President Nixon announced that Secretary of State Kissinger would go to the Middle East next week to help get talks under way between Israel and Syria. He had nothing to say about the lifting of the Arab oil embargo against the United States, but said that the “immediate problem is the disengagement” of troops along the Syrian front.
The Israeli soldiers who man the positions near this shell‐shattered village overlooking the cease‐fire line with Syria watch the news each evening on Damascus television. But they say they have a quicker, more reliable guide to events in the Arab world. “The shelling intensifies whenever there is an Arab summit conference or President Assad visits another Arab capital,” an Israeli lieutenant observed today. suppose the Syrians want to show the world that they are still fighting Israel.” Like the senior commanders in Tel Aviv, the soldiers stationed here at the front believe that the almost daily artillery exchanges with Syria are prompted by political considerations rather than military ones.
Although the Syrian shellings have increased in the last three weeks, the Israelis here doubt that they point to a serious Syrian attack. Rather, they assume that President Hafez al‐Assad is anxious to demonstrate to the rest of the Arab world Syria’s continued militancy, especially at a time when he is seeking the support of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other states for his hard-line stand on a full Israeli withdrawal. There is also the hope in Israel — though it is no more than that — that the intensified shelling is intended to prepare the stage for Syrian-Israeli negotiations on a troop separation agreement along this nervous front and, ultimately, for the release of the Israeli prisoners of war Syria is believed to be holding.
Defense Minister Moshe Dayan of Israel served notice that he would refuse to join the next cabinet unless the ruling Labor party agrees to share power with the right-wing opposition, the Likud. This puts him in direct conflict with Premier Golda Meir, who has repeatedly asserted that a coalition including the right wing would be a “government of paralysis,” incapable of making hard decisions on negotiations with the Arabs in the coming months.
Cambodian troops launched two short-lived drives to clear rebel forces out of areas south of Phnom Penh. One column, headed for Phume Kvet six miles south of the capital, was stopped about a half-mile out by enemy fire. The other column had planned to cross the Stung Prek Thnot River at Baku, five miles south of Phnom Penh, but was stopped by mortars and automatic weapons. In all, 20 government soldiers were wounded.
Foreign military analysts say, for example, that there is ample evidence showing that at least some of the artillery shells that have fallen on Phnom Penh recently, killing and wounding nearly 1,000 people, reached the insurgents through corrupt officials. A month and a half ago, according to Western sources, three army trucks carrying about 700 shells for 105‐mm. howitzers mysteriously disappeared and two weeks ago two more truckloads vanished. “Rice, gas, ammunition and many other things are supplied to the other side,” a former government minister said. “Everyone knows that.”
The artillery shells are needed by the Cambodian insurgents for the American-supplied howitzers they have captured from government forces. They have also captured some shells, but are apparently trying to increase their stocks by buying more from corrupt civilian or military officials. No one really tries to deny the existence of corruption anymore, not the Americans, whose increasing amounts of aid have fueled it, and not even the Government of President Lon Nol.
South Vietnam flew more Viet Cong captives to a release site north of Saigon to initiate a second week of prisoner exchanges, the military command said in Saigon. It said 1,188 pro-Viet Cong prisoners, including 33 soldiers, would be released in return for 170 South Vietnamese military and 23 civilian prisoners. Meanwhile, Saigon charged that North Vietnam has begun a tank buildup at Lộc Ninh, 75 miles north of Saigon, moving in at least 50 tanks from Cambodia. Saigon reported 291 Communist violations of the cease-fire in 48 hours.
An official attack on a dead Chinese intellectual for having praised Americans and entertained “guests” prompted fresh speculation today that Premier Chou En‐lai might be one of the targets of the new ideology campaign under way in China. Although Mr. Chou was not named in the attack, he has been the Chinese leader most closely associated with Peking’s policy of improved relations with Washington and has frequently entertained visiting Americans. Today’s criticism was directed at Hu Shih, China’s most prominent non‐Communist intellectual of the 20th century who long advocated large‐scale westernization of China. Mr. Hu, who died in 1962, was said to have “given talks everywhere, taken part in all kinds of banquets and entertained various sorts of ‘guests’ in order to promote his reputation in the cultural movement.”
Like the rest of the current campaign in China — officially described as a “revolutionary drive” in the spirit of the Cultural Revolution — today’s attack was in many ways obscure and esoteric. So far only Lin Piao, chairman Mao Tse‐tung’s dead and discredited successor, and Confucius, the ancient sage, have been publicly identified as objects of criticism. But both Chinese and foreign analysts who follow Chinese affairs here said it was unlikely that Dr. Hu, who has long been discredited in Communist eyes, would be dredged up except to score a point.
Japanese Foreign Minister Masayoshi Ohira today demanded the resignation of his senior subordinate, Deputy Minister Shinsaku Hogen, in an effort to deflect a mounting attack on himself from aggressive young politicians within the conservative governing party. But the militant politicians were not appeased, and within hours of Mr. Hogen’s resignation formally demanded the ouster of Mr. Ohira. A leader of the militant group said the demand would be repeated.
The Foreign Ministry of the Soviet Union summoned ambassadors from the U.S., the UK, France and other Western nations and announced that it would end most travel restrictions against diplomats. A spokesperson told the ambassadors that they would be allowed to travel, without prior permission, to any non-restricted area of the Soviet Union, as long as 24 hours’ notice had been given, and allowing free access to all but restricted areas within the 40-kilometer (25-mile) radius of central Moscow.
Dissident Soviet mathematician Leonid Plyushch, 34, is near death in a Soviet mental hospital after being physically and mentally abused, according to a petition circulated at the United Nations and made public by the International League for the Rights of Man. Signed by Soviet dissident physicist Andre Sakharov, the petition claims that Plyushch was being given large doses of a drug that has kept him exhausted, shivering, weak and suffering from swellings and spasms. Arrested January 14, 1972, in Kiev, he was charged with anti-Soviet agitation. Later ruled insane, he was given an indefinite term in an insane asylum.
Two men were killed and several injured when a bomb exploded at a bar on the outskirts of the Northern Ireland town of Moy, 35 miles southwest of Belfast, police reported. And army experts defused a 350-pound bomb found on a road near Fintona, a village 40 miles west of Belfast.
The Greek Government said tonight that it had defeated a Communist plot to overthrow it through renewed student disorders this week and had arrested Communist leaders, 13 of them members of the central committee of the banned party. Demetrios Karakostas, Under Secretary of the Premier’s office, said that the general security police had conclusive evidence that a four‐day student strike, now in its third day, was designed to end in riots and an attempt to overthrow the government. Reading from a statement at a press conference, he said 35 persons were being interrogated by the security police, who had seized the group’s archives, printing plants and foreign currency.
A man with a loaded .45-caliber pistol was seized by police as he broke through a crowd during the arrival of former Chilean President Salvador Allende’s widow at Kennedy Airport in New York. Mrs. Allende, who is to testify at a U.N. hearing on the treatment of Chilean dissidents, had just finished speaking to reporters. The man was identified as Ismael Barreto of Brooklyn. Police said they were not certain he intended to harm Mrs. Allende but “we are sure he had no business being there with a gun.”
A U.S. Senate agriculture subcommittee hearing was presented with a picture of world famine because of a fertilizer shortage in the United States. “We have the possibility of famine in dimensions we have never known” in some parts of the world, Senator Hubert H. Humphrey (D-Minnesota) said. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce Gary Cook, while contending the problem would not be as severe as industry spokesmen have suggested, forecast shortages of 150,000 to 450,000 tons of nitrogenous fertilizer, 671,000 to 836,000 tons of the phosphate type, but a surplus of 815,000 tons of potash fertilizer.
The Hearsts have heard no word from the kidnappers of their daughter Patricia since making a counteroffer to the Symbionese Liberation Army. Randolph Hearst met with activist groups to decide the best way to carry out the free food plan demanded by the kidnappers. American Indian Movement leader Russell Means said he doesn’t want to be associated with the ransom demanded by the abductors. Hearst stated that he doesn’t consider the plan as ransom money, but as a long-term plan to help the poor. Mrs. Hearst said she hopes her daughter will be returned tomorrow on her birthday.
An Indiana couple was held by Los Angeles police after attempting to impersonate Patty Hearst’s kidnappers. The police identified the suspects as Nile Dwayne Marx, an unemployed cab driver from Indiana, and his wife, Shirley Ann, 21 years old of Columbia, Missouri, who were booked early Sunday on suspicion of impersonating the kidnapers. Lieutenant Charles Higbie said that an investigation had found that the couple had no connection with the Symbionese Liberation Army or any other possible suspects in the kidnapping of the daughter of the newspaper publisher Randolph Hearst.
Energy czar William Simon announced a plan to ease gasoline shortages in hard-hit states, as the Federal Energy Office ordered emergency fuel allocations for 18 states. Simon explained that the gasoline will be taken from oil company reserves, not from other states, and he believes the new allocation program will ward off the need for rationing.
Local reaction to the new allocation plan was unenthusiastic. New Jersey was designated among the 18 states to receive emergency allocations. Two state senators have almost finalized plans to buy enormous amounts of gasoline for New Jersey. Some of the gasoline is being stored throughout the country, some of it is foreign-refined; the exact countries involved can’t be divulged. Brokers reported that plenty of gasoline is available outside the federal allocation system, but the price is steep.
The emergency energy bill passed by the Senate calls for price rollbacks on gasoline and gives the President the power to impose gasoline rationing. The measure, which has been stalled in Congress since December, passed by 67 to 32 after the Senate rejected three attempts to send it back to a Senate‐House conference committee to be rewritten for the second time in three weeks. The measure now goes to the House, which is expected to take it up later this week.
The trial of former Nixon cabinet members Maurice Stans and John Mitchell has begun in the Robert Vesco case. In New York City, the trial judge began the long process of choosing a jury. Defense lawyer John Diuguid stated that no impartial trial is likely to be found in New York because of publicity. He requested that the trial be moved elsewhere, but the judge refused.
The Senate Watergate Committee decided not to hold further public hearings. Senator Sam Ervin said the hearings were being ended because “the committee believes that it should be careful not to interfere unduly with the ongoing impeachment process of the House Judiciary Committee or the criminal cases which will soon be prosecuted by the special prosecutor, on which the attention of the country appears now to be focused.”
Judge John Sirica of the Federal District Court in Washington tried to end the public debate over findings of the court-appointed panel of electronics experts that is investigating subpoenaed presidential tape recordings.
The loss of Vice President Ford’s former congressional seat in Michigan to a Democrat, Richard VanderVeen, left Republicans badly shaken, while Democrats jubilantly predicted landslide victories for their party this fall. For the first time some of the top Republican leaders conceded that Watergate might indeed be a major factor in this year’s elections.
The Secret Service confirmed that “an automatic weapon was used” against a stolen Army helicopter when it approached the White House last weekend. After the bizarre flight by an Army mechanic, Pfc. Robert K. Preston, authorities reported that police shotgun fire greeted the craft. But photographs showed the Huey helicopter had been riddled with bullet holes unlike those caused by shotgun fire. Preston, who was superficially wounded, was still being held for psychiatric evaluation.
Clyde Bellecourt, an American Indian Movement leader, and a brother, Leonard, have been charged in Minneapolis with petty theft and breach of the peace. The two allegedly tried to steal $5.36 worth of sausage from a supermarket. The cases were continued until March 4 and the brothers were free on posted bonds. Clyde Bellecourt is a defendant in the federal government’s prosecution of the 71-day siege of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, last year.
Former Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, stripped of his Secret Service protection last Monday, will not be offered Maryland state police protection. Agnew lost his guards while on a golfing vacation in Palm Springs, California. An aide of Maryland Governor Marvin Mandel said Mandel had made an offer of protection shortly after Agnew resigned four months ago as Vice President but that the offer would not be extended again and it was not expected that Agnew would ask for it.
A bribery conviction against Otto Kerner, a former Illinois governor and currently on leave from his post as a judge in the 7th U.S. Court of Appeals, was dismissed by a federal appeals court in Chicago. But convictions of mail fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy against him were upheld. Kerner was tried in 1973 for allegedly accepting race track stock in return for granting favorable racing dates. The court also threw out a bribery conviction against Theodore J. Isaacs, who was convicted along with Kerner, but mail fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy charges were allowed to stand. Isaacs was Kerner’s revenue director. The two were sentenced to three years in prison and fined $50,000 each upon their conviction.
Black high school males, normally the highest dropout risks, gained half a grade level in Southern schools that receive federal desegregation aid, said a government-funded study. The U.S. Office of Education said the finding and the absence of lower achievement by white students in newly integrated schools proved the value of the four-year $339 million effort. The report said the black males probably benefited more from an improved racial climate than from superior instruction. Students of both races achieved best in schools that were 41% to 70% white and less well in schools more than 70% white, the report said.
Rose Kennedy, 83, mother of former President John F. Kennedy, was admitted to St. Mary’s Hospital in Palm Beach, Florida, after complaining of persistent headaches. She was undergoing diagnostic tests and her condition was listed as fair. “There’s no sense of seriousness,” said an aide to Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-Massachusetts). The senator was keeping in close contact with the hospital, the aide said, but he did not plan an immediate trip to see his mother.
The League of Women Voters discovered that it had men among its members, all of them in the chapter in Perth Amboy (New Jersey), where the league’s women defied the organization’s national bylaws by admitting men.
Sonny and Cher Bono have split up; Sonny filed for a legal separation. CBS announced that their television show will continue for the rest of the season anyway.
First American Music Awards: Helen Reddy and Jim Croce (posthumously) win.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 819.54 (-0.78, -0.10%).
Born:
Todd La Torre, American singer and musician (Queensrÿche), in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Juan Díaz, Cuban MLB pinch hitter and first baseman (Boston Red Sox), in San Jose de las Lajas, Cuba.
Died:
John Oliver Henderson, 64, United States federal judge, died after surgery for a ruptured aorta.
History Diaries 