened to the Swedish diplomat who saved the lives of at least 100,000 Jews during World War II. The suit was filed in U.S. District Court by lawyers for Guy Von Dardel, half-brother of Wallenberg, who was imprisoned by the Soviets in 1945 after carrying out his lifesaving mission in Nazi-occupied Hungary. Moscow says Wallenberg died in prison in 1947.
Armed raiders overran the U.S.-run Chevron Oil Co. complex near Bentiu in southern Sudan, killing three foreign workers — a Briton, a Kenyan, and a Filipino. Western diplomats said the raiders were believed to be Christian secessionist guerrillas seeking independence for southern Sudan from the Muslim-dominated government. The guerrillas have warned of attacks on the Chevron complex, saying it symbolizes U.S. cooperation with the government.
Claude Cheysson, French external relations minister, conferred in Chad with the Central African nation’s president, Hissen Habre, and reaffirmed France’s commitment to Habre, whose forces are fighting Libyan-backed rebels. Cheysson said French troops will stay in the former French colony as long as Libyan forces are in northern Chad.
An advanced U.S.I.A. news service was announced by the Reagan Administration. The United States Information Agency said it planned to use communications satellites to enable reporters around the world to question officials in Washington or wherever they might be.
Expected budget deficits for the rest of the decade “are totally unacceptable to me,” President Reagan told Congress in his annual Economic Report. Mr. Reagan stressed a need to make broad reductions in his Administration’s deficits, but he declared that most major action must wait until after this year’s Presidential election.
David A. Stockman sought to avert a drive in Congress for a three-year deficit reduction package that would be much larger than the amount proposed by President Reagan. Mr. Stockman, the Federal budget director, and other high-ranking Administration officials testified before Congress as the lawmakers opened hearings on the new budget.
The President and First Lady attend the annual National Prayer Breakfast.
The head of the Environmental Protection Agency defended President Reagan’s acid-rain program as “rational” and not “irresponsible.” EPA Administrator William D. Ruckelshaus told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee that Reagan’s decision to double research on acid rain rather than begin control of the pollution was based on the need for more information, not a lack of concern. “Before launching the country on an expensive and potentially divisive control program, we feel we need more scientific information,” he said. However, some committee members suggested that Reagan was avoiding the issue because of the upcoming election.
William A. Wilson of Los Angeles, President Reagan’s nominee as the first U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, won strong praise and no opposition at a Senate confirmation hearing. But Protestant groups opposed establishing full diplomatic relations with the Holy See as a violation of the constitutional separation of church and state. Wilson, a longtime Reagan friend, has served. for three years as presidential envoy to the Vatican.
The Federal Election Commission ruled that, for the first time, third-party candidates can qualify for matching funds for primary elections. The FEC, in response to a formal inquiry by feminist Sonia Johnson, who seeks the nomination of the Citizen’s Party, said that if she meets all the regular legal requirements-including raising at least $5,000 in each of 20 states in contributions of $250 or less, and actively campaigning in more than one state-she can get matching funds during her quest for the nomination.
A major anticrime bill was approved in the Senate by a vote of 91 to 1. Backers called the bipartisan package the most significant Federal anticrime measure in more than a decade. Earlier, the Senate rejected a proposed amendment that would have made it illegal for Government officials to secretly tape-record telephone conversations.
A Federal district judge in Brooklyn yesterday upheld the constitutionality of the Army chaplaincy program, which provides Government-financed clergymen and programs for soldiers of various faiths. The decision by Judge Joseph M. McLaughlin came in a four-year-old suit in which two lawyers challenged the nearly 200-year-old program as a violation of the principle of separation of church and state, which is mandated by the First Amendment of the Constitution. In his ruling, Judge McLaughlin said that, “given the obligations and restrictions imposed upon those in the military,” affording soldiers “an opportunity for worship without coercion preserves the religious neutrality of the Government.” He added, “It is not without significance that the First Congress drafted the First Amendment and, at the same time, authorized a paid chaplain for the Army.”
A circuit judge in Mobile, Alabama, overruled the jury and sentenced a Ku Klux Klansman to death in the electric chair for the March 21, 1981, killing of a young black man, whose body was hung from a tree. Judge Braxton Kittrell Jr. set an April 30 execution date for Henry Francis Hays, 29, who was convicted of killing 19-year-old Michael Donald, chosen at random, “to show Klan strength in Alabama.” Appeal of a death sentence is automatic. A jury of 11 whites and 1 black convicted Hays of capital murder on December 20 and recommended a sentence of life in prison without possibility of parole. Hays’ father, Bennie Jack Hays, 67, a “titan,” or a county head, in the United Klans of America, said his son is innocent and denounced the proceedings as the work of “liars and communists.”
A jury decided that horseplay and rough language are part of firehouse life and rejected a sex-discrimination claim by the first female firefighter in lowa City, Iowa. Linda Eaton, 31, charged that male co-workers harassed her after she won a 1979 civil rights suit that permitted her to breast-feed her son on duty. Eaton, who has since quit her job, was not present when the jury announced its decision. Eaton, who sought $950,000 from the city and top officials, said she did not have the money to appeal.
The authorities have found no sign of foul play in the deaths of three Salvadoran refugees whose bodies were found on a rural Texas road. The bodies of the illegal aliens, Abdulio Flores Perez, 15 years old, Marta Irene Flores, 27, and Maria Lucia Flores, 55, were found near an abandoned dairy barn in Willacy County on Wednesday. A tote bag found near the victims contained personal belongings, passports for the two young Salvadorans and visa papers allowing them to legally enter Mexico, said Jimmy Duddlesten of the Duddlesten Funeral home in Raymondville.
Four cases of toxic shock syndrome were reported in late 1983 in women using a vaginal contraceptive sponge, officials of the national Centers for Disease Control said in Atlanta. All four recovered. The agency said it is encouraging doctors to report any cases that come to their attention. Toxic shock syndrome is a disorder that occurs mainly in young women, particularly during or just after their menstrual periods. Most cases have been associated with the use of tampons.
Further use of a pesticide, ethylene dibromide, in grain and grain products will be banned today by the Environmental Protection Agency, according to agency and industry officials.
Three frightened passengers in a small plane pleaded for help by radio Wednesday as their pilot slumped unconscious at the controls, but they were unable to control the plane and it plunged into the ground, killing all four. Airline pilots heard the distress calls and relayed them to a Federal Aviation Administration traffic control center in Jacksonville, Florida. But efforts by the authorities there to contact the plane by radio failed. Jack Barker, an agency spokesman in Atlanta, said one of the women aboard the plane was apparently trying to fly the plane as she called frantically for help. The plane crashed near Loris, South Carolina.
A liftoff of the space shuttle Challenger was set for 8 A.M. EST tomorrow at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The shuttle is to begin an eight-day mission that will include critical tests of the abilities of spacewalking astronauts to repair orbiting satellites. Five astronauts are aboard the Challenger.
First Soap Opera Digest Awards: “Days of Our Lives” wins.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1213.88 (+1.57).
Born:
Cortland Finnegan, NFL cornerback (Pro Bowl, 2008; Tennessee Titans, St. Louis Rams, Miami Dolphins, Carolina Panthers), in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
Chin-lung Hu, Taiwanese MLB shortstop and second baseman (Los Angeles Dodgers, New York Mets), in Tainan City, Taiwan (Republic of China).
Triston Grant, Canadian NHL left wing (Philadelphia Flyers, Nashville Predators), in Neepawa, Manitoba, Canada.
History Diaries 