Lebanon formally canceled last May’s troop withdrawal agreement with Israel, declaring the United States-sponsored accord “null and void.” The action appeared to shift Lebanon solidly back into the Syrian-Arab fold and marked a major victory for Syria and its Soviet backers. The decision was made at a special session of President Gemayel’s Cabinet, which was reconstituted for the occasion after the former Prime Minister, Shafik al-Wazzan, agreed to rescind his resignation of February 5. Immediately after the announcement of the cancellation, the Syrian President, Hafez al-Assad, telephoned Mr. Gemayel and praised his decision as a “victory for the Lebanese people, Syrian people and the Arab nation,” a Syrian spokesman said in Damascus.
In Washington, the Reagan Administration said that it regretted the decision and that it would now leave it to the Arabs to find a substitute formula for achieving an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon.
Israel strongly condemned Lebanon’s cancellation of its security accord with Israel, calling the decision “a death sentence for Lebanese independence and sovereignty.” Deploring what it called the Syrian threats that led to the cancellation, Israel stated its willingness to stand by and put the accord into effect in the hope that “Lebanon will succeed in restoring her sovereignty and in liberating herself from Syrian domination.”
The reaction came in a formal statement issued by Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s office. The statement also declared that Israel intended to act on its own to insure its security “in light of the fact that, in this situation, Lebanon is incapable of fulfilling her international obligations and of preventing south Lebanon once again being turned into a terrorist base.” Officials in Jerusalem said Israel would not rush into any discussions or negotiations with Lebanon on arrangements to replace the abandoned accord, which was reached last May 17. No formal request has been received from Lebanon for new talks, one senior official said, although informal suggestions have been made for discussions, and Lebanon had asked Israel earlier to talk about canceling the accord.
Washington accused Iraq of using “lethal chemical weapons” against Iran in the latest fighting in the Persian Gulf. The Reagan Administration also criticized Iran for its “intransigent refusal” to halt the 42-month war until it has overthrown the Iraqi. A statement issued by the State Department said that the United States “has concluded that the available evidence” indicates that the weapons were used, in violation of the Geneva Protocol of 1925, which Iraq agreed to adhere to in 1931. The Administration, however, balanced the strong criticism of Iraq with an attack on Iran for its “intransigent refusal” to stop the war until it has overthrown the Iraqi Government. This, the statement said, was “inconsistent with the accepted norms of behavior among nations.” In recent days, Iran has accused Iraq of firing artillery shells with poisonous gases against Iranian positions. Some wounded Iranians have been flown to Sweden and Austria for treatment.
An Administration official said the chemical weapon being used by the Iraqis seemed to be mustard gas, a blistering agent that damages any tissue it touches. Iran has accused Iraq of using nerve gas and nitrogen mustard, another blistering agent similar to mustard gas. The Administration said there was no evidence that Iraq had used nerve gas. Mustard gas was responsible for a majority of the poison gas casualties of World War I and was stockpiled by the major powers in World War II. The official said all indications were that the gas was being produced by the Iraqis. He said it is not hard to manufacture and the Iraqis have a relatively sophisticated chemical industry.
The United States has had information for at least a year that the Iraqis were considering the use of chemical weapons, and it urged Iraq several times through diplomatic channels not to do so. The official said it was decided today to issue a public statement because the evidence had become “increasingly convincing” that the Iraqis had rejected the American appeals. This was the first American criticism of Iraq’s actions in the war for some time. In recent months, Washington has been increasingly concerned about an Iranian victory and the repercussions this would have in moderate Arab countries in the Persian Gulf. Secretary of State George P. Shultz has spoken out on the immense costs of the war in lives and in property.
John Hughes, the State Department spokesman, declined to say how the United States came to the conclusion that the Iraqis had been using chemical weapons other than to say the information came partly from open sources, such as the statements of doctors treating Iranians, and from other independent sources. Another official said, “The intelligence information was very strong.”
One of five Iranian soldiers being treated in Sweden died today, and doctors said they believed he had been “exposed to chemical weapons.” Chemicals also caused the burns of 10 Iranian soldiers flown to Austria, doctors in Vienna said. The 15 soldiers were flown to Vienna and Austria over the weekend. Iran said they were hurt when Iraqis attacked east of Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city, with nerve gas and nitrogen mustard. It asked the United Nations to investigate. Heart failure was listed as the immediate cause of death for the 17-year-old soldier who died today. “But our suspicions that he may have been exposed to chemical weapons remain and have been reinforced,” said Dr. Bengt Koerlof, a medical doctor and assistant professor at the Stockholm Karolinska Hospital Burns Unit.
Civilians have started evacuating Afghanistan’s strategic Panjshir Valley in anticipation of an imminent attack by Soviet troops occupying their nation, the rebel Afghan Islamic Press agency reported. It said the evacuation was ordered by Ahmad Shah Masood, commander of the valley’s guerrilla force, after a major Soviet operation in Najrab, southeast of the valley, which is 60 miles from Kabul. The news agency said Soviet paratroopers and 300 tanks were involved in the operation. Independent confirmation of the report was not available.
A Cambodian resistance leader charged that Vietnam frequently uses toxic gas against rebels in Cambodia. In an interview in Bangkok, Son Sann, head of the Khmer National Liberation Front, said Hanoi’s latest use of toxic weapons came on Saturday, when enemy forces attacked his troops near Ampil, 37 miles north of the Thai border town of Aranyaprathet.
An earthquake measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale rocked the Tokyo area and central and northern Japan for several minutes this morning. Japan’s Central Meteorological Agency said. The quake, centered deep below the seabed off Japan’s Pacific coast, rocked the capital in a series of waves lasting four minutes, but according to Japan Broadcasting Corp. there were no immediate reports of casualties or severe damage. Rail and air service was halted briefly while workmen checked for damage.
Swedish ships, helicopters and submarines combed the waters near a top-secret naval base in a new effort to prevent foreign mini-submarines and frogmen believed trapped in the area from escaping. The 27-day-old hunt was centered in a 20-square-mile area of the Karlskrona archipelago, 250 miles south of Stockholm. Swedish forces fired submachine guns and dropped shock bombs into the waters there on Saturday in an effort to flush out the unidentified intruders. In 1981, a Soviet submarine ran aground in the area; it was later released after Sweden protested to the Soviet Union.
About 800 veterans of an elite Nazi combat group of World War II, the Waffen SS, have scheduled a four-day reunion starting May 17 at the mountain resort of Bad Harzberg, West Germany, under the guise of an economic conference, town officials said. The disclosure touched off widespread protests by anti-Nazi groups, but town officials said they may be unable to ban the meeting. “A real cuckoo’s egg has been laid in our nest, and now we are trying to get rid of it,” town spokesman Gerd Eichrott said. “But it is difficult to ban the meeting on legal grounds now that it has been booked.”
President Reagan meets with the Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, Helmut Kohl.
The Soviet Union has expelled two British tourists on charges of distributing Zionist literature in Leningrad, the Soviet press agency Tass said today. It was the third such expulsion within a month of Western tourists in Leningrad. All were accused of distributing Zionist literature. Western sources in Moscow say the expulsions are designed to discourage Western tourists from having contact with Soviet Jews.
Defense Minister Dmitri F. Ustinov of the Soviet Union, opening a five-day official visit to India today, accused the United States of seeking military domination in Southeast Asia. Marshal Ustinov met for nearly two hours with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. “The situation has become grave with the United States militarizing and controlling countries of Southeast Asia,” Marshal Ustinov said at a dinner in his honor, “including those that are next to peaceful India.”
Rebel aircraft and a speedboat attacked three Nicaraguan navy patrol boats, killing two crew members and injuring at least five others in the third air attack in three days, survivors of the incident were quoted as saying. The five wounded crewmen were brought to the port of Corinto, 90 miles northwest of Managua, as were the bodies of the two slain crewmen, residents of the port city said. The three patrol boats were in the Gulf of Fonseca when they were attacked by the speedboat and fixed-wing airplanes, the crewmen were quoted as saying. There was no independent confirmation of the report.
Chile and Argentina agreed to a brief recess in talks on the Beagle Channel territorial dispute so that the two delegations can inform their governments of the progress so far, the Vatican’s mediation office announced today. The brief announcement said the talks had been going on at an “intense” pace since the Foreign Ministers of the two countries accepted Pope John Paul II’s initiative and signed a declaration of peace and friendship at the Vatican in January. The Beagle Channel is at the tip of South America. A dispute over rights to the area brought the two countries to the brink of war in 1978.
Negotiations on a Beagle Channel treaty between Argentina and Chile “are practically complete,” an Argentine Foreign Ministry official close to the negotiations said today. “The only thing left to do is to sign the treaty,”
South Africa is offering to release Nelson Mandela, the imprisoned founder of the African National Congress, on condition that he agree to live in the nominally independent tribal homeland of Transkei, friends of the black nationalist leader’s family report. But the friends say they doubt that Mandela, 65, who has served 21 years of a life sentence, would accept the offer because it would, in effect, require him to recognize the Transkei as a legitimate state.
President Reagan addresses about 2,000 at the Annual Congressional-City Conference of the National League of Cities. President Reagan, offering few election- year promises to the nation’s cities, told a convention of urban officials today that economic recovery was “the most important urban renewal program in America.” Addressing the National League of Cities, the President talked of success in dealing with urban problems without the creation of big new aid programs. “Loss of vision may well have been our worst urban problem,” the President said, referring to the period of closer Federal involvement in urban affairs that preceded his Presidency.
He asked his audience of 3,000 officials at the Washington Hilton Hotel to lobby Congress to pass his long-stalled program that would extend tax benefits to corporations that develop inner-city businesses and new jobs, and the omnibus crime bill that has already approved by the Senate. Mr. Reagan’s address was an indication of a muted election-year approach to the cities, with the emphasis on economic recovery and what he called “a return to basic values,” including safer streets and more efficient school curriculums.
A Nativity scene was upheld by the Supreme Court, which ruled, 5 to 4, that a municipality could include such a scene as part of an official Christmas display without violating the constitutionally required separation of church and state. The decision involved a city-owned creche in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.
The residents of Pawtucket, which is a predominantly Roman Catholic city, appeared delighted at the Supreme Court’s decision upholding the display of a Christmastime Nativity scene. The High Court’s split decision overturned the rulings of two lower federal courts.
A plan to permit organized prayer in the public schools is under debate in the Senate. The proposed constitutional amendment would reverse a 22-year-old Supreme Court decision banning the prayers. The debate is heavy with political overtones since President Reagan has made the issue a staple of his campaign speeches and has urged Congress to act swiftly on the proposed amendment.
Gary Hart’s victory in the Maine caucuses on Sunday propelled the Democratic Presidential campaign into an angry new phase. Walter F. Mondale acknowledged that he is fighting for his political survival and assailed Senator Hart with the harshest personal attacks of the campaign year. Workers for both candidates predicted that Mr. Hart would win today’s nonbinding preference voting in Vermont.
Senator Hart’s temperament was molded in rural Kansas and in the study carrels of Yale, and his political style was shaped when he headed the unsuccessful 1972 Presidential campaign of George McGovern. The Colorado Senator is outgoing, winning and, on occasion, inspiring on the stump, but he is withdrawn and almost shy in private.
The Justice Department has decided to join in an action against Birmingham, Alabama, as a result of a decree that was signed three years ago to help minority blacks and women gain promotions in Birmingham’s police and fire departments. The department, along with a group of white police officers and firefighters, claims that Birmingham has violated some officers’ rights by promoting blacks and women under the court decree. White House spokesman Larry Speakes said the department’s decision was “standard presidential policy,” but said that did not mean that President Reagan was involved in it.
The man who arranged the sale of the California home of Presidential Counselor Edwin Meese 3rd told the Senate Judiciary Committee how he eventually contributed about $70,000 to the $307,500 sale. A few months after he arranged the sale, the witness, Thomas J. Barrack Jr., a wealthy developer, won a Reagan Administration post.
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights declined to become involved in a Nebraska religious school controversy, despite 50,000 letters urging the panel to investigate whether the school’s constitutional rights were violated. But the commission voted to discuss in May whether to launch an investigation into the government’s powers over religious institutions. The federal panel has been under intense pressure to act on the Nebraska dispute from evangelical Christians who believe the state of Nebraska violated the constitutional rights of the Faith Christian School in Louisville.
A woman who says she was sexually assaulted on a barroom pool table failed to point out the two men who had allegedly raped her when she returned to the tavern later that night, a policeman testified. Meanwhile, documents released by the court showed that two of the six defendants in the incident that took place in Fall River, Massachusetts, last March 7 told police they held the woman while another of the defendants raped her.
A southbound Amtrak train carrying 249 passengers derailed in north-central North Carolina, injuring at least 30 persons, none seriously, authorities said in Kittrell. The Silver Star was bound from New York to Miami when 18 cars derailed at 6:45 p.m. EST about 40 miles north of Raleigh, said Amtrak spokeswoman Diane Elliott in Washington. “There are no fatalities.” Vance County Fire Chief Ranger Wilkerson said, and “I don’t even think we’re going to have any critically injured.” Cause of the derailment was not immediately determined.
A longtime aide to Kevin H. White, Theodore V. Anzalone, was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of extortion, conspiracy and illegally covering up currency transactions that benefited the wife and mother of Boston’s former Mayor.
A proposed ordinance aimed at removing handguns from homes of the Cleveland suburb of Cleveland Heights, which has a population of 45,000, was defeated by the City Council. The seven-member council voted 6 to 1 against the ordinance, which would have restricted handgun ownership to law enforcement officers, security guards, members of the military and antique gun collectors. The Cleveland Heights ordinance was modeled after one that has been in effect in Morton Grove. Illinois, since 1981.
The San Bernardino, California, City Council has tentatively voted to impose a $100 fine for break-dancing in public, saying that the activity draws large and boisterous crowds that interfere with mall shoppers and keep customers away. In the gymnastic art form, break- dancers often spin on the floor on their heads, shoulders or other parts of their bodies. The police say that since it became a craze, gang violence has decreased.
Theodore Streleski, who murdered a Stanford University professor and said only last month he could not promise he would not kill again, will be paroled on Thursday. Mr. Streleski, 47 years old, will be paroled in southern California’s Orange County, Phil Guthrie, a spokesman for state Department of Corrections, said today. Mr. Streleski was convicted of the August 1978 murder of Prof. Karel deLeeuw. The defendant said at his trial that he killed the professor for making derogatory remarks about his appearance and for interfering with his study of mathematics. It was the second controversial parole action in California in the last three months. Dan White was paroled last December after serving five years for the slayings of Mayor George R. Moscone of San Francisco and Supervisor Harvey Milk in City Hall on November 27, 1978. Mr. White, a former policeman, is also living in Orange County.
A southbound Amtrak train carrying 249 passengers derailed near Kittrell, North Carolina this evening, injuring at least 30 people, none seriously, the authorities said. The train, the Silver Star, was bound from New York to Miami when one of its three locomotives and 18 cars derailed at 6:45 PM about 40 miles north of Raleigh, said an Amtrak official in Washington. More than 30 people were taken to Maria Parham Hospital in Henderson, a hospital spokesman said. Fewer than a dozen were expected to be admitted.
CBS and the union representing news writers and graphics artists extended their contract talks two hours past a midnight EST strike deadline set by the 320 employees, according to a union spokesman. But the negotiations, which affect Los Angeles’ KNX-TV and KNX radio, were reportedly still in progress. Dan Ratner, a spokesman for the Writers Guild of America, announced that negotiators had stopped the clock and talks for one hour past the deadline. But later, as last-minute talks continued in an attempt to avert the 1:01 AM walkout, the deadline was pushed back another hour. ABC, which has split with CBS in the talks, agreed to demands for wage hikes and union control over certain duties.
William Powell died in a Palm Springs, California, hospital at the age of 91. The actor’s wry, winning cynicism brightened such movie classics as the 1930’s and 40’s comedy-murder-mystery “Thin Man” series, the 1936 screwball farce “My Man Godfrey” and the 1947 period comedy “Life with Father.”
The dynamics of continental drift, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are explained by deep patterns that have been identified by scientists using earthquake waves to chart the earth’s interior. The wave patterns have indicated a deep-seated, superheated zone beneath the western region of North America, suggesting, it is proposed, that the western and eastern halves may eventually split apart.
Kilauea volcano’s latest eruption on the island of Hawaii sent a 700-foot-wide river of molten lava surging toward a housing area before it suddenly abated and spared the area’s few residents, authorities said. But it left a toe of lava 25 feet high sizzling and cooling just uphill from seven evacuated homes, they said. There also were fears of more eruptions.
New theories on excuses by a team of psychologists explain how to distinguish benign ones from destructive ones, when excuses are symptoms of a psychological problem and what personality type is most prone to overusing excuses. One finding suggests that as many as 20 percent of American adults overuse excuses to a point that may be detrimental to their emotional health.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1165.2 (-6.28).
Born:
Ryan Plackemeier, NFL punter (Seattle Seahawks, Washington Redskins), in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Died:
William Powell, 91, American actor (The “Thin Man” movies, “My Man Godfrey”, “Life with Father”).
Michael Sklar, 39, American comedian (“Laugh-In”; “Sha Na Na”), of lymphoma.
History Diaries 