Formal scrapping of the accord Lebanon reached last May with Israel on security and on a simultaneous Syrian and Israeli troop withdrawal from Lebanon, will be started today, Lebanon’s Foreign Minister said. Cancellation of the American-sponsored agreement has been a key Syrian demand in talks on a formula to end Lebanon’s political violence.
Heavy fighting broke out again in Beirut between the Lebanese Army and anti-government militiamen as negotiations continued between Lebanese and Syrian officials in Damascus. Fighting was also reported at the strategic mountain town of Souq el Gharb, Shuweifat and Kfar Chima, along the Lebanese Army’s line protecting the presidential palace at Baabda.
At least six Arab men were wounded when several masked gunmen fired at a crowded bus in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. In Jerusalem, a grenade exploded outside the Hospice, the Old City’s only hospital, which caters to Arabs. The attacks were the latest in a series that have led to official concern about the possibility that Jewish terrorists are operating in the West Bank.
An Iraqi general suggested that Iraq reserves the right to use chemical weapons. Iran, which has been at war with Iraq for 42 months, has charged several times that nitrogen mustard has been used against its forces. Major General Hisham Sabah al-Fakhri said “We will use all possible means to defend our country.”
Ten Iranian soldiers burned on the southern war front with Iraq very likely are poison gas victims. Austrian doctors treating them in Vienna said. The soldiers were flown to Vienna’s General Hospital with severe burns around the eyes. mouth and nose and in intense pain. Britain denied Iranian charges that it armed the Iraqis with chemical weapons, and Iraq has issued disclaimers on the use of gas. Chemical warfare, waged in World War I with mustard gas and gas shells, was banned under the Geneva Convention of 1925.
An estimated 100 East Germans seeking passage to the West are being given refuge in West German embassies in Communist Eastern Europe, including 24 staying in Bonn’s embassy in Prague. West German newspapers reported. Bild am Sonntag said the 24 refugees in the Prague embassy were allowed to remain after the niece of East German Premier Willi Stoph and other members of her family left the embassy Thursday, returning to East Germany after reportedly being given assurances they will be allowed to emigrate later to the West.
U.S. customs agents arrested two New York businessmen and confiscated hundreds of automatic weapons in the first illegal arms shipment to Poland ever seized in the United States, a customs official said. The plan allegedly was uncovered at a meeting in New Orleans attended by the two men. Solomon Schwartz, 48, of Monsey, New York, and H. Leonard Berg, 48, of New York City. Also at the meeting were an undercover agent and an informer. U.S. officials said the shipment was destined for the Warsaw government, not for supporters of the outlawed Solidarity union.
A Swedish military spokesman said today that military forces hunting a foreign submarine had fired in separate incidents at three frogmen spotted emerging from the sea today on the small island of Almoe. The latest sightings of frogmen occurred near the place where troops fired at a lone diver Wednesday night. A spokesman at the Karlskrona naval base nearby said troops with tracker dogs were searching for several frogmen and had opened fire several times early this morning.
The island of Almoe is inside an area that has been sealed off for more than three weeks by the Swedish armed forces, who think they have trapped a foreign vessel, possibly a small submarine. The Swedish military reported Saturday that a submarine had been found lurking just outside the Karlskrona archipelago and that depth charges had been dropped to warn it off. Military sources suggested it might be a “mother ship” for the smaller craft.
Controls on Roman Catholic schools in France proposed by the Socialist government brought out a demonstration of about 500,000 people in Versailles. The demonstration culminated months of campaigning against a government bill that is scheduled to go before the National Assembly in the spring.
The first test of the U.S. cruise missile in Canada will be conducted Tuesday morning over Arctic terrain similar to parts of the Soviet Union, a Canadian military spokesman said. The unarmed missile will be launched over the Beaufort Sea from under the wing of an American B-52 and will be closely monitored for its 1,000-mile flight. Peace activists opposed to the test immediately vowed to press court challenges and protests across Canada in a bid to block the program.
Cambodian Communist guerrillas fighting the Vietnamese said they crippled the airport at Siem Reap, in the western part of the country. after a night attack. The Khmer Rouge army’s radio said its forces destroyed the airport control tower, fuel tanks, and a hangar. The reported attack was the second on Siem Reap, Cambodia’s second largest city, by the Khmer Rouge, who ruled the country from 1975 until early 1979, when they were ousted by the Vietnamese. On January 27, the Khmer Rouge briefly occupied most of Siem Reap.
The government of Punjab state authorized the police in three districts today to “shoot to kill” lawbreakers and to conduct searches and make arrests without warrants. It declared the Amritsar, Gurdaspar and Kapurthala districts “disturbed areas” because of attacks by “elements who were disturbing communal peace and public order.” Sikh militants are demanding greater autonomy in the northern state, and more than 70 people, most of them Hindus, have been killed since February 14 in Punjab.
A right-wing candidate in El Salvador’s presidential election has denied accusations that he was involved in the country’s death squads. Roberto d’Aubuisson, the candidate of the rightist Nationalist Republican Alliance Party, also said he still planned to visit the United States Monday, although he has no visa. Responding to an article Saturday in The New York Times in which a former Salvadoran military officer linked Mr. d’Aubuisson and other high Salvadoran officials to the death squads, Mr. d’Aubuisson said, “They are not taking into account that I have been busy the past two years writing a constitution.” Mr. d’Aubuisson served as president of the Salvadoran Constituent Assembly beginning in April 1982. He resigned that post to run for the presidency. “These people have already voted for me once,” Mr. d’Aubuisson said of his supporters at a political rally Saturday night in the eastern town of San Sebastian. “Do you think they will go out to vote for an assassin?”
Mr. d’Aubuisson, a former major in the Salvadoran armed forces, said he had been told that a visa will be waiting for him when he arrives in the United States on Monday. But United States Embassy officials in San Salvador said Mr. d’Aubuisson had not applied for a visa there. Mr. d’Aubuisson said that while in the United States, he planned to speak to the Young Americans for Freedom and the Students for Reagan at Georgetown University. The State Department denied a visa to Mr. d’Aubuisson last November 29, citing “national interests” in an apparent reference to previous charges linking Mr. d’Aubuisson with the death squads.
A leader of Uruguay’s outlawed Communist Party, Jose Luis Massera, was released after spending nine years in jail. Massera, 68, said he is “in good spirits and in fairly good health, although the nervous strain has left some traces.” The former first secretary of the party and an engineering professor, he was arrested in 1975 and charged with organizing underground armed groups. The pro-Soviet party was outlawed in November, 1973, shortly after the armed forces staged a successful coup
Nigerian troops shelled sectors of the northeastern city of Yola in an effort to crush week-long religious riots that have killed at least 250 people and possibly as many as 1,000, Nigerian newspapers said. A television report said heavy fighting persisted over the weekend. The rising death toll followed a week of riots that started when armed Muslim fundamentalists of the Maitatsine sect stormed the marketplace of the provincial capital, setting fires. Food was reported running short in Yola.
Almost 100 House members formally asked President Reagan today to send emergency grain shipments to Africa and take other steps to ease a food crisis there. The request was made in a letter from Representative Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota, urging speedy action to help drought-stricken African nations. The letter was signed by 95 other members, including 11 Republicans. “We wish to commend you for your personal attention to the African food crisis and to urge that you take several emergency actions to forestall a human catastrophe in 24 African nations,” Mr. Dorgan said. He urged the speedy shipment of food already approved for delivery to Africa and asked for the immediate use of 300,000 tons of grain now in the Emergency Wheat Reserve.
Democratic Colorado Governor Gary Hart defeated Walter F. Mondale in the Maine Democratic caucuses. It was Mr. Hart’s second upset victory over Mr. Mondale in a week. Nearly complete returns from the 412 caucus meetings gave Mr. Hart about half the vote and a seven-percentage-point lead over Mr. Mondale.
Walter F. Mondale and Gary Hart, the leading Democratic Presidential contenders, had the sharpest exchange of the campaign tonight in a debate over who is more committed to arms control. Senator Hart initiated the confrontation with an unusually acerbic personal attack on former Vice President Mondale for being the candidate of organized labor. Mr. Mondale, he asserted, is a “very humble man” who would “still rather be considered a little-known dark horse struggling to get by on $12 million and an A.F.L.-C.I.O. endorsement.” The Colorado Senator’s remark prompted boos and hisses from many of the 1,200 people gathered for the annual Massachusetts Democratic dinner here.
Mr. Mondale was given a prolonged standing ovation when he was introduced. Seeking to differentiate himself from Senator Hart on the arms control issue, the former Vice President said that while he had been the first Democratic candidate to endorse the nuclear freeze, “for nearly a year you refused to endorse the freeze.” Mr. Mondale also charged that Senator Hart had helped President Reagan’s effort to undermine the freeze by co-sponsoring in the Senate the “build down” missile proposal, a plan that proposed to reduce nuclear armaments by gradually replacing obsolete missiles with smaller numbers of new ones.
The President and First Lady celebrate their 32nd Wedding Anniversary.
A Birmingham, Alabama, civil rights suit by white police officers and firefighters is being joined by the Justice Department. The plaintiffs, all men, contend that the city violated their rights in promoting blacks and women under an affirmative action decree adopted with the support of the Reagan Administration.
The Air Force C-5 cargo planes made by Lockheed would be replaced after current production by a new fleet of 220 C-17’s to be built by McDonnell Douglas over the next three decades, if Congress approves the plan, one of the biggest Defense Department programs in years.
Employee medical benefits have become so oppressive that “you’ll see a lot of broke companies,” Lee A. Iacocca, chairman of the Chrysler Corporation, said. Chrysler is one of the companies hardest hit by workers’ growing medical bills. Three members of the Chrysler board, Mr. Iacocca, Douglas A. Fraser and Joseph A. Califano Jr., consider themselves in many respects responsible for the expensive way the nation’s health care system evolved and are discussing possible changes.
John Z. DeLorean is to go on trial in Los Angeles tomorrow on charges of trafficking in cocaine. The trial will begin 17 months after his arrest in Los Angeles by federal undercover agents who said they arrested him as he was concluding a drug deal reportedly worth $24 million. Mr. DeLorean, a former General Motors executive, was the head of a failing British-financed sports-car company in Northern Ireland.
The Air Force is not making profitable use of the women in its ranks, a congressman who heads the House Military Personnel Subcommittee said. The Air Force, which Rep. Les Aspin (D-Wisconsin) said is normally considered the best service when it comes to women in uniform, actually uses only half as many women, proportionately, as the Navy and Army. Aspin released a study he made of women in uniform and proposed legislation that would make the Air Force substantially increase the number of women it recruits.
An escaped prisoner waited one-and-a-half hours in the cold before finding someone to surrender to early this morning, a day after a fellow fugitive was captured, officials said. “You can never find a cop when you want one,” a shivering Leonard Hystad, 48 years old, told the officers he flagged down, according to a Department of Corrections spokesman. Mr. Hystad was taken into custody two miles south of the Larch Corrections Center where the two men escaped from a van Friday.
Americans are becoming a bit less mobile, with growing numbers of homeowners deciding to stay put in the face of high housing prices and interest rates, a government report said. Twenty years ago, a record one American in five was changing residence annually, according to government statistics. Since then, the number has declined steadily and 1982 Census Bureau figures show less than 17% of the population changing residence each year. Virtually all of the decline occurred among moves within the same county, the bureau said. For moves from one county to another, those usually associated with a change in job or in lifestyle, the rate has been fairly constant over the last 20 years.
Joellen Stanton’s photograph in the 1984 Brunswick High School’s yearbook, “Dragon,” will be accompanied by a graphic description of what happens when a person is electrocuted. The school board objected to the description and said it would fight all the way to the United States Supreme Court, but Thursday it accepted a compromise allowing Miss Stanton to include the quotation next to her photo, but with its source and a sentence of explanation enclosed in parentheses. The description reads: “The executioner will pull this lever four times. Each time 2,000 volts will course through your body, making your eyeballs first bulge, then burst, and then broiling your brains.”
A 4-year-old St. Louis girl, clinically dead when pulled from a frigid creek at Fulton, Missouri, was revived more than an hour later in what one hospital official called “a miracle.” The girl, Shannon Wright, was listed in critical condition at the University of Missouri Medical Center in Columbia. Emergency procedures employed in the case were similar to those used in January on a 4-year-old Chicago boy who fell into Lake Michigan and later was revived, authorities said. Fulton police said the girl, who was visiting relatives with her mother, apparently wandered off around 11 AM and was pulled from the creek about 30 minutes later.
A 25-foot-high, 900-foot-wide wall of lava from Kilauea Volcano threatened a sparsely populated subdivision, and police put up roadblocks to prevent sightseers from entering the area. The 32-mile-long river of molten rock on the Island of Hawaii was reported to be about one mile from the Royal Gardens subdivision, which has been evacuated five times since the eruption started 15 months ago, said Reggie Okamura, a scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Hawaiian Volcano Observatory. The lava, moving over previous flows at about 600 feet per hour, was heading toward a corner of the area. Kilauea, the world’s most active volcano, roared to life Saturday, marking the 16th major phase of the eruption that began January 3, 1983.
Winter storms blanketed Minnesota and the foothills of the Colorado Rockies with snow, while northwestern Louisiana was wracked by a tornado and twisters threatened the Southwest. Minnesota got up to 16 inches of snow and Colorado eight inches. Winter storm warnings for another half-foot of snow were in effect for almost all of Minnesota, northern Wisconsin, and Upper Michigan. Travelers’ advisories were posted for those areas, as well as eastern parts of the Dakotas, Southern Wisconsin, and parts of the Ohio Valley.
Two outstanding defensive players, shortstop Pee Wee Reese and catcher Rick Ferrell, are elected to the Hall of Fame by the Special Veterans Committee. Reese hit .269 in 16 seasons with the Dodgers while Ferrell batted .281 with just 28 home runs in 18 seasons for the Browns, Red Sox, and Senators.
Bill Johnson continued his assault on the European downhill racers today, winning a World Cup downhill on Aspen Mountain. It was the Californian’s second World Cup victory of the season and followed his downhill triumph in the Olympic Winter Games last month. All three of his victories have come after races had been postponed by bad weather and were run on soft snow, conditions that Johnson favors. “I think I do better on loose snow than most downhillers,” said Johnson, of Van Nuys, Calif. “I can get on the edge of my skis and hold it through the turns.”
Tennis legend Martina Navratilova retains her WTA Tour Championship in New York City; she beats Chris Evert 6—3, 7—5, 6—1 for her 5th overall Championship title. “You only play as good as your opponent lets you play,” Miss Navratilova said after her victory. “This is what it’s about, all the work you do off the court. Yesterday and today, I had a chance to go out and do what I can do. When you have matches like that, and everything comes together, it feels so good to be out there.”
Born:
Ai Iwamura, Japanese actress (“Battle Royale”), in Tokyo, Japan.
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