Syria remained firm in its refusal to participate in any kind of reconciliation with President Amin Gemayel until he unconditionally abrogates the 1983 accord for the withdrawal of Israel troops. Lebanese opposition officials said Rafik Hariri, a Saudi mediator, was expected in Beirut with a “clear cut and unambiguous” message from President Hafez el-Assad of Syria that, until the accord is broken, he has no intention of discussing reconciliation.
According to the Christian Phalangist radio, fighting erupted again today around the ridgeline village of Suk al-Gharb, where Lebanese soldiers are defending the approaches to the presidential palace against Druze and Shiite militiamen. The Druze have been making probing advances to keep up pressure on the army’s Eighth Brigade defending the village, Western military sources said. They said the Druze and Shiites appeared poised for an offensive any time they choose. “We are just waiting for the Americans to go and then we will take Suk al-Gharb,” said a Shiite militiaman guarding the Khalde intersection south of Beirut airport.
Rocket and machine-gun exchanges continued along the green line dividing Christian East Beirut and Muslim West Beirut. Four people were reported killed and 12 others wounded. Security sources said 15 people were killed, including two soldiers, and 27 others wounded during fighting with mortars, artillery and machine guns through the night and this morning. Machine-gun fire whistled into the Marine compound at Beirut airport, but a spokesman said no one had been hurt. He described the firing as “spillover” from the battles along the green line. The 1,300 marines still left on shore completed the transfer of support equipment and nonessential supplies to their ships and were ready for the final evacuation, which was expected to start in the next two days.
President Reagan is notified that some Christians within Lebanon would like to create a separate state including West Beirut.
A key Israeli legislator called for Israeli troops in Lebanon to advance north of their Awali River positions and “seize additional territory” along the coast in response to the gains made by Syrian-backed Muslim militias against the Lebanese army. In an interview on Israel Radio, Eliahu Ben-Elissar, chairman of the Knesset’s foreign affairs and defense committees, also said that with “the collapse of the central Lebanese administration,” Israel must remain in Lebanon to protect its northern border from Palestinian attack.
The United States held secret talks with the Palestine Liberation Organization for nine months in an effort to persuade PLO leader Yasser Arafat to recognize Israel’s right to exist, the New York Times reported. The newspaper said that John Edwin Mroz of New York, a private citizen who acted as intermediary, held more than 50 meetings with PLO officials from August, 1981, until May, 1982. The PLO suspended the talks in June, 1982, after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. The newspaper reported that Israel was not informed of the talks. The United States offer contradicted its policy toward the P.L.O. since 1975, which is based on nonrecognition of the P.L.O. until it recognizes Israel as a nation.
Iran said today that it would accept a new United Nations mission to assess damage to civilian areas in the Persian Gulf war but would not hold political discussions with the group. A United Nations spokesman in New York said Friday that Iraq, after expressing reservations, had agreed to accept the mission look into charges by both sides that civilian areas were being bombarded in the war that began in September 1980. Iraq accused Iran of making “cheap propaganda” out of a United Nations mission last May that found devastation in both countries, but more in Iran than Iraq.
Iran’s press agency said Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati, in a message to Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar, had agreed to accept the mission, but had excluded political talks. Mr. Velayati referred to “unbridled missile attacks and aerial bombardments” and added: “Due to new developments, we regret that we would not be able to hold any political discussions with the members of your fact-finding mission. We therefore request the U.N. Secretary General to exclude the political item from their mandate.”
A military commander says Sudanese troops killed 30 rebels who had attacked a Nile River passenger steamer earlier this week, the official press agency reported today. The army “is now in full control of all areas in south Sudan which outlaws infiltrate to carry out their criminal sabotage activities,” the agency quoted General Abdel-Rahman Sewar-el- Dahab as saying Friday. The agency reported today that all but 14 passengers and 2 crew members had been accounted for. There were 800 passengers aboard the steamer Hegliga and the six barges it was towing when it was attacked Monday. The raid occurred near Waskeing, about 500 miles south of Khartoum. Sudanese officials said the rebels were infiltrating from neighboring Ethiopia after receiving military training.
The Vatican and Italy signed a new concordat in which Roman Catholicism ceases to be the state religion of Italy. The new accord was further evidence of the diminishing secular power of the church in Italy. The document concluded negotiations that were begun in 1967, when Parliament authorized them. It is a revision of the original concordat concluded between Pope Pius XI and Mussolini in 1929.
Helmut Schmidt, former West German chancellor, accused the Roman Catholic Church and Pope John Paul II of opposing effective family planning at a time when “the rise in population could explode global peace.” Schmidt, at a New Delhi conference on population and development, said, “The ideology of the Roman Catholic Church is one of the obstacles to family planning.” Schmidt said there is a distinction. between contraception and abortion, but “the Pope doesn’t see this.”
The sun’s return to Murmansk after seven weeks of polar night is observed by celebrations. The sun is an obsession at these latitudes beyond the Arctic Circle. Long vacations, during which most Murmansk residents go south, are among inducements offered by the Soviet Government to get people to work in the Far North. Salaries are more than double those paid in the south, retirement age is five years earlier, and there are more things to buy.
The Soviet airline Aeroflot has been afflicted with “a lot of crude violations of discipline, mismanagement, theft of property and corruption,” according to a senior Soviet aviation official. In the Ministry of Aviation Industry’s monthly journal, N.A. Bulanov deplored the lack of discipline among Aeroflot personnel and urged managers to crack down on illicit practices. Bulanov made no mention of accidents but said pilots had been summoned to a meeting on safety. Last month, Aviation Minister Boris Bugayev said accidents had damaged morale.
The United States and Turkey have agreed on further cooperation in military matters after a high-level defense group meeting that ended here today, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said. It said in a statement that the meeting had reviewed the possibilities of strengthening the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s southern flank and discussed progress in modernizing Turkey’s armed forces. Turkey, a member of NATO, is to receive $715 million in American military aid this year, mostly to update its aging military equipment. The United States-Turkish defense group was set up in 1981 to coordinate military issues.
The police battled rioting Hindus and Sikhs in northwest Haryana state in India today, leaving one dead and 15 injured in ethnic clashes that spread from Punjab state, officials said. The latest clashes came as the leader of the Sikh Akali party accused Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s Government of trying to “annihilate” the Sikhs and called off talks aimed at finding a solution to the crisis in northern Punjab. Seventeen people have been killed and more than 200 injured since riots erupted between Sikhs and Hindus in Punjab Tuesday. Street battles between Sikh and Hindu mobs broke out today in Kaithal, a mainly Hindu town about 100 miles northwest of New Delhi in Haryana, a province bordering Punjab.
A Philippine judge dismissed firearms charges against opposition leader Salvador Laurel after President Ferdinand E. Marcos ordered that Laurel be released from jail and allowed to leave on a trip to the United States while the case was investigated. Laurel, arrested Friday at the Manila airport, said officials planted the pistol in his suitcase to keep him from criticizing Marcos abroad. He shouted, “I am vindicated!” after the judge went beyond Marcos’ order and completely dismissed the charges. Laurel said he would leave on the trip today.
Korean Air Lines shifted at least 10 veteran pilots to ground duties in the wake of the Soviet Union’s September 1 downing of a KAL jet with the loss of 269 lives, airline officials in Seoul said. The disciplinary action began after the Boeing 747 was shot down when it flew off course over Soviet territory, and it was stepped up when a Korean DC-10 cargo jet collided with a small plane on the runway at Anchorage in December. There were reports that the airline also fired two senior pilots and demoted several senior flight operations officials.
Argentina has accepted British proposals for the start of bilateral discussions on the Falkland Islands and other issues, the Daily Mail of London reported. President Raul Alfonsin, in an interview with the paper in Buenos Aires, reportedly said that Argentina would like to begin the talks with an “open agenda,” a remark that the newspaper said seemed to clear away the preconditions that have blocked discussions. Alfonsin said he would speak to the Argentine people next week and that he hoped the talks could begin after that.
Foreign Minister Roelof F. Botha of South Africa will lead a delegation to Mozambique Monday for talks on improving relations, the Foreign Ministry said today. The one-day meeting follows talks between officials of the two countries January 16 on ways to achieve peace and security after years of hostility. On Thursday Mr. Botha held talks in the Zambian capital, Lusaka, with representatives of Angola and the United States at which the two African nations set up a joint commission to monitor a South African troop withdrawal from southern Angola. The Lusaka talks were regarded as a possible step toward eventual independence for Namibia, or South-West Africa, which is ruled by South Africa in defiance of the United Nations.
In a move to pressure the Democratic-run House into action on the omnibus anti-crime bill that passed the Republican-controlled Senate 91 to 1 on February 2, President Reagan advised listeners to his regular weekly radio talk: “Perhaps you might inquire from your representative if he or she is ready to act and if not, why not.” Reagan urged his listeners not to tolerate delay and praised sections that would make sentencing more uniform, allow judges to refuse bail to suspects shown to be dangerous and restrict the use of insanity as a defense.
The Presidential election process will get under way in Iowa tomorrow night when Iowans assemble in precinct caucuses. As they have done every four years since 1972, the Iowa caucuses mark the official start of the Presidential campaign year.
The President and First Lady attend the Princess Grace Foundation gala.
The Reagan Administration has proposed cutting by half the budget and staff requested for 1985 by the federal agency that studies the health effects of hazardous waste dumps, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. The newspaper said that two major reductions at the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry in Atlanta would leave the agency unable to conduct new laboratory tests costing $4.5 million to determine the toxicity of chemicals found at hazardous-waste sites, and would force the agency to delay plans to conduct a 15-state study of whether diseases caused by chemicals are more prevalent among people living near chemical dumps.
The nation’s backup warning system against nuclear attack failed during a routine test and it took officers 34 minutes to contact Colorado headquarters to notify them of the breakdown, a CBS News team reported. The failure occurred at the National Attack Warning System’s facility outside. Washington this month while the CBS team doing a story on the warning system looked on. CBS said that top people in agencies the system is supposed to be warning did not even know of its existence. The source of the failure was found to be a telephone cable.
Production of a small missile by the early 1990’s has been promised by the Pentagon in a report to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees. The first high-level assessment of the small, strategic nuclear missile called Midgetman since it was endorsed last spring by the Reagan Administration admits production faces numerous technical problems.
The 1981 convictions of the “Plowshares Eight,” a group of nuclear weapons opponents who broke into a defense plant. were thrown out because of trial errors. The Rev. Daniel Berrigan and his brother, Philip, were among those arrested at the General Electric plant in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. The 6-1 Pittsburgh Superior Court verdict threw out the convictions on burglary, conspiracy and criminal mischief charges. The defendants argued that the judge had erred in blocking testimony attempting to show they were justified in their action. Pennsylvania law permits such arguments.
Agriculture Secretary John R. Block reversed his earlier stance and pushed back the sign-up deadline for farmers in 1984 commodity price support programs to March 16, three weeks beyond the original February 24 cutoff. “It has become obvious more time is needed if we are going to get the participation we must have for the sign-up this year,” Block told a news conference in Des Moines. Block faced protests from farmers friendly to the Administration and the prospect of disastrously low participation.
Dwindling federal aid to cities has led most mayors to seek expanded authority that would permit them to increase their own revenue or carry out their own initiatives as they see fit. This change was confirmed in a recent survey of metropolitan governments of all sizes by the National League of Cities. It has fundamental implications, experts say.
A convicted cocaine trafficker has said that mob figures put out a $100,000 contract on the life of former Chicago Mayor Jane M. Byrne, allegedly because she did not push hard enough for legalized gambling, according to a report published in the Chicago Tribune. Federal authorities said they have no evidence that any effort was made to carry out an assassination. Robert (Doug) Hardin, the convicted cocaine trafficker and later an underworld informant, disclosed the alleged plot.
A petition from a consumer group and others to hold a public hearing on whether aspartame is safe for use in soft drinks has been rejected by Mark Novitch, the acting commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, but critics say they will step up legal efforts to get the low-calorie sweetener pulled from the market. The substance, marketed as Nutrasweet, has become widely used in diet soft drinks since the FDA first approved it for carbonated beverages last July 1.
An Indiana County (Pennsylvania) mine where three miners died in an explosion Thursday had twice the national accident rate in 1983 and had a “considerable” methane problem in the past, a federal mine safety official has reported. A preliminary Federal report showed that for 1983, the accident rate for every 200,000 working hours at the Greenwich Collieries No. 1 mine was 22 percent, more than twice the national rate of 10 percent, said Tom Brown, of the Mine Safety and Health Administration in Arlington, Va. Mr. Brown’s statements were reported today by The Altoona Mirror. Autopsies were performed today on the miners’ bodies, brought to the surface shortly after midnight by recovery teams. The bodies were found before dawn Friday, but recovery efforts had to wait until the methane gas was pumped from the area and rescuers could retrieve the bodies without life support systems.
Five Tennessee convicts drew guns on their guards in a field today, commandeered three vehicles, riddled another with shotgun fire and escaped in different directions, the authorities said. No one was reported injured, but a prison official said the “extremely dangerous” fugitives, including two convicted murderers and a rapist, blew out the back window of a prison vehicle that was chasing them. “A prison employee, Wayne Douglas, was pursuing the three and he pulled them over,” said Dick Baumbach, an assistant to the Correction Commissioner. “But the shotgun blew out the rear window of the vehicle.” The convicts made their break while working with a group of inmates in one of the farm fields at Fort Pillow. “Three of them pulled pistols on two correctional officers,” Mr. Baumbach said. He said they were joined by two others who jumped into a prison vehicle and fled.
About 80 percent of all packages mailed from the island of Hawaii contain marijuana, according to Federal officials. Long suspecting that drug dealers in Hawaii were making use of United States mails, investigators recently took drug-sniffing dogs and conducted a weeklong examination of parcel post service on Hawaii, according to United States Attorney Daniel Bent. The dogs reacted to 80 percent of the packages.
A World Airways DC-10 carrying 183 passengers came within five miles of colliding with two Air Force KC-135 tanker planes in flight before the pilot changed course, officials have said. A regional spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration, John Ellis, said Friday that a preliminary investigation indicated the planes came as close as 4.8 miles Wednesday night over Topeka, Kansas. Mr. Ellis said the incident was under investigation because standard safety procedures were violated when the World Airways DC-10 flew within five miles of the Air Force tankers. However, an air traffic controller told a Kansas City television station, KMBC, that the planes may have been as close as one-half mile and only seconds from a collision. “The aircraft were head-on, three or four seconds from hitting each other,” said the man, identified by the station only as a controller at the Air Route Traffic Control Center in Olathe.
Conversions of Roman Catholics in Puerto Rico to Protestantism, begun by missionaries in 1898 when Puerto Rico came under the American flag, have been increased by Pentecostal and evangelical groups.
A blizzard and 100 m.p.h. winds struck the Plains, spreading snow from the Texas Panhandle to the Dakotas. High snowdrifts halted traffic across parts of the Middle West, stranding travelers. Blizzard warnings were posted in the southeastern plains of Colorado, the Oklahoma Panhandle and southwestern and north-central Nebraska. Many highways were impassable. Thousands of stranded travelers packed motels and truck stops as the storm swept out of the Rockies, where it left up to two feet of snow earlier, and pushed toward the Great Lakes, fanning a foot of snow or more with winds gusting up to 60 miles an hour across Kansas and Nebraska, into Iowa and South Dakota.
Finnish cross-country skier Marja-Liisa Hämäläinen wins the 20k gold medal at the Sarajevo Winter Olympics; sweeps all 3 individual events, also winning the 5k and 10k events. The victory made her the first triple gold medalist in the XIV Olympic Winter Games, and Finland’s first triple winner in 60 years.
Finnish ski jumper Matti Nykänen wins first of 4 career Olympic gold medals in the Large Hill individual event at the Sarajevo Winter Games. Matti Nykaenen of Finland outdueled East Germany’s Jens Weissflog. Nykaenen turned in two near-perfect jumps of 380 feet and 364 feet 2 inches off the hill at Malo Polje, south of Sarajevo, for a total of 231.2 points. Weissflog, who edged the 20-year-old Nykaenen in the 70-meter jump, gained 213.7 points from his two jumps.
East German figure skater Katarina Witt wins first of 2 consecutive women’s singles gold medals at the Sarajevo Winter Olympics; also wins gold in Calgary (1988). In a free-skating event so close that if either of two judges had given the second-place finisher a tenth of a point more, the outcome would have been reversed, Katarina Witt of East Germany won the gold medal tonight in women’s figure skating at the XIV Olympic Winter Games. Rosalynn Sumners of Edmonds, Wash., earned second place and the silver medal.
The victory by the 18-year-old Miss Witt was notable in several respects. For one, she became the second straight East German to win this championship. Anett Poetzsch, her teammate and friend in Karl-Marx-Stadt, won in 1980 in Lake Placid, New York. More significantly, Miss Witt defeated the present, past and perhaps future world champions, all Americans. Miss Sumners won the world title in 1983, Elaine Zayak of Paramus, New Jersey, won in 1982 and 16-year-old Tiffany Chin of Toluca Lake, California, is the brightest young figure skater in the world.
Born:
Brian Bogusevic, MLB outfielder and pinch hitter (Houston Astros, Chicago Cubs, Philadelphia Phillies), in Oak Lawn, Illinois.
Clifton Ryan, NFL defensive tackle (St. Louis Rams), in Saginaw, Michigan.
Mike Richardson, NFL defensive back (New England Patriots, Kansas City Chiefs, Indianapolis Colts), in Sumter, South Carolina.
Buddy Nielsen, American singer (Senses Fail), in Ridgewood, New Jersey.
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