Amin Gemayel opened the second Lebanese reconciliation conference in five months, appealing for an end to “nine years of insane and continuous war.” Lebanon’s eight senior Muslim and Christian leaders gathered in a conference room in Lausanne, Switzerland, to hear President Gemayel deliver an opening address in subdued and almost sad tones.
The commander of Lebanon’s Army has offered his resignation to President Gemayel as a concession to anti- government factions, according to military officials in Beirut. They said the move could ultimately lead to a Lebanese Army closely aligned with Syria’s foreign policy and security objectives.
Iran charged that Iraq used “chemical bombs” in an attempt to retake Majnoon Island, an oil reserve captured last month. The official Iranian news agency, in a dispatch monitored in London, said that a strong wind helped reduce contamination from the bombs. The agency also said that about 1,700 Iranians have fallen victim so far to Iraq’s use of chemical weapons in the Persian Gulf war. In Vienna, meanwhile, a doctor reported that three of 10 Iranian soldiers treated in the Austrian city have died from the effects of mustard gas poisoning. Iraq has denied the use of chemical weapons.
Jordanians voted for the first time in 17 years to fill vacancies in the lower house of Parliament. Results were not expected until today. More than 500.000 Jordanians, including women for the first time, were registered to vote. Police guarded each of the nation’s 800 polling centers in anticipation of brawls between supporters of the 101 candidates, and Jordanians were barred from carrying firearms. The government declared election day a public holiday to encourage voting.
London police dismantled a bomb at the Omar Khayyam, a nightclub popular with Egyptians and Libyans. The threat to the club — the latest incident after a weekend series of bombings and other terrorist threats that Scotland Yard traces to the Libyan regime of Colonel Muammar Qaddafi — also imperiled the offices of Alia, the Jordanian airline, which is in the same building. Four explosions in London and Manchester over the weekend injured 26 people. Today, the chief of Scotland Yard’s anti-terrorist squad, Commander William Hucklesby, will take part in talks in Paris on surveillance of suspected Libyan terrorists.
Almost half of Britain’s 180,000 miners went on strike against government plans to cut jobs and close unprofitable mines, spokesmen for the unions and the National Coal Board said. In Yorkshire — Britain’s richest mining area, with a quarter of the nation’s coal — 56,000 men refused to work. Miners in two traditionally militant areas, Scotland and Wales, were divided about the strike call, and violence erupted at Scotland’s biggest pit, Bilston Glen, near Edinburgh. In three English Midlands districts, local votes on the stoppage will be conducted late this week. The British National Union of Mine Workers headed by Arthur Scargill supports regional strikes, and calls for national action; the strikes will fail to achieve their goals.
Italy said today that it had accepted a new Bulgarian ambassador to replace the diplomat who was recalled 15 months ago at the height of tensions over purported Bulgarian involvement in the shooting of Pope John Paul II in 1981. The Italian Foreign Ministry said it had accepted Raico Marinov Nicolov as the new envoy from Sofia. The previous envoy, Venelin Kozev, was recalled December 9, 1982, for what the Bulgarian Government said were “normal consultations.” Two days later, Italy recalled its Ambassador to Bulgaria, Carlo Rossi Arnaud.
Bulgarian officials said after the recall that their ambassador had been told by Italian officials not to return to Rome. The Italians denied that. Mehmet Ali Ağca, a Turk, was convicted of shooting the Pope and is serving a life sentence in Italy. Mr. Ağca implicated Sergei Ivanov Antonov, the Rome manager of the Bulgarian state airline, who is charged with complicity in the shooting and is under house arrest in Rome.
El Salvador needs ammunition, according to President Reagan. He warned Congress that the Salvadoran Government was running out of ammunition and other military supplies and would be unable to hold secure elections on March 25 unless his request for emergency arms was approved quickly.
More than 2.5 million Salvadorans are registered for the March 25 presidential election, according to the nation’s Central Election Council. Using an American-supplied computer system, officials culled out more than 133,000 duplicate or phony government identity cards, the only required identification for voting, commission members said. Although predicting a 90% turnout, they said guerrilla activity will make voting impossible in about 20 towns. Alternate polling places are to be set up outside the towns.
After delivering a condemnation of this month’s Salvadoran presidential elections, leftist guerrillas rounded up 36 youths from a small town and marched them off to serve in insurgent ranks. Residents of San Esteban Catrina, about 40 miles east of San Salvador, said the incident occurred last Thursday. The Salvadoran military also has used similar recruiting tactics, but not in this village for more than two years, the residents said.
The governing Conservative Party trailed the opposition Liberals in 18 of Colombia’s 23 provinces, according to partial returns from local elections Sunday. Fewer than 3 voters out of 10 cast ballots in the elections, which were President Belisario Betancur’s first major test since he was elected almost two years ago. The abstention rate among the 14.8 million eligible voters was the highest in 20 years, authorities said. They said the full results would not be known until the end of the week. Early results showed the Liberal Party leading in most provinces, with a dissident Liberal faction winning 40 percent of the vote in the capital.
President Augusto Pinochet’s government ousted Rodolfo Seguel today as leader of Chilean copper workers, the semiofficial Orbe press agency said. Mr. Seguel is also the leader of the National Workers Command, which last year staged nationwide protests against the government. He was informed of the Labor Ministry ruling by an inspection team, the press agency said. Government sources said the ruling was based on Mr. Seguel’s dismissal from the Chile Copper Corporation for having staged a strike last June and for having failed to pay union dues over the last six months. A lawyer for the copper workers’ union at the El Teniente mine, where Mr. Seguel was employed, said later that the dismissal would be appealed.
Sudanese rebels have freed a pregnant West German woman and her 18-month-old son who had been held captive for 30 days, the West German Embassy in Ethiopia announced. An embassy statement said that Ursula Morson, 34, and the child were handed over to Ethiopian authorities and are recovering in an Addis Ababa hospital. Morson, her son and her Kenyan husband were captured February 10, along with three European technicians. after a rebel attack on a French construction camp in southern Sudan. The rebels are still holding the four men.
The United States said today that it was seeking ways to strengthen the military forces of the Sudan against what it called “increased security threats,” but denied Ethiopian charges that a big arms airlift to the Sudan was under way. The Sudan has accused Ethiopia of aiding rebels in the southern part of the country and of attacking Sudanese territory. Ethiopia in turn accuses Sudan of attacks on Ethiopian soil. “U.S. and Sudanese authorities are reviewing the ongoing military assistance program to determine how the U.S. can strengthen Sudan’s defensive capability against increased security threats from outside the country,” the State Department spokesman, John Hughes, told reporters. “No decision has been taken yet as to the type of military equipment nor the mode of delivery,” he said.
Four Democratic aspirants for President campaigned in the South as nine states across the nation prepared for a potential crucial set of primary elections and caucuses today. While Senator Gary Hart answered new criticism of his campaign from Sunday’s debate, former Vice President Walter F. Mondale said that “this incredible momentum” for Mr. Hart was ebbing.
Local television newscasts have helped to fuel a momentum building behind Gary Hart. The Colorado Senator adopted the strategy of local television because he lacked the money and organization available to Walter F. Mondale.
Senator Hart’s surge of popularity rides strongly on generational appeal, according to backers and opponents. Specialists say the core of his support comes from “the baby boom generation” or “the Vietnam generation” of people between 30 and 45 years of age.
Walter F. Mondale said, “I’m fine, I’m at peace, I’m sort of liberated.” In an interview, he said, “I got rid of all that front-runner stuff. It’s lousy to be a front-runner because people think you don’t need them. Now they know I need them.”
President Reagan participates in a Q&A with children from the local Congress Heights Elementary School.
President Reagan meets with the House Republican Leadership about the deficit.
William French Smith widened a Cabinet-level split. The Attorney General issued a strong statement supporting the Justice Department’s position on a proposed steel industry merger. On Sunday, Commerce Secretary Malcolm Baldrige called the department’s opposition to a merger of the LTV Corporation and the Republic Steel Corporation “a world class mistake.”
President Reagan’s counsel suggested that Edwin Meese III, attorney-general designate, give up an Army reserve transfer and pay additional interest on $60,000 in personal loans shortly before the matters were considered at his Senate confirmation hearings. White House counsel Fred F. Fielding, who is Reagan’s lawyer, mentioned the two suggestions in a letter sent to Senator Howard M. Metzenbaum (D-Ohio) in connection with the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearings on Meese’s nomination.
The State Department said three employees have been reprimanded for their role in the mistaken delivery to a local prison of a filing cabinet full of top secret government documents. The documents, which included Secretary of State George P. Shultz’s daily briefing papers, were discovered in the possession of inmates at Lorton Reformatory in suburban Virginia last November. A State Department spokesman said an investigation “revealed certain procedural weaknesses” that are being corrected.
The American Medical Association filed suit against the Reagan Administration to prevent it from investigating treatment given to handicapped infants, saying such “intrusion” was declared illegal in New York’s case of “Baby Jane Doe” — a child born five months ago with an open spinal column and an abnormally developed head. The AMA suit asserts that the investigations are an invasion of privacy and “injure parents who are placed in tragic, stressful situations.” The suit comes as the Reagan Administration pursues efforts to investigate whether handicapped infants suffer discrimination as a result of medical decisions denying them life-prolonging treatment.
Texas authorities rejected convicted killer James David Autry’s request that his execution by drug injection be televised and refused to commute his sentence to life in prison. At the same time, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles voted against recommending that Governor Mark White commute the sentence or grant a 45-day reprieve for Autry, a 29-year-old drifter, who was convicted of capital murder in the 1980 slaying of a Port Arthur convenience store clerk. Autry’s last hope to prevent the execution set for Wednesday at 12:01 local time lies in a petition for a stay of execution that was referred to the full U.S. Supreme Court by Justice Byron R. White.
More than 300 CBS employees nationwide, including 80 staffers of Los Angeles’ CBS affiliate radio and television stations, voted not to strike against the network, averting a walkout that was scheduled to start at 12:01 am EST today, a union spokesman said. The vote was 226 to 107. Voting by members of the East Coast Writers Guild of America followed a vote by members of Guild West, which was not disclosed.
Chief Justice Warren E. Burger today refused to temporarily lift restrictions on the home employment of knitters who work in the outerwear industry. Justice Burger rejected an emergency request by four would-be workers from rural Vermont to set aside the restrictions until the full Supreme Court considers the case. The Reagan Administration in 1981 lifted a 41-year ban on employing home workers in the knitted outerwear industry, but the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit overturned the action last November 29.
Home employment has long been a cause of controversy in the knitted outerwear industry, which employs about 63,000 production workers. The removal of restrictions was challenged in a lawsuit by manufacturers, labor unions and state labor officials, who argued that with home workers it is not possible to effectively enforce wage and child labor laws. The Supreme Court still may eventually accept the women’s formal appeal for full review of the homework issue.
Increasing traffic congestion has prompted referendums on mass- transit plans in both Houston and Dallas. Residents of Houston, where freeway congestion is viewed as a problem of facilities rather than as a crisis of vision, rejected a transit plan. Residents of Dallas who believe in concerted civic activism and a specific approach to city planning approved a transit plan.
Profound trauma can be overcome by many children, according to new research data. The evidence shows that many wounded children — the emotionally disturbed, the abused, the unloved — are remarkably resilient in the face of deep pain and suffering. Life often seems to offer them a healing capacity.
Thunderstorms battered southeast Texas with a foot of hail at Victoria and blew cars off roads. Snow and freezing rain covered most of Missouri, where three deaths were blamed on the weather, and cold gripped the North with subzero temperatures from Minnesota to Maine. The storm clogged morning rush-hour traffic in Kansas City before moving across the state to St. Louis, where three men were killed in a truck collision on ice-slick Interstate 270, officials said.
Many animals think and plan, in the opinion of some researchers. Wildlife experts have recently seen behavior patterns that suggest that some animals can anticipate, make choices, coordinate their actions with those of their companions and adapt to changing situations.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1155.36 (+15.60).
Born:
Jaimie Alexander, American actress (“Blindspot”), in Greenville, South Carolina.
José Arredondo, Dominican MLB pitcher (Los Angeles Angels, Cincinnati Reds), in San Pedro de Macoris, Dominican Republic.
Frankie De La Cruz, Dominican MLB pitcher (Detroit Tigers, Florida Marlins, San Diego Padres, Milwaukee Brewers), in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
History Diaries 