A cease-fire was agreed upon by Lebanon’s factional leaders attending a unity conference in Lausanne, Switzerland. Accord came after a day of often bitter debate over who was responsible for the fighting. After the evening session of talks between President Amin Gemayel, eight factional leaders and observers from Syria and Saudi Arabia, Michel Samaha, the President’s spokesman, said: ”The conference has declared a cease-fire that will go into effect at 9 PM Beirut time.” According to reports from Beirut, shells continued to land in both the eastern and the western parts of the divided city for half an hour after the deadline. Later the guns seemed to fall silent. On Wednesday, the conference is expected to begin discussing proposals for a political settlement.
At today’s morning session, President Gemayel refused to sign a cease- fire accord on the ground that the Government was ”above” the conflict and should not be a party. This prompted the Druze leader, Walid Jumblat, to remark to reporters: ”The so-called Lebanese President does not realize that he is at war with the Lebanese people.” When the evening session got under way, Mr. Jumblat and Nabih Berri, the Shiite leader, each arrived with videotape cassettes of television film that was described as showing destruction wrought by the Lebanese Army on Druze and Shiite neighborhoods. Mr. Berri also had a metal cannister of film reportedly depicting similar scenes, which he occasionally tapped on the table while President Gemayel spoke, conference sources said.
A wave of desertions by soldiers in Kabul, the Afghan capital, has followed a government decision to extend the tours of duty of soldiers in the capital from three to four years, Western diplomats said here today. Quoting reports from their embassies in Kabul, they said many soldiers on guard duty near Kabul airport and the main army bases in southwestern Kabul had fled after hearing the news on radio and television last Thursday. The government, which has taken stringent measures in recent months to shore up its dwindling army, announced the duty tour extension along with a series of other measures to fill the barracks. Western diplomats say deaths and desertions have reduced the army to half the 80,000-man level it had before guerrilla action began after the Communist coup in April 1978.
Britain announced lower than expected tax increases on alcohol, gasoline, cars and cigarettes and decreed cuts in taxes on business payrolls and on people of low-income. The new Chancellor of the Exchequer, Nigel Lawson, in his first budget speech to Parliament, said British economic growth is the highest in the European Economic Community and announced that the budget deficit will be 27.5% lower than expected — $10.87 billion. The biggest surprise in the tax changes was the first application of the 15% value-added tax on take-out food such as fish and chips.
Britain’s National Coal Board moved to stop illegal picketing in a strike that has halted operations at more than 100 of the nation’s mines. The board said it will seek an injunction against the “flying pickets” — miners from militant areas such as Yorkshire who are crossing the country to blockade still-operating mines, touching off violence with miners who want to work. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has made it clear that she will not intervene in the dispute, which is focused on government plans to close unprofitable mines.
More than 100,000 striking miners kept over half of Britain’s pits shut today, sending pickets to block those miners wanting to work and touching off renewed violence. The state-run National Coal Board estimated that about 105 of the nation’s 172 pits were at a standstill and some 110,000 of the 180,000 miners either on strike or refusing to cross picket lines. Leaders of the National Union of Mineworkers predicted that all the pits would be paralyzed by the weekend. If the union leader, Arthur Scargill, gets all the workers out, it will be the first national strike since one in 1973 helped bring down the Conservative Government of Prime Minister Edward Heath. This time the miners are split, with feelings running high among those resisting the strike call, and the police have been called to break up clashes on the picket lines.
A Libyan businessman and three other unidentified people were charged after a weekend bombing blitz in Britain that Scotland Yard says was aimed at exiled critics of Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi. In London, businessman Ali Giahour, 44, was charged with conspiracy in bombings in the capital that wounded 23 people, and seven other Libyans were detained for questioning. In Manchester, police said three people were charged with two bombings at a Manchester apartment complex that injured a Syrian couple and their 10-month-old child.
Opposition conservatives, profiting from a wave of popular dissatisfaction with France’s leftist government, won five of six special municipal elections over the weekend. Among the losers was Guy Berjal, Communist mayor of Limeil-Brevannes, outside Paris. And in the northern French town of Houplines, which the left lost by only 24 votes in 1983, a conservative incumbent was reelected with almost 60% of the ballots. Both towns have traditionally been leftist strongholds.
A European Parliament report accused the Soviet Union of actively trying to disrupt the Atlantic Alliance and said there is “considerable evidence” that Moscow was involved in the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II in 1981. The report, by British Conservative delegate Lord Bethel, cited the expulsion of 71 Soviet diplomats from Western Europe in 1983 as evidence of increased disruption.
Officials of the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization insisted that the Reagan Administration — not Congress — request information that the U.S. General Accounting Office seeks to investigate the agency. The United States has given notice that it intends to leave UNESCO and end its 25% budget subsidy. UNESCO has said it welcomes an international investigation of its operations and spending, but it demanded that the State Department, rather than the Congress-based GAO, formally request any data.
Poland’s church stood fast in its demand that crucifixes be displayed in public school classrooms, but the authorities insisted again that the crosses must be removed. The Roman Catholic Church’s position was announced after a meeting of the nine-member ruling body composed of Jozef Cardinal Glemp and the senior bishops.
President Reagan prepares for President Mitterrand of France’s visit.
Darbara Singh, the former Chief Minister of Punjab state, escaped assassination today when gunmen fired at him while he was attending a funeral. The Press Trust of India, a news agency, said four people were wounded in the attack in Nangal in eastern Punjab. Mr. Singh, a member of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s Congress Party, also escaped an attempt on his life last year when a bomb was thrown at him at a public meeting. He led Punjab’s government until last October when it was dismissed and the state was placed under direct rule from New Delhi. The dismissal of Mr. Singh’s government followed the killing of eight Hindus by Sikh extremists in the state.
More than 80 people have been killed and several hundred wounded in the latest bout of violence in the last month in Punjab, where most of India’s 12 million Sikhs live, and in neighboring Haryana state. Punjab has been shaken by sectarian tension since militant Sikhs began a campaign nearly two years ago for religious and political concessions.
President Reagan addresses The Young Leadership Conference of United Jewish Appeal about Israel and the Middle East. The President urged American Jews to support his plan to supply advanced military equipment to Jordan. Mr. Reagan said such assistance would not threaten Israel and would help deter Syria from trying “to dominate the region.”
Reagan writes this day in his diary:
“A speech day. Addressed 2,000—The Young Leadership Conf. of United Jewish Appeal at the Hilton. Went in the entrance where I was shot 3 yrs. ago. This time our security had boxed in the area so I was undercover when I got out of the car. It seemed like a lot of trouble to me but you dont overrule security. It was an enthusiastic crowd who greeted my speech mainly about Israel & the Mid East with several ovations—including one standing ovation. I couldn’t believe it when the local news—Channel 9 in the 5 P.M. news—described me as coolly received & even hissed at one point. Not one word about the cheers etc.”
Additional aid for Nicaraguan rebels was approved without dissent at a closed meeting of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
El Salvador’s military is short of some types of ammunition and communications equipment, but the shortages are no immediate threat to the March 25 presidential election, according to the chief of staff of the armed forces.
Grenada’s interim government dampened a celebration planned today to honor the coup that brought the late Maurice Bishop to power by preventing a calypso performer from entering the country. A spokesman for the Maurice Bishop Memorial Foundation, which organized the celebration, accused the Government of ”hostile action” by barring The Mighty Gryner, the Barbados-born calypso singer, from entering the country for a concert planned for this evening. Bishop loyalists established the foundation three months ago to honor the memory of those killed in the October 19, 1983, massacre that prompted an invasion by United States and Caribbean troops six days later. Among the two dozen people killed by soldiers loyal to an extremist faction in the government were Mr. Bishop and three of his ministers.
Angola rejected South Africa’s proposal for an all-party conference to negotiate independence for Namibia (South-West Africa). The Angolan Foreign Ministry said that only South Africa, which administers the territory, and the South-West Africa People’s Organization, the black nationalist group opposing South African control, should be directly involved in such talks, which it said should be under U.N. auspices. South Africa had proposed that it and SWAPO, as well as Angola, the Angolan guerrillas fighting the Angolan government, and Namibian political parties join in the talks.
Gary Hart won the Democratic Presidential primaries in Florida, Massachusetts and Rhode Island as Walter F. Mondale struggled to sustain his candidacy by carrying Alabama and Georgia. Mr. Mondale had campaigned intensively in both Deep South states to achieve what his strategists regarded as the minimum level of success he needed to carry his campaign into the friendlier terrain of the Middle Western caucuses and primaries. Top officials of John Glenn’s campaign said they would urge the Senator to withdraw from the race.
Edwin Meese 3rd failed to list a “personal, interest-free loan of $15,000” made to his wife when he filled out his financial disclosure report in 1981. The White House said the Presidential Counselor had apologized to the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee for having “inadvertently failed to list” the loan. Meanwhile, the committee announced that Mr. Meese had been asked to return to testify before the panel, which is preparing to vote on his nomination to be Attorney General.
President Reagan was rebuffed by the board of trustees of Stanford University. By a vote of 22 to 4, the board rejected a proposal to locate a Ronald Reagan Center for Public Affairs on Stanford’s campus.
President Reagan’s administration swears-in Maureen Corcoran as Counsel for the Department of Education, the first woman to ever hold such a Cabinet post.
Attorney General William French Smith sent Congress a bill that would provide an estimated $45 million to $75 million a year in federal cash payments and assistance to victims of crime. The proposed Victims of Crime Assistance Act of 1984 would provide money to the 38 states that now have victim-compensation laws. It would also allow judges to seize profits that anyone charged with a federal crime might receive from selling a story of the crime for publication or broadcast.
The deregulation efforts of the Reagan Administration prevented the government from carrying out its legal obligation to collect and disseminate information about medical devices that might be hazardous to patients, according to Representative Albert Gore Jr., Democrat of Tennessee.
John Z. DeLorean appeared in federal District Court in Los Angeles to stand trial for what the government charges was a $24 million cocaine sale conspiracy. The government says that Mr. DeLorean, a former vice president of General Motors, was trying to raise money to save his auto company.
Convicted killer James D. Autry, who killed a convenience store clerk in a dispute over a six-pack of beer, was executed by a lethal injection in Huntsville, Texas, early Wednesday. Governor Mark White refused to grant a last-minute reprieve. Earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 7-2 vote, rejected arguments that Autry was subjected to cruel and unusual punishment when a previous execution attempt was blocked by Supreme Court Justice Byron White last October. Autry, 29, had wanted his execution to be televised live, but his request was denied by a federal appeals court. He was the second man to be executed in Texas by injection.
A Senate committee, after three years of on-and-off debate, approved a bill that is intended to strengthen the federal Clean Air Act and begin the nation’s first program to control acid rain. The measure, which would be the first major revision in the air pollution law in seven years, was approved 16 to 2 and sent to the Senate floor. There it faces severe, perhaps insurmountable, opposition because of the cost of the acid rain provisions, estimated in the billions of dollars. The measure would require 31 states bordering or east of the Mississippi River to reduce their emissions of sulfur dioxide by 10 million tons a year over the next 10 years.
Texas Board of Education rules requiring public school textbooks to present evolution as “only one of several explanations of the origins of humankind” are unconstitutional, Texas Attorney General Jim Mattox declared. Mattox’s opinion is non-binding, but is traditionally obeyed by state agencies and could affect textbooks nationally. “The inference is inescapable… that a concern for religious sensibilities, rather than a dedication to scientific truth, was the real motivation for the rules,” Mattox said. He said the state rules violate the First and 14th amendments.”
Saying that a purported gang rape started out as “just a joke,” a defense attorney told a jury in Fall River, Massachusetts, that his client tried to have sex on a barroom pool table with a willing woman who then asked to go home with him. “Everyone thought it was just a joke,” Edward Harrington, the attorney for Daniel Silva, told a jury in opening arguments. Harrington told the jury that the attempt at sex on the night of March 6, 1983, between his client and a 22-year-old mother of two “was consensual in nature.”
The prosecution, charging that Cuban-born policeman Luis Alvarez “panicked” in the killing of a black man in Miami, rested its case in the manslaughter trial of the suspended officer. Alvarez, 24, is accused of “gross negligence” in the death of Nevell Johnson Jr., 20, whom he was trying to arrest for carrying a concealed weapon in a ghetto video arcade on December 28, 1982. The killing set off a three-day race riot.
A second Supreme Court Justice was asked today to delay the trial of Chief Judge Harry E. Claiborne, of the Federal District Court of Nevada, on charges including accepting $30,000 in bribes from a brothel owner. Meanwhile, Judge Walter E. Hoffman, who has been assigned to the case, continued to review a defense motion that federal agents abused the grand jury system and illegally amassed evidence against Judge Claiborne that should be thrown out. As jury selection entered its second day today, a defense attorney, Oscar Goodman, asked Associate Justice Byron R. White for time to let the entire Court hear arguments that Judge Claiborne cannot be tried without first being removed from the bench. Justice White took no immediate action. Associate Justice William H. Rehnquist rejected a similar motion Monday shortly before the trial opened in United States District Court.
About 70 farmers drove tractors, trucks and cars into Jamestown, North Dakota, a town of 16,000 people today, blockading bank parking lots and federal agencies to demand that the government help improve the sagging agricultural economy. They vowed to remain on downtown streets until the end of the week. ”We’re fighting an infested disease called cancer in government,” said one farmer, James Lacina. The farmers issued a statement saying they are threatened by high interest rates, low prices, and a cheap food policy. The statement called for the government to take 25 percent of the military budget for an ”agriculture products reserve to assist in exporting food to hungry nations.”
Justice Carl O. Bradford of York County (Maine) Superior Court today found Charles W. Chamberlain not guilty of manslaughter in a fatal two-car crash a year ago at Arundel but ruled that he was guilty of two counts of procuring liquor for the minors involved in the accident, in which three Sanford teen-agers and a Freeport man were killed. Justice Bradford said that the state had not proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Chamberlain could have foreseen when he bought the liquor that Dale Yerxa, 17 years old and the driver of the car in which the teen-agers were killed, would become intoxicated and operate the car in a condition that would result in a fatal accident.
Economizing by nonprofit theaters was reported by leaders of many of the nation’s major ones. They said that financial problems had forced them to make artistic compromises to remain solvent.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1164.78 (+9.42).
Born:
Rachael Bella, American actress (“The Ring”), in Vermillion, South Dakota.
Noel Fisher, Canadian actor (“Shameless”, “The Riches”), in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
History Diaries 