President Nixon said that he was confident that enough progress would be made in American efforts toward a Middle East settlement to ensure that the Arab states did not reimpose their oil embargo against the United States. In a question-and-answer session at the meeting in Houston, Mr. Nixon said that he did not regard the Arab decision to “review” the oil situation on June 1 as a condition on the United States to bring new pressure on Israel.
One Israeli soldier was killed and two others, and two United Nations truce observers were wounded today in some of the heaviest exchanges of artillery fire between Israeli and Syrian forces since the October war. Military, sources said the exchanges, including tank and long‐range artillery fire, went on for six hours this morning. This was the eighth consecutive day of clashes, which have grown steadily in severity since the first sporadic exchanges of fire. The shooting began soon after 6 AM today and was still going on at noon. Both sides appeared to be using long-range artillery. Syrian shells fell in the area of El Quneitra and several Israeli civilian settlements nearby, including Ein Zivan in the sector captured by Israel in the 1967 war. Settlers in the rock‐strewn heights took to their deep shelters early today and remained there until afternoon.
A military spokesman in Tel Aviv said the two United Nations officers were wounded when they tried to arrange a halt in the firing at 9:15 AM, nearly three hours after the artillery and tank duels started. He said the Syrians had continued their firing after the request was made. The Syrians began the shooting, soon after dawn, the spokesman said, and it spread along most of the front‐line area as Israeli forces replied with a heavy barrage.
A Syrian spokesman said that the two United Nations observers — a Finnish major and a Danish captain — were wounded when their post near the cease-fire line came under Israeli shelling. He said the two men, Major Arto Koivula and Captain Fleming‐Nilsen, had been taken to a hospital in Damascus for treatment. A medical report said that Major Koivula’s wounds were serious, according to a Syrian news agency report from Damascus. A Syrian liaison officer who was with the observers was also wounded by Israeli fire the spokesman declared.
U.N. Secretary General Waldheim said today that firing incidents on the Syrian Israeli line had assumed “serious proportions” in the last few days. He appealed to both parties to exercise restraint and to observe the cease‐fire ordered October 22 by the Security Council. Mr. Waldheim, in his statement, said that United Nations military observers were still investigating the incidents in which the two observer officers ‐were wounded.
Rancor has erupted among leaders of the Palestinian guerrilla movement over whether to take part in Arab‐Israeli peace talks in Geneva, even though they have not yet been invited. The quarrel reflects their confusion and apprehension as they perceive a trend among Arab Governments toward a settlement with Israel. Moderates among the Palestinians do not want to be isolated from a general settlement and lean to a compromise. Others reject any accommodation and vow to fight on.
The United States will pay “tens of millions of dollars” in helping to clear the Suez Canal of mines and unexploded ordnance, the Pentagon said today. In the next few weeks about 500 Navy and Army men will be sent to clear the canal of mines and to train the Egyptians on removal of tons of unexploded munitions buried in or along the 103‐mile waterway. The United States and Egypt announced agreement yesterday to clear the canal. The Pentagon spokesman, Jerry W. Friedheim, said Rear Admiral Brian McCauley, in charge of clearing the mines from Haiphong Harbor last year, would head the Suez operation. Helicopters dragging magnetic equipment designed to detonate mines will cover the approaches to the canal and its entire length, Mr. Friedheim said. Abbot 100 Army and Navy ordnance specialists will set up a school to teach the Egyptians how to blow up munitions which have been laid in the waterway since 1967. It was closed by the Israeli‐Arab conflict then.
Iraqi government forces have been cut off by Kurdish guerrillas in northern Iraq and are suffering shortages of food and ammunition, the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet said. According to Beirut press reports, Bagdad is holding off a crackdown on the rebellious tribesmen pending expiration of a 15-day ultimatum March 26. After that, “the government blow will be swift,” a Beirut newspaper’s Bagdad correspondent said.
President Nixon said he believed that despite the recent sharp exchanges with Europe, the United States and the European allies “are going to work out the differences that we have in the economic and political field.” It was one of the numerous comments he made on foreign and domestic affairs at a meeting of the National Association of Broadcasters in Houston. He seemed to be moderating the tone he took in the highly critical remarks he recently made about the European Common Market countries. Earlier in the day, the United States and West Germany announced an agreement in principle on new payments by the Bonn government to offset the cost of maintaining American forces in Germany.
In its first major foreign policy statement, Britain’s new Labor party government adopted a conciliatory approach to relations with the United States and said that Europe should engage in the “fullest and most intimate” cooperation with Washington. James Callaghan, the Foreign Secretary, also said in the House of Commons that President Nixon’s critical remarks about the Common Market countries had the “effect of inducing a greater sense of realism” in Europe. He cautioned against “anti-American tinges” in European political statements.
The State Department expressed hope that the new Labor government of Britain will reaffirm support for the joint construction of a naval base and air facility at Diego Garcia Island in the Indian Ocean. The U.S. statement came after a Labor spokesman acknowledged that Britain is reviewing its foreign policy, including the Indian Ocean project.
A police sergeant was killed outside his home in a predominantly Protestant Belfast suburb when a bomb exploded in his car. In another area of Northern Ireland, gunmen in a speeding car wounded a Roman Catholic teacher in Cookstown. Meanwhile, the British minister for Northern Ireland, Merlyn Rees, ordered an inquiry into security in Ulster after a weekend in which eight persons died.
Pavel Litvinov, a grandson of former Soviet Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov, was issued papers by the U.S. Embassy in Vienna that will allow him to enter the United States as a refugee. Litvinov spent four years in Siberia for demonstrating against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. He and his family were given permission to leave Russia last week.
Cambodia sent more than 2,000 troops by helicopter and navy landing craft toward Phsar Oudong, provincial capital 23 miles north of Phnom Penh which fell to the rebels Monday. Field reporters said that some rescue units had been stopped and that Communist gunners pounded surrounded troops who were trying to retreat from Oudong.
A 1,200‐man government force trying to retreat from a captured provincial capital northwest of Phnom Penh has been surrounded by insurgent troops and subjected to heavy mortar fire, reports from the field said today. The insurgents, estimated to number 2,000 men, reportedly stopped a rescue unit from breaking through. The trapped force was said to be about half a mile east of Phsar Oudong, the provincial capital 24 miles northwest of here that fell to the insurgents yesterday. The government troops were trying to retreat from the town and regroup for a counter‐attack when the insurgents blew up a bridge on Route 5, cutting the escape route.
In South Vietnam, the International Commission of Control and Supervision decided to investigate the March 9 shelling of a school in which 32 children died. The Việt Cộng suggested both sides join in the investigation.
Concerted opposition began developing in the U.S. Senate today to the Administration’s request for a $474‐million emergency increase in military aid to South Vietnam. A group of Senators, mainly from the ranks of the Vietnam “doves” of the past, protested to the Senate Armed Services Committee that expansion of military aid to South Vietnam would be a perpetuation of the policy of military involvement in Indochina that was supposed to have come to an end with the Vietnam cease‐fire agreement. The Defense Department has warned that it was running out of military aid funds for the Saigon Government, saying that by mid‐April the South Vietnamese forces would have to curtail severely their military operations.
As a stopgap, the Administration has asked Congress to raise the spending ceiling on military aid to South Vietnam this fiscal year to $1.6‐billion from the $1.126‐billion set by Congress last year. The Senate opposition is focusing on an amendment offered by Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Senator James B. Pearson, Republican of Kansas, that would block the increased military aid sought by the Administration as part of a $6.2‐billion supplementary appropriation for the Defense Department.
Student-led riots over food shortages and high prices spread across Bihar state in India despite army and police reinforcements who were rushed in to control the violence. An Indian news service said troops and police opened fire on the mobs, killing 10 people.
Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheik Mujibur Rahman, appearing tired and weak, left by special plane for the Soviet Union for medical treatment of an undisclosed illness. His doctors said facilities in Bangladesh were inadequate for diagnosis and treatment of his ailment.
Guatemala’s vice president-elect, Mario Sandoval Alarcon, called Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) “an abusive simpleton” and demanded an apology from him for doubting the legitimacy of the Guatemala presidential election March 4. Kennedy had criticized the election in a Washington interview. The losers in the election, the National Opposition Front, who have claimed the election was a fraud, praised Kennedy for his remarks.
Republican U.S. Senator James L. Buckley became the first conservative Republican in Congress to call for the resignation of U.S. President Richard Nixon. Senator James Buckley of New York, who has staunchly supported President Nixon, became the first conservative Republican in Congress to call on the President to resign. Mr. Buckley said that the Watergate case had become “a disorder, a trauma involving every tissue of the nation.”
President Nixon declared that he would continue to resist demands for his resignation because it “might be good politics but it would be bad statesmanship” to yield to his critics or to low standings in public opinion polls. He made the statement at a meeting of the National Association of Broadcasters in Houston, and restated his intention to complete his second term.
President Nixon announced at the Houston meeting that he was easing some restrictions on energy consumption as a result of the end of the Arab oil embargo and said flatly that it would not be necessary to ration fuel. He said that the voluntary ban on Sunday sales of gasoline will be lifted, effective Sunday, and that the Federal Energy Office has been directed to increase fuel allocations to industry and agriculture.
President Nixon’s special Watergate counsel, James St. Clair, has been meeting privately on Capitol Hill with key Republicans in an apparent effort to win support for President Nixon’s refusal to give Watergate evidence to the House Judiciary Committee’s impeachment inquiry.
The House Ways and Means Committee voted extensive changes in the way oil companies are taxed, but the changes were not expected to add a dollar to the taxes the oil industry will pay this year on its domestic operations.
Pan American World Airways, the nation’s largest international airline, asked the government for permission to negotiate consolidation of trans-Atlantic service with Trans World Airlines. Pan Am said that “skyrocketing” fuel prices had plunged it into a “serious financial crisis.”
A county judge denied today a request by two imprisoned members of the Symbionese Liberation Army to make a televised appearance that was demanded by the kidnappers of Patricia Hearst. Judge Sam Hall said that if he approved the appearance, he might be “creating an atmosphere that would make it impossible for the defendants to get a fair trial.”
The request was made by Russell Little, 26 years old, and Joseph Remiro, 27, who are being held on charges of murdering Dr. Marcus Foster, the Oakland School Superintendent, last November 6. As a condition for releasing Miss Hearst, who was kidnapped more than six weeks ago, the kidnappers demanded that the TV appearance be allowed so that the two defendants could report how they were being treated in jail and to offer suggestions for the release of Miss Hearst, the daughter of Randolph A. Hearst, the newspaper publisher.
A committee of scientists accused the government’s 10-year-old, $250 million program on cancer-causing viruses of failing to support needed basic research and of having an inbred management replete with conflicts of interest. As a result, “promising scientists are not being funded today,” the panel’s chairman, Dr. Norman Zinder of Rockefeller University in New York, told the National Cancer Advisory Board. The committee was picked by the board, which oversees the federal fight against cancer, to study complaints among scientists that the National Cancer Institute’s program to find cancer viruses was not worth the money spent on it. The committee report also said that some of the NCI scientists “are also often the recipients of large amounts of the money they dispense.”
Rep. John A. Blatnik (D-Minnesota) announced plans to have members of the House Public Works Committee examine first-hand the public transit problems in six major cities during the first week of April. The cities were New York, Chicago, Boston, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and San Francisco-Sacramento. Results of the hearings will be used to assist in the drafting of major transportation legislation.
Rep. Fred B. Rooney (D-Pennsylvania) said his legislative assistant, William L. Kovacs, was under criminal investigation by the Justice Department in connection with Rooney’s lawsuit seeking release of $400 million in federal construction funds. “Needless to say,” Rooney said in a written statement, “I regard the so-called investigation of Mr. Kovacs to be nothing more nor less than a brazen attempt of this Administration to further erode the authority of Congress.” The Justice Department refused comment, other than to say it had a duty to investigate when an allegation was made.
The month-long trial of Representative Frank Brasco of Brooklyn ended in a mistrial when the jury failed to reach a verdict on a charge of conspiracy to obtain payoffs to help a truck company headed by a reputed Mafia member. The jury got the case in Manhattan Federal Court after a four-week trial highlighted by the testimony of John A. Masiello, an alleged Mafia figure who is serving a seven-year sentence for bribing postal officials. He was named a co-conspirator but not a defendant. Brasco, 41, first elected to Congress in 1966 and currently a member of the Post Office and Civil Service Committee, was accused of agreeing to accept $17,500 as a kickback for negotiating an $875,000 loan for Masiello.
Kingdon Gould Jr., U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands, said in a statement in The Hague that there were no strings attached to contributions he made to President Nixon’s 1972 reelection campaign. Published reports have said Gould was one of several ambassadors questioned by Watergate special prosecutor Leon Jaworski in connection with the “selling” of diplomatic posts. Gould, of Washington, D.C., said, “All my contributions have been freely given with no strings attached. I have neither solicited nor been offered a position conditioned on a contribution.
FBI agents monitored phone calls for an hour at a government roadblock near Wounded Knee, South Dakota, including one placed by American Indian Movement leader Dennis Banks, a defense exhibit indicated. The disclosure came during a hearing in federal court in St. Paul, Minnesota, on charges that the government used illegal wiretapping during the occupation last year. Lawyers for Banks and Russell Means, accused of playing leading roles in the armed occupation, seek dismissal for allegedly illegal wiretapping and other “government misconduct.” In earlier testimony, a former Justice Department negotiator said he assured a lawyer for the Indians that a telephone line from the village was not tapped.
The House Ways and Means Committee voted today extensive changes in the way oil companies are taxed. The changes were not expected to add a dollar to the taxes the oil industry will pay this year on its domestic operations although they were expected to add $150‐million next year and, in succeeding years, additional amounts that are small when compared with the industry’s profits. The committee’s decisions to eliminate the 22 percent depletion allowance in part over a period of five years, and to inaugurate what is known as “windfall profits tax” were still subject to reversal on one further committee vote. But the proceedings have reached a stage where such a reversal would be quite unusual.
Jefferson Starship begins their first tour.
In a 3-team deal involving the Cleveland Indians, Detroit Tigers, and New York Yankees, pitcher Jim Perry joins his pitching brother, Gaylord, in Cleveland. Pitcher Ed Farmer and outfielder “No Neck” Williams end up on the Yankees, while catcher Gerry Moses goes to the Motor City.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 867.57 (-6.65, -0.76%).
Born:
Jason LaRue, MLB catcher (Cincinnati Reds, Kansas City Royals, St. Louis Cardinals), in Houston, Texas.
“Rocky” [John] Coppinger, MLB pitcher (Baltimore Orioles, Milwaukee Brewers), in El Paso, Texas.
Vida Guerra, Cuban born-American model and actress; in Havana, Cuba.
Helsi Herlinda, Indonesian TV actress and producer; in Jakarta, Indonesia.
Died:
Anne Klein, 50, American fashion designer, died of breast cancer.
Edward Platt, 58, American TV actor best known as “The Chief” on the television show “Get Smart,” of a heart attack.
Hertha Kuusinen, 70, Finnish communist politician (daughter of Otto Ville Kuusinen).
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