The Foreign Ministers of Egypt and Saudi Arabia gave Secretary of State Kissinger a four-nation Arab proposal for disengagement of Israeli and Syrian forces along the Golan Heights. After meeting with Ismail Fahmy of Egypt and Omar Saqqaf of Saudi Arabia, Mr. Kissinger told reporters at the State Department that he hoped the Arab proposal would lead to the opening of formal talks on disengagement in Syria.
Arab leaders began converging on the ancient Punjabi city of Lahore today in advance of an Islamic leaders’ conference that is set to deal with the Middle East and oil prices. The Islamic meeting, spurred by Prime Minister Zulfikar All Bhutto of Pakistan, is to include representatives from 30 predominantly Moslem nations ranging from Chad and Guinea to Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Libya and Iran. The three-day conference is scheduled to start Friday. Officials arriving in this city near the Indian border 270 miles northwest of New Delhi made it clear that the conference would seek to forge unity among Moslem nations on two key Middle East issues: Israeli withdrawal from Arab Jerusalem and the “restoration of the rights of the Palestinian people.”
Thieves have stolen one of Israel’s most revered monuments to her 1948 war dead, the bronze representation of an eternal flame dedicated last year in the center of Haifa. The city engineer told police today that the 110‐pound bronze casting was stolen last night.
Libya, the one‐time Cinderella land for Western oil companies, has turned into the toughest country with which to do business on the international oil scene. In an abrupt, uncompromising style, the young military leaders of this North African desert country have been dictating terms to the foreign oil companies here that have had a revolutionary impact, not only here, but throughout the international oil industry. Sometimes, as happened this week, foreign companies find out that they have been nationalized by hearing the news on Libya’s state‐owned radio.
Cambodian insurgents attacked a 10-vessel convoy on its way up the Mekong River to Phnom Penh, blew up an ammunition barge, and killed one seaman and wounded four others, port authorities here said today. The rebels attacked the convoy 26 to 29 miles southeast of Phnom Penh. The barge that blew up was carrying 700 tons of ammunition, the port authorities said. The convoy arrived in Phnom Penh tonight.
South Vietnam announced the formation of a new Cabinet today, saying the aim was to improve the efficiency of the Government of President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu. In the new Cabinet, which will be formally installed tomorrow, there are fewer ministers and fewer ministries to try to solve the country’s serious economic, social and military problems. But Western diplomats and some Vietnamese analysts said the changes seemed cosmetic and not likely to result in new Government approaches to the problems of inflation, official corruption and the carrying out of the Paris peace agreement.
All but two members of the former 24‐member Cabinet offered their resignations to President Thiệu on Saturday. The President accepted them and in his new Government, technically formed by Premier Trần Thiện Khiêm, 15 of those who had resigned were retained. Only five ministers were dropped and four new became ministers. Mr. Khiêm remains as Premier, with control of the Defense Ministry. Some of the old Cabinet’s ministries were placed under other ministries, but none of the changes startled analysts of Vietnamese affairs, and the composition of the new Government does not seem to signal any significant change in major Government policies.
South Vietnamese forces have occupied a fifth island in the disputed Spratly archipelago in the South China Sea without opposition, informed sources said today. The sources said that the South Vietnamese Navy had put about 30 men ashore yesterday. Similar small garrisons, were landed in recent weeks on four other of the 11 barren islands, which are believed to have oil deposits in the sea around them. The Spratlys are also claimed by Peking and Taipei, and by the Philippines. The Chinese Nationalists and the Philippines have forces on separate islands, in the group. There have been no military clashes reported in the Spratlys. Fighting broke out a month ago between the South Vietnamese and the Chinese Communists in the Paracels, another disputed chain of islands in the South China Sea. The Chinese drove the Vietnamese from the islands.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who is in Zurich, vowed to continue his work in exile and said he had as much right to live on Russian soil as those who had “the audacity to physically throw me out.” In his first interview since his expulsion from the Soviet Union last week, the Nobel Prize author said he did not know when his family would join him or where he would settle.
A booby-trapped land mine exploded on the Irish Republic border outside the County Armagh village of Moybane, killing a British soldier, Northern Ireland officials reported. The soldier apparently was trying to defuse the mine while other soldiers stood guard. After the mine exploded, six guerrillas with automatic weapons and rifles opened fire on the Britons. No one else was hurt, however, and the guerrillas fled across the border.
In the climax to a 20-year-old tax scandal involving almost every Italian political party, 103 persons were convicted of bribery by an Arezzo, Italy, court. The verdict and sentencing came at a time when most parties are again being accused of accepting bribes, allegedly from oil men anxious for windfall profits. The court ruled the National Institute for Management of Consumer Taxes (INGIC) won many municipal contracts to collect taxes by bribing officials of various parties, ranging from Christian Democrats to Communists. Those convicted received jail terms ranging from two to 10 years.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the U.S. Ambassador to India, presented the largest check on record to the government of India, canceling India’s $3.2 billion debt to the U.S. for food and humanitarian aid after signing an agreement with the government. Moynihan and presented the Indian Secretary of Economic Affairs, M. G. Kaul, with a check signed by John G. Kaptain, the disbursement officer for the U.S. Embassy in India, for 16,640,000,000 (16 billion, 640 million) Indian rupees, equivalent to $2,046,700,000 in U.S. dollars under the prevailing exchange rate. The remainder of the remaining 1.17 billion dollars would be drawn upon for operations of the U.S. embassy and for educational and cultural projects. Moynihan commented later, “I never saw so much money on such a small piece of paper in my life.”
Marxist and leftist members of the Indian parliament rushed the dais as President V. V. Giri outlined the government’s program for 1974. “You have no moral authority to address this house,” shouted Communist Party leader Jyotirmoy Bosu. Then Bosu and a dozen other members of the leftist opposition rushed the dais, shouting protests against inflation and food shortages. As Giri continued to speak above the uproar, Congress Party members formed a line in front of him to block the leftist rush.
“We need an overhaul of international, economic and political relations,” President Luis Echeverria Alvarez told a crowd of cheering Mexicans as he laid the blame for the problems of the world on the big powers. Returning from a five-nation tour, he spoke in Mexico City’s main plaza to a crowd estimated at 500,000. Echeverria indicated he supported price increases for oil and other raw materials and said that the oil crisis had “sounded the end of an era… based on the injustices of consumer societies.” Echeverria’s 18-day tour included Italy, Austria, West Germany, Yugoslavia and the Bahamas.
Mexican Foreign Minister Emilio O. Rabasa opened a conference of 24 Latin American foreign ministers in Mexico City by calling for unity when the ministers begin a “new dialog” with U.S. Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger later this week. He said the ministers should meet Kissinger “on an equal footing and on a basis of mutual respect.” Kissinger had promised to open the “new dialog” on hemisphere affairs.
A right-wing Perónist youth leader, Alejandro Giovenco, was killed on a Buenos Aires street when a bomb he was carrying in a briefcase exploded, police reported. The blast injured three bystanders. Police said Giovenco had been among a group of youth leaders who met Thursday with President Juan D. Perón, who told them that his revolution would be without “blows or bombs.”
About 100,000 people were reported homeless after nine days of torrential rainfalls caused widespread flooding in 12 Argentine provinces. No official death toll figures were available but press reports from the three worst-hit provinces — Santiago del Estero, Salta and Jujuy — said more than 100 persons had died in the floods. The three normally dry northwestern provinces have been declared disaster areas. The area’s cotton, tobacco and vegetable crops have been ruined.
Randolph Hearst spent a busy day working on a counteroffer in an effort to bargain for his daughter’s release from kidnappers. Hearst discussed his ransom plan with third world groups designated as intermediaries by the Symbionese Liberation Army. They demanded that Hearst must finance food for all of California’s poor before Patricia Hearst’s release can be negotiated. Tuesday is the kidnappers’ deadline.
The government decided against pressing charges for Pvt. Robert Preston’s antics with a helicopter on the White House lawn early Sunday morning. Preston is under psychiatric observation, and court-martial proceedings await Preston if he is found to be stable. The Secret Service stated that it was not embarrassed or upset by the incident; however, the security system is always in a stage of “reevaluation”.
A budget meeting of the Joint Economic Committee of Congress turned into an energy hearing. Senator William Proxmire criticized President Nixon’s budget; budget director Roy Ash defended it. Ash insisted that his statements regarding the energy crisis are in agreement with the President’s plans for breaking the back of the crisis in ’74. Consumers must learn to live with less energy.
Senator Frank Church, Idaho Democrat, said that consumers on the Eastern Seaboard are having to pay $50 million a year extra for power because a dispute between two American oil companies forced an increase in the prices that public utilities paid for petroleum. Much of the increase is being borne by customers of the Consolidated Edison Company and the Long Island Lighting Company, according to testimony made public by Senator Church.
The publication “Automotive News” reported that auto makers and dealers are beginning this month with the greatest stockpile of unsold cars ever. Many assembly plants have closed in order to switch over to the production of smaller cars. Several thousand more auto workers have been laid off for a week as a result.
Senator Henry Jackson expressed confidence that the Senate could override a veto of the emergency energy bill, which contains a rollback in crude oil prices, but he predicted a “razor-thin” margin in a vote scheduled tomorrow. Administration strategists have said that President Nixon would veto the bill because its price rollback provision is regarded as inflexible.
A Virginia electronics and counter-intelligence expert, in a report that has gone to White House lawyers, maintains that the 18½ minute buzzing on a key presidential tape recording may have been caused accidentally rather than deliberately. Allan Bell said that he volunteered to help Charles Rhyne, a lawyer for President Nixon’s secretary, Rose Mary Woods. Mr. Rhyne said that he thought Mr. Bell’s report was “so important” that he sent copies to Judge John Sirica, the White House and the special Watergate prosecutor.
President Nixon, sharing a platform in Huntsville, Alabama, with Governor George Wallace at an “Honor America Day” rally, told a predominantly friendly crowd of more than 20,000 that partisanship and distorted reporting in Washington had made it appear that the nation is sick. He made this comment, which he said was a “personal note,” at the end of a “what’s right with America” speech.
Jury selection will begin tomorrow for the trial of former United States Attorney General John Mitchell and former Secretary of Commerce Maurice Stans at the Federal District Court in New York. Their trial on charges of conspiracy, obstruction of justice and perjury is scheduled to start at 10 A.M.
At 7:29 p.m., Colonel Thomas L. Gatch, Jr., took off in his balloon Light Heart from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to attempt the first crossing of the Atlantic Ocean in a balloon. Air currents pushed Light Heart far south of Gatch’s planned course. An airliner would make the final radio contact with Gatch on February 19, and the last sighting would be by a freight ship, Ore Meridian, on February 21. The search by the U.S. Department of Defense was abandoned on March 6 after more than two weeks. Neither Light Heart nor Gatch had been found almost 50 years after his disappearance.
Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania and Rep. Michael J. Harrington (D-Massachusetts) backed legislation that would protect veterans and their widows against a cutback in pensions because of the 11% boost in Social Security benefits this year. “As the law now stands, when Social Security benefits go up, veterans’ benefits go down,” said Harrington, who, with Scott, is sponsoring the legislation to protect the pensions. The present law would reduce the benefits of 1,331,800 veterans and widows and eliminate benefits altogether for an additional 15,700.
Gunfire echoed across the nearly deserted Kent, Ohio, State University campus as Justice Department officials reenacted the May 4, 1970, shooting incident in which four students died. Officials fired M-1 rifles loaded with blanks from the positions held by Ohio National Guard troops during the incident. Other stand-ins took the places of the victims. The sounds were recorded on tape, a spokesman said, so they can be compared with a tape recording made at a nearby dormitory during the actual shooting. The grand jury investigating the clash of guardsmen and students gathered to protest U.S. military involvement in Cambodia is currently in recess and will resume next Monday.
Forty-five of the 48 faculty members at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis who have been boycotting classes in a doctrinal dispute were fired for refusing to return to their classrooms, the seminary’s board of control announced. The teachers said they would proceed with plans to organize a seminary in exile. The development was the latest in a dispute that has deeply divided the 3-million-member Lutheran Church Missouri Synod on the question of Biblical interpretation. Concordia has been virtually empty since January 21, when faculty members and most of the 700 students began the boycott to protest the suspension of the seminary’s president, the Rev. John H. Tietjen, for alleged teaching of false doctrine.
“We are moderate and conservative Republicans interested in helping the Administration and in keeping it from tilting leftward,” said Rep. Edward J. Derwinski of Illinois, acting chairman of a group of 70 House Republicans who have joined forces as an organization known as the Steering Committee. The group meets today to formally elect officers and plan for the rest of the current session of Congress. But it has already been operating for a year with nine paid research staffers working in an office near the Capitol. Derwinski said that “eventually, we hope to become a legitimate Republican answer to the Democratic Study Group,” a lobbying-research group run by liberal House Democrats.
NASA launches Italian satellite San Marcos C-2 (235/843 km).
The Houston Astros trade Pat Darcy to the Cincinnati Reds for Denis Menke. Playing in Houston for the second time, Menke will hang it up after hitting .103 in 30 games. For the Ohio-born Darcy, it’s great timing as two of his three big-league seasons are on World Championship teams.
Born:
Jillian Michaels, U.S. fitness expert and TV personality; in Los Angeles, California.
Jamey Carroll, MLB second baseman, third baseman, and shortstop (Montreal Expos-Washington Nationals, Colorado Rockies, Cleveland Indians, Los Angeles Dodgers, Minnesota Twins, Kansas City Royals), in Evansville, Indiana.
Nadine Labaki, Lebanese film director, actress and activist; in Baabdat, Mount Lebanon Governorate, Lebanon.
Died:
Arthur Elrod, 49, American interior designer, was killed in a traffic accident when the vehicle he was in was struck by a drunk driver.
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