Lebanon’s President and Syria reached an understanding on a plan to resolve Lebanon’s violent political crisis, Lebanese officials said. The terms of the proposed agreement would mark a sharp shift in Lebanon’s diplomatic orientation, away from Israel and toward Syria, the Soviet Union’s closest ally in the Middle East.
Amin Gemayel’s resignation was no longer demanded by Syria’s key Lebanese allies, a move that officials in Damascus say clears the way for carrying out an accord between President Gemayel and President Hafez al-Assad of Syria. The demands by the Druse and Shiite Muslim leaders for Mr. Gemayel’s resignation had been regarded as a major obstacle to agreement on the basis of a Lebanese peace accord.
United States military analysts said today that Iran had moved artillery, tanks and aircraft into attack positions for what could become the largest offensive of its war with Iraq. The analysts said the Iranian force, consisting of 400,000 troops assembled in staging areas in mountains to the east of the Iran-Iraq border would be ready to begin the drive within the next three or four days. On the other side, the analysts said, Iraqi forces estimated at 250,000 troops appear to be ready. While they are outnumbered, they have the advantage of fortified positions. Iraq Gains Confidence
The analysts said Iraqi troops also appeared to have gained confidence through losses they have inflicted on poorly trained Iranian assault troops in the smaller-scale attacks of the last two weeks. As for the Iraqi communiques of Thursday that said Iraqi forces had sunk seven Iranian ships, military officers here said United States intelligence had not been able to confirm that such actions had taken place. The officers declined to discuss the sources of information that go into intelligence assessments. In the past such sources have included satellite photographs, pictures from high altitude reconnaissance planes, and intercepts of radio and telephone transmissions.
Iraq warned foreign shipping again tonight not to approach Iranian ports in the Persian Gulf. But it said it did not intend to attack the main Iranian oil terminal on Kharg Island at present. Speaking on the Baghdad radio, an Iraqi military spokesman said the Government had decided on such a course to give the Iranians a chance “to allow Iraq to make use of its right of navigation in the Gulf. But if they insist on preventing us from exercising this right,” he said, “Iraq will destroy these installations.” This was the third warning by Iraq to foreign shipping this week. The warning to foreign shipping was renewed on Tuesday, and an Iraqi communique said on Thursday that Iraqi jets and naval vessels had attacked and sunk seven Iranian ships moving in waters northwest of Kharg Island toward the Iranian port of Bandar Khomeini at the northern end of the Persian Gulf.
A broadcast from Teheran said the President of Iran, Hojatolislam Ali Khamenei, reiterated at a prayer meeting today that Iran was prepared to close the Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the gulf if Iraq attacked Iranian oil installations. He also said Iran would take such action if Iranian shipping was denied security. “Iran is not seeking adventurism in the Hormuz Strait,” the Iranian President said, according to the Teheran radio. But, he added, “if it was made insecure for Iranian ships, Iran would not let others use it.”
In the ground war, meanwhile, both sides said their forces had inflicted heavy casualties on the other. The Iranian and Iraqi communiqués, were broadcast on the Teheran and Baghdad radios and monitored here. Iraq said tonight that Iraqi forces had crushed an Iranian attack east of the Iraqi port of Basra, killing or wounding more than 19,000 Iranians and destroying 57 tanks in a 10-hour battle that began late Thursday. The Iraqi communiqué said Iraqi planes carried out intensive raids against Iranian troop positions and concentrations on the southern front, where Iran began an offensive nine days ago. One plane was lost, it said. An Iranian communiqué, broadcast from Teheran, said Iranian forces on the Iraqi side of the border beat off five Iraqi counterattacks Wednesday and Thursday in the southern marshlands, killing or wounding 1,300 Iraqi soldiers.
Konstantin U. Chernenko urged the United States to take steps toward the start of a “real drastic change in Soviet-American relations.” In a televised address from the Kremlin, the new Soviet leader said: “We would wish such a drastic change. Now it is up to Washington to act.” Mr. Chernenko’s speech was the last of a series of “pre-election speeches” by unopposed candidates to the Supreme Soviet, one of the major rituals of the Soviet one-party system.
Speaking to his ceremonial constituents in a nationally televised speech from the Kremlin’s Palace of Congresses, Mr. Chernenko, 72 years old, appeared to have difficulty reading his 50-minute text, stumbling and slurring his words. At one point, he seemed to lose his place and skipped an entire, critical passage, which was subsequently published by Tass, the official press agency.
A Soviet Olympic official was denied a visa by the State Department for reasons of “internal security.” The Soviet official, Oleg N. Yermishkin, had applied for a visa to serve as an “Olympics attaché” in Los Angeles for six months before and after the Summer Games there.
Josef Cardinal Glemp, the Roman Catholic primate of Poland, was quoted today as saying that the outlawed union Solidarity was no longer acting in the interests of workers. “When Solidarity’s strength was at its peak, I said the church would support it as long as it kept to its original proposal of defending the workers,” the newspaper O Estado de Sao Paulo quoted the Cardinal as saying. “But, at one point, Solidarity abandoned this proposal and it no longer defends the working class.” “Shortly after being created, the movement became a political organization,” Cardinal Glemp was quoted as saying. “Half of its 10 million members belong to the Communist Party, which means that its ideals are not the same as the church.’
The newspaper also quoted Cardinal Glemp, who is touring South America, as saying in the interview that Solidarity was a “mixed bag” of Marxists and Trotskyists and that Lech Walesa, its founder, was an “independent who has been manipulated and who has lost control” of the union. Mr. Walesa, responding in Poland, said: “The union was democratic so one had to carry the orders of the union in a democratic way. If this is manipulation, then I was manipulated.”
Bands of pirates attacked a boat carrying refugees from Vietnam, robbing, raping and kidnapping the women and forcing the men overboard, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said today. A spokesman, Leo Davico, said 33 refugees were feared drowned and 20 women kidnapped in the attack, one of two that occurred last month after the boat left Vietnam carrying 60 refugees. Mr. Davico said the report was based on the testimony of two 12-year-old girls who drifted at sea, clinging to a container, for 24 hours before being rescued by Malaysian fishermen. The girls’ account was corroborated by five male survivors who reached the coast of Thailand, he said. Mr. Davico called the attack one of the most serious yet involving the boat people, who still leave Vietnam at an average of 1,600 per month.
Deputy Prime Minister Wan Li of China, looking ahead to President Reagan’s visit here late next month, today ruled out any substantial improvement in relations with the United States until the Taiwan issue is resolved. “We welcome President Reagan,” he told Chinese and Japanese journalists, “but no significant progress can be made in our bilateral relations before the Taiwan issue is properly resolved.” Peking regards any American tie with Taiwan as interference in its internal affairs.
On other topics, Mr. Wan ruled out a quick mending of ties with the Soviet Union after the death of the Soviet leader Yuri V. Andropov. And he said Peking supported the North Korean call for peace talks with South Korea and the United States on reunification of the Korean peninsula. Washington backs the South Koreans, who have expressed reservations about such a meeting.
A former Salvadoran official has implicated high-ranking Salvadoran officials and civilians in acts of terrorism, including Roberto d’Aubuisson, a leading candidate for El Salvador’s presidency. The former official, who has served at the highest level of the security police in El Salvador, has given members of Congress extensive details on the inner workings of Salvadoran death squads.
The United States Congressman who obtained UNESCO’s consent to a Congressional investigation said today that he would ask the agency head to ensure that documents needed for the inquiry will not be destroyed. The Representative, James H. Scheuer, Democrat of Queens, said at a news conference that he had heard rumors that “files are disappearing and documents are being shredded.” He said he would communicate his concern to Amadou-Mahtar M’Bow of Senegal, director general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, which is based here. “I am confident of the good faith of the director general and am sure he will take whatever steps are necessary to protect the files, records and documents so that our access to them is real,” Mr. Scheuer said.
The Vatican newspaper says the heresy charge brought against the Italian astronomer Galileo in 1633 seems baseless, but sources said that the Vatican commission studying the charge is not expected to recommend overturning it. “The Holy Father has said the church had erred in condemning Galileo, and the commission apparently does not feel any need of a formal action beyond stating the circumstances that had led to his condemnation,” said a Vatican source who asked not to be identified. An inquisition court in Rome condemned Galileo Galilei as being “vehemently suspected of heresy” for his assertion that the Earth was an ordinary planet revolving around the sun. The church condemned Galileo after he published in 1632 his “Dialogue on the Two Chief Systems of the World,” which stated that the Earth was not the center of the universe.
The President and First Lady attend the 11th Annual Reception and Dinner of the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC). President Reagan tonight rallied conservative supporters with a call for four more years in office and a denunciation of Democratic opponents as “spendthrifts who mangled America.” The President saluted the Conservative Political Action Conference with the message “Long live the revolution.” And he sketched an election-year choice of paths “toward greater freedom or bigger government.” The alternatives, he said, were between a “drab materialistic world, where Big Brother rules by promises to special interest groups, and a world of adventure, where everyday people set their sights on impossible dreams, distant stars and the Kingdom of God.”
In his remarks to the conservative gathering at the Washington Sheraton Hotel, Mr. Reagan attributed to his critics a “tombstone society of wage and price guidelines, mandatory quotas, tax increases, planned shortages and shared sacrifices.” “Let others run down America and seek to punish success,” he said. “Let them call you greedy for not wanting Government to take more and more of your earnings.”
In claiming success at the White House, Mr. Reagan dismissed as “sermonettes” Democratic charges that he has not been compassionate toward the poor. He said the Democrats had “mangled America with the nightmare of double-digit inflation” and numerous other failings. These failures, he said, were not caused by “unusual rotations of the moon, or by the personality of my predecessor,” but rather by misguided policies and a misjudgment of human nature. “Believe me, you cannot create a desert, hand a person a cup of water, and call that compassion,” he said in criticism of Democratic policies.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is asking the Federal Election Commission to investigate the relationship between President Reagan’s campaign committee and the National Conservative Political Action Committee. In a letter to the commission, given to a reporter Thursday, Representative Tony Coelho, Democrat of California, chairman of the Democratic committee, said that expenditures by the conservative group in support of President Reagan were not truly independent, as required by law. Mr. Coelho said money was being spent “in coordination and consultation with Reagan-Bush ’84 and other agents of the President.” Craig Shirley, director of communications for the conservative group, said in an interview that the charges were “ridiculous” and “a public relations gimmick.”
President Reagan meets to craft legislation that would enable the U.S. to have a successful program for anti-terrorism.
Officials of President Reagan’s re-election campaign have decided to apply for $10.1 million in matching funds from the Federal Government for campaign expenses before the Republican National Convention in August. The President signed a document today that authorizes the committee to pursue such funds. Earlier the campaign was considering not applying for Federal funds and using only money it could raise on its own to pay for its activities. Had the campaign decided to do this, it would not have had to abide by a set of federally mandated ceilings on political spending in each state. In addition, some conservatives in the Reagan campaign are philosophically opposed to accepting Federal funds.
Edwin Meese 3rd faced challenges on several grounds on the second day of Senate confirmation hearings on his nomination as Attorney General. He was questioned about the Reagan Administration’s record on appointing members of minority groups to the federal bench, and on his views on civil rights, but the most intensive questioning came from Senator Howard M. Metzenbaum, about the sale of the Meese home in California.
New curbs on EDB’s use on fruit were announced by William D. Ruckelshaus, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. He warned of a broader problem from many other pesticides put into use before health standards were set.
Widely used commercial chemicals have never been adequately tested for potential health hazards, according to a report prepared by a committee of experts for the National Research Council. For the tens of thousands of chemicals used in commercial products and processes, food, cosmetics and pesticides, there is little or no toxicity data available and even less information on the extent to which humans are exposed to the substances, the report said.
Survival of improved labor relations achieved in recent years at General Motors is in some doubt as G.M. and the United Automobile Workers prepare for what is expected to be a difficult round of negotiations on a new contract to replace the one that expires September 14. The union will present its position at a bargaining convention in Detroit Tuesday.
Walter F. Mondale’s income in the two years after leaving the Vice Presidency provided him with a solid personal financial footing before he announced his candidacy for the Democratic Presidential nomination last year. His earnings of nearly $1 million in the two-year period included more than $700,000 in legal and consulting fees paid by companies and organizations headed by close political associates.
Former Mayor Frank L. Rizzo, under fire from the news media and consumer critics, left his job as a security consultant with the Philadelphia Gas Works today, a day after he moved into his new office, a utility spokesman said. Mr. Rizzo, at one time Philadelphia’s Police Commissioner, was hired at a salary of $5,000 a month to combat gas thefts from the city-owned utility. His announcement of his intention to continue drawing his annual city pension of $45,000 a year led to accusations of “double dipping.”
A flash fire today swept through a Utah plant where solid-fuel propellant is placed in missile rockets, slightly injuring 13 workers who rushed out just ahead of the flames, officials said. The early morning fire caused extensive damage to the aluminum, wood and steel building at the big Morton-Thiokol missile and rocket manufacturing complex 15 miles west of Brigham City, said a company spokesman, Jim Brown. Scott Rackham said he and three other employees rushed out of the building and down a hill before feeling a couple of shock waves that “lifted us off the ground and threw us.”
Angry Nevada officials said today the Governor of Colorado should go to Las Vegas and find out that he was wrong when he asserted that one in every eight women under 45 in that gambling spa was a prostitute. In Carson City, Nevada, Governor Dick Bryan said he had called Governor Richard Lamm of Colorado and “unloaded.” “His comments are totally without foundation in fact, and an insult to every Nevada woman,” Governor Bryan said. “And in my judgment, he owes an apology to the State of Nevada and women in particular for what I believe to be an insensitive, unfounded and intemperate comment. “He said he was sorry.”
A reclusive Maryland woman with $350,000 in assets who lived four weeks in a tin-roofed home with her dead brother’s body is undergoing medical and mental evaluation, the authorities said today. A police spokesman said the body of James Deaton, 91 years old, was found February 17 under a covering of blankets hours after a neighbor learned from Mr. Deaton’s sister that he had died. Myrtle Varney, 79, had asked Delores Owens, a neighbor, to buy some beans at a grocery store. Miss Owens offered to take her shopping but Mrs. Varney refused, saying she did not want to leave her home unguarded. “The neighbor asked, ‘Where is your brother,’ and Mrs. Varney nonchalantly answered, ‘He’s dead,’ and continued on with another conversation,” Bob Law of the county police said.
They are doubles partners, bridge partners and close friends, but today Pam Shriver and Martina Navratilova will find themselves on opposite sides of the net at Madison Square Garden, facing off in the semifinals of the Virginia Slims Championships. Miss Shriver, the third-ranked player in the world, won the right to meet Miss Navratilova with last night’s 6—3, 7—6 victory over Hana Mandlikova, whom she had never beaten before. Today’s second semifinal will match unseeded Barbara Potter and Chris Evert Lloyd, who breezed to victory last night, 6—1, 6—2, against Helena Sukova of Czechoslovakia.
The NFL’s Baltimore Colts are staying in Baltimore, at least for the time being. That was the message that their owner, Robert Irsay, delivered to owners and executives of the other 27 National Football League teams at a meeting today. But the possibility of a move did not meet any resistance from the owners, who are facing a $49 million penalty for trying to block the shift by the Raiders from Oakland to Los Angeles. Pete Rozelle, the NFL commissioner, who presided over the one- day session, said that Irsay spoke to the owners and told them that he has made “no commitment” to another city to deliver the Colts.
Rozelle said that Irsay was still discussing with Mayor William D. Schaefer of Baltimore the possibility of keeping the team there. Rozelle did not identify the cities under consideration, other than to say that Irsay had ruled out New York. The city considered the leading contender is Indianapolis, which recently constructed a 61,000-seat domed stadium. In Baltimore, the Colts play in Memorial Stadium, a 60,000-seat facility that was built in the 1920’s.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1171.48 (+12.04).
Born:
Elizabeth Jagger, English model and actress, daughter of American model Jerry Hall and the Rolling Stones lead singer Mick Jagger, in New York, New York.
Jonathan Ericsson, Swedish National Team and NHL defenseman (Olympics, silver medal, 2014; Detroit Red Wings), in Karlskrona, Sweden.
Died:
Louis Basile, 48, actor (Louie-“The Super”).
History Diaries 