Officers of the 2nd Division of the Ethiopian Army and at an Ethiopian Air Force base seized control of the African nation’s second largest city, Asmara. Elements of the Ethiopian Army today reportedly seized control of Asmara, the nation’s second largest city, to back demands for higher pay. They placed the commanding general and some other senior officers of an army division there under “restraint” or house arrest, according to telephoned reports from the city. Foreigners in Asmara quoted the dissident soldiers as having said that they did not wish to overthrow the Government of Emperor Haile Selassie but that they wanted enough pay to live.
Coming after last week’s civil riots and disturbances in Addis Ababa, reflecting popular concern over inflation and unemployment, the army action in Asmara seemed to constitute the gravest crisis that the 82‐year‐old emperor has faced since December, 1960, when the imperial bodyguard revolted and attempted to depose him. However, the events that have unfolded in the last few days do not seem to constitute an immediate threat to the throne, and Addis Ababa today seemed calm, possibly because Ethiopians seldom get much news of such a crisis until it is over.
It became known today that military units here in the capital, after having helped to quell the civil disturbances last week, refused over the weekend to continue their security duties unless a pay increase was granted. The emperor responded Sunday, after a night of hectic negotiations, by raising the pay of private soldiers to $50 month. It had been $41. The increase was viewed as insufficient by some units in Addis Ababa and heavy firing broke out in one section of the city Sunday night. Rebellious enlisted men, noncommissioned officers and some junior officers in Asmara in northern Ethiopia also rejected the pay raise as too small and seized control of the Asmara international airport at 11 o’clock last night. The airport has been closed to traffic.
Asmara, a city of 200,000 inhabitants and the capital of Eritrea Province, has been the scene of a prolonged guerrilla insurgency by Eritrean separatists. Some reports tonight said that members of the Eritrean Liberation Front had attacked a major highway north of Asmara in an attempt to exploit the difficulties the Ethiopian Government was experiencing in the city. Dissident troops were reported to have seized government buildings, the communications office and banks in Asmara.
South Vietnam sent hundreds of reinforcements to Mekong Delta trouble spots after Communist-led troops overran two bases, resulting in the deaths of at least 144 government troops and the wounding of an estimated 1,000. Saigon and the Việt Cộng exchanged another group of prisoners, ending the second of three phases in the current prisoner exchange schedule.
In Cambodia, rebel forces attacked three government positions 4½ miles southeast of Phnom Penh, capturing 114 government soldiers, field reports said. Government reinforcements rushed to the area only to mistake government soldiers for rebels in the darkness, opening fire and killing one of their own men and wounding six others, the report said.
President Nixon signed a proclamation for a nationwide observance of Vietnam Veterans Day on March 29, the first anniversary of the withdrawal of the last American troops from Vietnam. He said that had the United States not stood firm in Vietnam it would not be possible to go forward with the “great initiative for peace.” He said that the 17 million people of South Vietnam and the 7 million of Cambodia “would certainly now be under Communist control” but for the U.S. role in the Vietnam War. Moreover, he said, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and Thailand would be in “much greater danger” of aggression.
The Gambell incident occurred when a Soviet ice reconnaissance aircraft was running low on fuel and made an emergency landing in the United States. The Antonov An-24 touched down at the airport at Gambell, Alaska on St. Lawrence Island with 15 people on board; the 12 passengers were all Soviet scientists. Two days later, the An-24 was refueled by a U.S. Air Force C-130 airplane and departed at 7:30 in the evening.
The U.S. Department of Justice has appealed a federal court order that struck down the Army’s drug suppression program in Europe, arguing that the court lacked jurisdiction and that its order would do irreparable injury to military discipline, department spokesmen reported. The U.S. District Court of Appeals in Washington was asked to stay execution of an injunction against the drug program issued February 8 by Dist. Judge Gerhard A. Gesell. The judge’s decision forbids the Army on constitutional grounds from holding unannounced drug searches without probable cause for suspecting the men being searched.
Exiled Soviet author Alexander Solzhenitsyn left Oslo, Norway, on a train for Switzerland, still undecided where he will settle. Sources in Moscow said he may decide to stay in Switzerland, where he went after being ousted by the Soviet Union. His wife and three sons are still in Moscow.
Gold hits record $188 an ounce in Paris. The gold rush continued throughout the European bullion markets as gold surged through the psychologically important $175 barrier and then went up to $188 an ounce before settling back at the close. The closing price in London was $175 an ounce, a gain of $5 for the day.
The biggest criminal trial ever held in Italy has ended with prison sentences totaling 350 years meted out to 103 elderly defendants found guilty of malfeasance and graft. But none of them will ever go to jail. The appeals procedure will drag on at least until October, 1976, and by that time the 20‐year statute of limitations will wipe out all the offenses, stemming from one of Italy’s major corruption scandals, that the court had to examine. The 103 persons who have been convicted remain free pending decisions by a court of appeals and, in the last resort, the Court of Cassation, and such rulings usually take four to seven years. The chronic slowness of the Italian judicial system, as shown by the mass trial just ended after more than a year, casts a pall of futility over current inquiries into more recent scandals.
A senior American official said that team of United States Navy demolition experts had been sent to the Suez Canal at Egypt’s request to advise on clearing mines and other explosives. The waterway, closed since 1967, is due to be reopened this year. Newsmen were told of this action, the latest apparent sign of improved Egyptian‐American relations, shortly before Secretary of State Kissinger landed in Damascus.
Adm. Thomas H. Moorer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, estimated today that it had cost the Soviet Union more than $2.6‐billion to supply and equip, Arab nations as result of the Mideast War. This estimate is more than twice the $1‐billion that the United States said it spent on supplying Israel and somewhat bigger than the $2.2‐billion in aid for Israel voted by Congress. Admiral Moorer gave his estimate of Soviet cost in appraising the military outcome of the October war for the House Appropriations Committee. He disputed suggestions that the lessons learned from the performance of both sides and of United States’ and Soviet weaponry dictated “new military texts.” On the contrary, Admiral Moorer said, “time-honored strategic and tactical concepts have been underlined.”
The Admiral acknowledged that the heavy losses inflicted on Israeli aircraft by Soviet-made antiaircraft missiles and guns had brought about accelerated development of improved United States weapons to overcome air defenses. “We are developing a program to provide a more mobile, capable, and responsive family of battlefield air defense weapons and are re‐examining deployment tactics.” he said. Admiral Moorer said the need, to provide Israel with “moderate quantities of equipment and munitions” at the height of the fighting pointed up what he called “the magnitude of worldwide deficiencies in the level of arms, munitions, and war material maintained by the United States.”
The House Foreign Affairs Committee approved legislation authorizing $115 million in disaster relief aid to Pakistan, Nicaragua and to the drought-stricken countries in western Africa. But the committee cut $35 million from the $85 million the Nixon Administration had requested for flood-relief assistance to Pakistan. Rep. Lee Hamilton (D-Indiana) said much of the money requested for Pakistan was for long term rehabilitation projects not directly related to the flood aid. Nicaragua will get $15 million in quake aid and the African countries $50 million in drought aid.
Argentine Marxist guerrillas announced two more kidnappings, bringing to five the number of captives they hold in “people’s prisons.” The latest victims are Antonio Vallocchia, 65, an executive of a Swift meat-packing firm who was accused by the People’s Revolutionary Army of being responsible for the firing of 42 workers, and Mario Reducto, a retired noncommissioned navy officer who was allegedly involved in the kidnaping and torture of a guerrilla.
Leading supporters of Chile’s late President, Dr. Salvador Allende Gossens, are being held in a desolate “concentration camp” on Dawson Island in the Strait of Magellan, according to a report last week in Brazil’s leading political magazine, Visgo. The article said that a Visdo correspondent recently spent two hours on Dawson Island and interviewed several men, who had been Dr. Allende’s aides, including former Defense Minister Orlando Letelier, and the former chief of the Chilean Communist party, Luis Corvelán Lepe. This Is believed to be the first report of a visit by a foreign correspondent to the island since some 35 of Dr. Allende’s closest aides were flown there after the military coup last September. A small group of Chilean newsmen who support the military junta and representatives of the International Red Cross have visited the prison island.
Special Watergate Prosecutor Leon Jaworski said that he believed his office now knew the full story of the Watergate affair and predicted that major indictments in the cover‐up phase of the case would come as early as tomorrow or Friday. He said in an interview that the indictments would come after a jury was selected in the trial in New York of two former Cabinet officers, John N. Mitchell and Maurice H. Stans.
Republicans and Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee challenged President Nixon’s assertion that he could not be impeached except on the basis of evidence that he had violated criminal law. But several members of the committee conducting an impeachment inquiry said that, as a practical matter, the outcome of the investigation would probably turn on Mr. Nixon’s involvement, if any, in criminal aspects of the Watergate scandal.
When questioned about the tax deduction he took for donating his vice-presidential papers to the National Archives, the President named four Democrats, including Wiesner, who took similar deductions. Press secretary Gerald Warren blamed the President’s mistake on the press.
President Nixon formally declined to appear at John Ehrlichman’s trial as a witness. Special prosecutor Leon Jaworski reportedly decided against subpoenaing the President as witness before the Watergate grand jury.
The House Judiciary Committee’s special counsel, John Doar, made his first request for presidential material to be used in the impeachment probe. Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott urged the President to make available all material relevant to the committee’s and the special prosecutor’s investigations.
Samuel Joseph Byck, the unemployed salesman who killed two persons and himself in an aborted attempt to hijack a jetliner at Baltimore-Washington International Airport last week, had planned to crash-dive the plane into the White House, according to columnist Jack Anderson. Anderson said Byck, 44, described his plan, “Operation Pandora Box,” in a tape recording he mailed to Anderson “a few hours before the attempted hijacking.” Anderson quoted Byck as saying he hoped to make the pilot start to buzz the White House and then “I will shoot the pilot and then… try to steer the plane into the target, which is the White House.” Anderson noted that President Nixon stayed in the White House on the day of the hijacking attempt.
The House Rules Committee unexpectedly killed a federal land use bill which had been called President Nixon’s “highest priority” environmental measure. Rep. Sam Steiger (R-Arizona), who claimed credit for switching President Nixon against the bill, said he would “be very, very surprised” if the bill were revived this year. The bill, similar to one that passed the Senate last June, would provide $800 million over the next eight years for states to develop comprehensive plans for regulating the use of land, particularly for projects like power plants and airports.
President Nixon, in a surprise move, accused Congressional Democrats of acting “irresponsibly” on education legislation and of failing to move fast enough on health insurance. On education particularly, it was sharp departure from the Administration’s recent actions, which were, to move in conciliatory way.
President Nixon’s statement regarding the fuel crisis stirred up controversy. The President stated that gasoline rationing likely won’t be needed, adding that the crisis has passed, but not the problem. President Nixon’s assertion in his Monday night news conference at the White House that the energy “crisis” had subsided to the status of a “problem” drew heated contradictions from Democratic Congressional leaders and a mild endorsement from the Federal Energy Office.
Energy chief William Simon appeared before a Senate committee to clarify the President’s statements. Simon said that the President referred to the crisis being “over” only insofar as long lines at gasoline stations are concerned. Senator Henry Jackson criticized the President’s use of words during his press conference. Senators believe that Simon and the Federal Energy Office should make evaluations of the energy situation in order to restore the administration’s credibility.
Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield again urged that gasoline rationing be instituted immediately. Some oil executives on a panel advising the Interior Department conceded that rationing is inevitable if the fuel allocation system doesn’t work out. They also warned that unemployment figures will rise if more petroleum imports don’t reach the United States. Many coal mines in Virginia and West Virginia are closed because gasoline is unavailable for workers to reach the mines.
The gasoline shortage is affecting leisure time also. Middle class Americans can’t enjoy Mardi Gras this year because the gasoline shortage is keeping them home. Kentucky resident John Alcorn said he couldn’t find gas on the way to Louisiana so he hitched a ride into New Orleans. Others have resorted to taking tour buses because of the gasoline shortage.
Federal Reserve Board chairman Arthur Burns disagreed with a statement about inflation which President Nixon made at his press conference. The President also ran into trouble because of his reference to Jerome Wiesner and tax deductions. The White House apologized for the reference.
The threat of a contempt citation against Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks, authors of an unpublished book on the Central Intelligence Agency, ended when they agreed to drop their contention that some information in the manuscript was obtained after they left government service. A judge’s order in a suburban Washington court in Virginia that they name sources for the information was then waived. Marchetti and Marks go to court Thursday to try to force the CIA to drop objections to almost 200 items in the manuscript.
Four crewmen aboard the aircraft carrier USS Independence (CV-62) died when they were overcome by fumes in an aviation fuel tank. A spokesman said three of the sailors apparently were killed while attempting to rescue the fourth man while the ship was docked at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth, Virginia. The spokesman said the tank was “basically empty” but not completely dry. The four men were checking and adjusting gauges when one apparently slipped and fell into the tank.
A Houston uniformed policeman responding to a trouble call in a bar shot and killed a county undercover narcotics agent, police said. They said Rodney Scott Morgan, 26, an undercover agent in the sheriff’s office since 1972, was shot by patrolman Glen Thyssen. Morgan had just arrested two men in the restroom and his partner, undercover agent F. G. Dodd, had fired a shot into the ceiling to stop the scuffling. A witness said Thyssen “kicked open the door to the men’s room. A man with a gun in his hand spun around. Thyssen took one step back and fired once, hitting the man in the chest. He dropped dead.”
“SN 1974C”, a supernova that had occurred at least 46 million years earlier, was observed on Earth for the first time. The supernova was first spotted from Earth by astronomer Arp van der Kruit.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 859.51 (+8.13, +0.95%).
Born:
Sébastien Loeb, French rally driver, in Haguenau, France.
Died:
Paul Sample, 77, American artist.
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