The mission of the Marines in Lebanon is not over despite their move to ships off Beirut, President Reagan said. In a televised news conference, he said the Marines could conceivably return if doing so improved their ability to protect the Lebanese Government. Asked at a news conference to describe what circumstances could lead to a decision to reintroduce the marines, Mr. Reagan said, “If they could improve the possibility of carrying out their mission, then, yes, that would be a reason for sending them in.” Noting that American planes had again been the targets of antiaircraft fire, Mr. Reagan said, “We have not responded because we think this is a time for restraint and for hoping to cool things down.” Last December, when American planes were fired upon, Syrian antiaircraft batteries were hit by air strikes and shells from American warships offshore.
On relations with the Soviet Union and its new leader, Konstantin U. Chernenko, Mr. Reagan said Vice President Bush had had a “very fruitful meeting” in Moscow at the time of the funeral last week of Yuri V. Andropov, the Soviet leader. “We’re very hopeful of the latest announcement he had made that he was willing to agree to on-site inspection regarding chemical warfare,” the President said. “We think this is a good sign, and we have let him know that we want better relations,” Mr. Reagan said. “We want to sit down and try to resolve some of the problems that we have.”
President Reagan has his advisors consider an invitation to General Secretary Chernenko to be the President’s guest at the opening of the Olympic games in Los Angeles in July.
A major drive by Iranian forces has begun on the southern front and is aimed at the Iraqi oil port of Basra, Iraqi broadcasts said. But they added that Iraqi soldiers had destroyed or repelled the first attackers. Iran said its forces surged across the border into Iraq in three places and claimed that its troops pushed to within 10 miles of Iraq’s main north-south highway. Iraq said the attacks were “totally crushed.” Neither report could be independently confirmed, but both sides agreed that fierce fighting was raging.
Britain and the U.S. send warships to the Persian Gulf following an Iranian offensive against Iraq. In London, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said Britain might intervene “in certain circumstances” with the United States to secure Western oil supplies threatened by the Persian Gulf war. Iran has threatened to block the strategic Strait of Hormuz if its oil facilities are attacked by Iraq.
The Israeli Parliament approved the government’s $22.7 billion austerity budget amid warnings from Finance Minister Yigal Cohen-Orgad that the nation faces hard times. Cohen-Orgad, presenting the budget after months of Cabinet wrangling, said the government’s priorities are to boost exports by 8% and to reduce the national debt, the highest per capita in the world, from $22 billion to $20 billion. Without U.S. aid, now more than $2.5 billion a year, Israel would not be able to carry on, he warned.
Jordan severed diplomatic and political relations with Libya over the sacking and torching of its embassy in Tripoli last week, state-run Jordan television said. It reported that the decision was made at a Cabinet meeting after a thorough review of Jordanian-Libyan ties. Prime Minister Ahmed Obeidat earlier told Parliament that about 200 attackers, among them mercenaries from Chad, stormed, looted and burned the embassy. They also threatened the lives of Jordan’s ambassador to Libya and his staff. Obeidat said.
The French police said today that truckers, ignoring a government warning, had expanded their road blockades to almost every main highway in the country. With traffic halted or slowed at 240 points, access cut off to cities such as Toulon and Nancy, and some industries shut down for lack of parts, the Government described the protest action, now in its seventh day, as “inadmissible.” The blockades began when French trucks were unable to enter Italy because of a French customs agents’ strike on the Alpine border. Caught for days on the road, their cargoes spoiling, the drivers rebelled. They demanded that the Government reimburse them for time lost because of the strike and for insurance and fuel taxes.
Polish parishioners who occupied a Warsaw church and began a hunger strike because their priest, a supporter of the outlawed Solidarity union, was transferred, agreed to suspend the protest for three weeks. Father Mieczyslaw Nowak, whose removal from St. Joseph’s Church by Cardinal Jozef Glemp sparked the demonstration, said the protesters assured him they will not resume their fast before March 12, when Glemp returns from a month-long trip to South America.
The Archbishop of Cracow has agreed to press the appeal of a pro-Solidarity priest against the order from the Roman Catholic Primate, Jozef Cardinal Glemp, transferring him from his parish, people attending a protest mass here were told tonight. Representatives of the protesters announced that the Archbishop, Franciszek Cardinal Macharski, who is the nominal head of the Polish church in the absence of the Primate, “has promised intercession on our behalf.” The promise was made at a meeting with the delegation Tuesday, a spokesman of the protest group said. The order last week transferring the Rev. Mieczyslaw Nowak to a rural parish had brought a sharp challenge to the authority of Cardinal Glemp, with nightly protest masses and a hunger strike. The dozen hunger strikers suspended their fast tonight pending the appeal.
Eighteen Grenadians faced charges related to the coup that prompted a United States-led invasion last October. Former Deputy Prime Minister Bernard Coard and the former army commander, Hudson Austin, were charged with nine others with conspiracy to murder. Crowds of Grenadians shouted “Hang them all!” as the 18 people appeared in court on the Caribbean island to be charged in the bloody coup that prompted a U.S.-led invasion last October. Seven soldiers were charged with the actual murder of Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and seven other officials. The cases were adjourned until April 4.
El Salvador’s centrist Christian Democratic Party and the country’s largest labor organization have joined forces to challenge right-wing parties in March 25 elections, labor sources said. Under the agreement, Popular Democratic Unity, which represents mostly farm laborers, would back Jose Napoleon Duarte for president and, if he won, get important Cabinet posts in return. Duarte and rightist Roberto D’Aubuisson are the main contenders in the elections, and diplomats said labor support is crucial if Duarte hopes to win.
Sikh terrorist bands killed at least nine Hindus and wounded 22 in the latest violence in their campaign in northern India to win religious and political concessions from Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s government, authorities said. Gandhi, meanwhile, ordered more paramilitary forces into the riot-scarred states of Punjab and Haryana. The Sikhs are a breakaway Hindu sect who reject idolatry and the caste system.
The Chinese Government denied today that it was involved in a plot to smuggle sophisticated United States technology to China. The denial came in response to the arrest on February 11 in New Jersey of five people, one of them a Chinese citizen, on charges of trying to purchase more than $1 billion worth of classified military equipment for reshipment to China. At a weekly briefing today for foreign correspondents, Wang Zhenyu, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, called the reports of China’s involvement in the alleged conspiracy “absolutely groundless and a sheer fabrication.”
Vietnam has given a “clear commitment” to move more rapidly in determining the status of the nearly 2,500 Americans still listed as missing in the Vietnam war, a member of a United States delegation to Hanoi said today. The Vietnamese Government no longer links the missing Americans with other issues between the two countries, said Ann Mills Griffiths, executive director of the National League of Missing in Action-Prisoners of War Families. Mrs. Griffiths spoke at a news conference here after traveling to Hanoi with four American officials. The delegation was led by Richard L. Armitage, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense.
The Canadian Government delivered a strong diplomatic protest to the State Department today against the Reagan Administration’s failure to seek reductions in air pollution believed to cause acid rain. Ambassador Allan E. Gotlieb said his government was trying to convince the Administration that acid rain was the most important issue between the two countries and one that threatened to raise “high-level concerns” among all Canadians. The text of the note presented by Mr. Gotlieb to William Schneider Jr., an Under Secretary of State, was not made public.
President Reagan’s standing with the American people continues the strong upward momentum that began a year ago, paralleling the economic recovery, according to the latest Gallup Poll. Reagan’s current job-performance rating of 57% approval represents an unprecedented 22 percentage-point improvement over the 35% approval rating (his lowest to date) recorded in January, 1983. Currently, 57% approve and 36% disapprove of Reagan’s overall performance in office.
Rising deficits would be generated for the next several years by President Reagan’s 1985 budget proposals, rather than the moderately declining trend the Administration projected, according to a first analysis by the Congressional Budget Office. The new deficit estimates are sure to be a key issue in the bipartisan negotiations between Congress and the Administration. The talks resume Thursday with additional participants, including the chairmen of the budget, appropriation and tax-writing committees in the Senate.
President Reagan tapes a message about the school prayer amendment. Mr. Reagan called on both houses to approve a proposed Constitutional amendment that would supersede the Supreme Court ban on government-sponsored prayer in public schools.
The President accused Democrats in the House of having “begged away” from his call for a bipartisan reduction of the Federal deficit. Mr. Reagan made the charge at his televised news conference. “If we don’t act soon, we’ll lose another year to fruitless political posturing and legislative stalemate,” the President said in an opening statement at a nationally televised news conference. In his most direct attack on the Democrats thus far in his month-old re-election campaign, the President also accused the House of Representatives, which is controlled by Democrats, of “dragging its feet” on the omnibus crime bill passed earlier this month by the Republican-controlled Senate.
The Democrats face an uphill fight in their efforts to regain control of the Senate this year. After a disheartening summer and fall, Senate Democratic strategists finally received a lift when they recently persuaded former Governor William Winter of Mississippi to declare his candidacy for the Senate seat held by Thad Cochran, a Republican completing his first term. But the Democrats still acknowledge they face an uphill fight to regain control of the Senate. “This is the big break we’ve been waiting for,” Audrey Sheppard, assistant executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said of the Winter candidacy. “It’s the best thing that’s happened to us in a long time.” The Winter candidacy could prove one of the Democrats’ few breaks in a season of gloom. They suffered a severe blow last summer with the death of Senator Henry M. Jackson of Washington. Last fall the election of his Republican successor, Daniel J. Evans, gave the Republicans a majority of 55 to 45. Many Democrats who previously considered control of the Senate well within their reach began to regard the required effort as Olympian.
The Senate voted today, 63 to 32, for a bill to allow the Federal Government to execute terrorists, spies and people who attack Presidents. The death penalty bill went to the House, where Democratic leaders have not yet decided whether to take action soon on capital punishment or other anticrime measures approved by the Senate. Since the 98th Congress reconvened January 23, the Republican-controlled Senate has almost exclusively concerned itself with crime measures. President Reagan urged in a political broadcast Saturday that the House follow the Senate’s lead because “the liberal approach of coddling criminals didn’t work and never will.”
Several Democratic aspirants for President campaigning in New Hampshire were said to be worried about their ability to stay in the Presidential race.
The Environmental Protection Agency announced that it will reopen the question of whether it should require school districts to reduce asbestos contamination in their buildings. The EPA granted a petition from the Service Employees International Union, which asked the federal agency to draw up a rule to require countermeasures against asbestos in all public and commercial buildings. Earlier, the National Education Association also asked the EPA to seek measures against asbestos in their contracts with school boards.
The House voted 309 to 78 to establish a Select Committee on Hunger to help focus congressional attention on what sponsors said is a “spreading worldwide horror.” The 17-member panel will conduct hearings and study the hunger problem, but it will not fashion legislation. Rep. Mickey Leland (D-Texas) is slated to become chairman of the panel.
Disability benefits would be restored to nearly 400,000 former Social Security recipients under an order issued by an appeals court.
Air bags would be provided in 5,000 Ford cars that the Government plans to buy to test the devices’ effectiveness in preventing injury.
Organized labor was rebuffed by the Supreme Court. The Justices ruled unanimously that a bankruptcy court may free a company from its union contracts without requiring proof that the company would otherwise face imminent failure.
“David,” the 12-year-old Houston boy who had spent almost all his life in sterile isolation, died of undetermined causes. The boy, David Phillip Vetter, died in a hospital room 15 days after he was removed from the plastic bubble he had lived in since birth. Vetter’s surname was not revealed to the general public until 10 years after his death in order to preserve his family’s privacy.
Two fugitives from a prison work gang shot and killed retired tire dealer Paul Windrow while he was grilling steaks in the backyard of his house near Brownsville. The men then took his wife hostage on a five-hour drive across Tennessee before releasing her, police said in Knoxville. Elizabeth Windrow, 55, was set free after her captors pulled into a highway rest stop about 15 miles from Knoxville. She said they told her to lie on the floorboard and count to 500, and then they drove away in another car that apparently had been waiting for them, police said. The fugitives — identified as James Clegg, 30, and Ronald Lee Freeman, 41 — were among five inmates who dug up hidden pistols Saturday, overpowered their guards, and fled from Fort Pillow State Prison in a stolen car.
Striking Boston dockworkers approved a new three-year contract and agreed to end a 13-day-old walkout that idled the busy East Coast port. It was the last of four strikes by East Coast longshoremen to be settled. Dockworkers in Baltimore, Philadelphia and Providence, Rhode Island, reached agreements last week to end their work stoppages. The pact provides 1,500 hours of guaranteed income in the first year, 1,600 the second year, and up to 1,800 in the final year.
Commonwealth Edison Co. will spend up to $30 million in the next two years to remove electrical equipment containing cancer-causing PCBs in the Chicago region, Edison officials said. The utility outlined the plan in the wake of a precedent-setting civil suit filed Tuesday by the Justice Department. The suit charges that leaking PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) have damaged property or caused health problems at seven sites in Chicago and its suburbs. More than 40,000 PCB-containing capacitors and transformers on utility poles in northern Illinois.
The Tennessee Legislature approved the nation’s most comprehensive merit pay system for teachers. It was praised by President Reagan but resisted by the state teachers’ lobby. The bill, along with a measure raising the state sales tax 1 cent per dollar to pay for it, now goes to Republican Governor Lamar Alexander for his signature. The bill sets up a five-step “career ladder” and those teachers in the upper three categories get pay bonuses ranging from $1,000 to $7,000 per year. The average teacher now makes less than $17,000 a year.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1134.21 (-5.13).
Born:
Venetian Princess [Jodie-Amy Rivera], YouTube Internet personality, in Brockton, Massachusetts.
Died:
David Phillip Vetter, 12, boy who spent most of his life in a plastic bubble, from Burkitt lymphoma.
Max Newman, 87, British mathematician and codebreaker (Colossus).
History Diaries 