Iran warned today that it may retaliate with chemical weapons if the Iraqis continue to use them. Iraq has denied repeated accusations that it has used mustard gas and nerve gas in the Persian Gulf war, despite support for Iran’s charges from the United States and other countries. In Paris, the newspapers Le Monde and France-Soir published reports that Iranian “soldiers” taken to Europe for treatment of burns attributed to chemical weapons were really civilians injured in an explosion at an Iranian chemical plant.
Both sides, meanwhile, reported heavy air and ground fighting Friday in the marshlands east of Basra, where the Iranians, as part of their latest offensive, occupy Iraq’s strategic Majnoon Island oil field. An Iranian war communique said that the Iraqis, trying to recapture the landfill island, wounded 2,200 Iranian soldiers during heavy fighting in the marshes. A communique broadcast by Baghdad radio, monitored in Cyprus, said Iraqi warplanes and helicopter gunships made daylong intensive bombing raids against Iranian positions and troop build-ups in the southern Iraqi marshes, inflicting heavy losses on the Iranians.
Iran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency said Parliament Speaker Hashemi Rafsanjani, who usually speaks for the Iranian leadership, warned of possible chemical weapon retaliation on Iraq. The agency quoted Rafsanjani as saying, in an address during the weekly Friday prayers gathering at Tehran University, that Iran, because of its “advanced pharmaceutical and chemical technology, can manufacture chemical weapons and use them any time it should deem it advisable.” “We now believe that we should not employ chemical weapons, but we do not know how long we will maintain such an outlook. We are determined not to venture into doing this. But can we wait for a lifetime?” Rafsanjani said.
Druze and Muslim militiamen fought fierce battles in West Beirut for a second day today, transforming the city’s western neighborhoods into ghost towns as most civilians abandoned the streets to the young fighters. The fighting closed the one crossing point between the eastern and western sectors of the capital and paralyzed West Beirut. The battles began when the Mourabitoun militia, a Libyan-backed Sunni Muslim group that lost its headquarters and other positions in fighting Thursday against the Druze Progressive Socialist Party militia, counterattacked early this morning. The most intense battles raged around the Gamal Abdel Nasser mosque, in the heart of the Mouribitoun’s old stronghold. Tonight, a group of Muslim and Druze leaders announced agreement on a cease-fire, and the battles appeared to subside shortly after.
While the Druze and Muslim militiamen fought each other, they also continued their battle against the forces of the Lebanese Army, predominantly Christians, who have remained loyal to President Amin Gemayel. There were sharp exchanges between the Muslim militias and the army along the Green Line dividing East and West Beirut. In the mountains overlooking the capital, the militias and the army traded artillery fire. Security sources said the West Beirut battles had left at least 18 people dead. The Druse militiamen had withdrawn from the mosque after taking it over from the Mourabitoun on Thursday and had turned it over to government internal security forces, according to a security forces official.
France’s leader warned the Reagan Administration against “creating new causes of dissension” in East-West relations at a time when the Soviet Union may be reassessing its position on arms control talks. President Francois Mitterrand concluded two days of talks with Administration officials. According to Administration officials, he and President Reagan agreed that the Soviet Union would be welcomed back to renewed nuclear-arms reduction talks but that the West should not offer special inducements to resume them.
President Francois Mitterrand said at a news conference in Washington today that French soldiers had accomplished their mission in Lebanon and would soon be leaving. He did not indicate a departure date. But his spokesman, Michel Vauzelle, told French reporters traveling with Mr. Mitterrand that it would be “a question of days” until conditions for replacing the 1,200 French soldiers in Beirut are arranged.
President Reagan’s envoy carrying a letter to Konstantin U. Chernenko was ignored in Moscow, Administration officials said. The officials said the envoy, Lieutenant General Brent Scowcroft, retired, chairman of the President’s Commission on Strategic Forces, told Soviet officials when he was in Moscow two weeks ago that he had a letter from Mr. Reagan and some additional authorized comments, but they made no response. Administration officials said they could not recall a similar instance in Soviet-American relations.
After deferring the question several times, the Dutch Government faces an imminent decision on whether to accept the 48 American cruise missiles assigned to it by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. All available evidence suggests that it will not be able to carry out a full deployment on schedule. Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers has promised an answer by the end of June and is searching for a politically feasible compromise. According to Western diplomats, Foreign Minister Hans van den Broek sounded out American officials this month about the possibility of a cut in the number of missiles to be installed. Mr. van den Broek, a supporter of the cruise program, reportedly said that could be one way out of the quandary in which his government finds itself.
Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger is to visit the Dutch capital next week to discuss that and other possible compromises with the country’s hard- pressed Christian Democratic Prime Minister. NATO officials are said to believe that Mr. Weinberger will be prepared to accept any arrangement that preserves NATO’s solid front by avoiding outright rejection of the missiles by the Dutch Government.
Mr. Lubbers’s problem is that while he solidly supports full deployment, as does the right-wing Liberal party, the Christian Democrats’ coalition partner, his own party is split. The split is manifest not only in Parliament but also in the Cabinet; Mr. van den Broek’s support for the program is balanced by doubts expressed by the Defense Minister, Jacob de Ruiter, also a Christian Democrat. Diplomats and most members of Parliament doubt that Mr. Lubbers could muster enough votes for approval of full deployment by 1986, as envisaged in the NATO plan. The coalition has 79 of 150 seats and can probably count on the support of 6 members of the small Calvinist parties. But at least 8 and perhaps as many as 20 Christian Democrats would be expected to vote “no” on full deployment.
A 23-year-old British Foreign Office clerk was sentenced today to six months in prison after she admitted in court that she leaked to the press a secret memorandum on the scheduled arrival date of cruise missiles in Britain. The clerk, Sarah Tisdall, appearing pale and shaken, was told by the judge that he could not permit her violation of the Official Secrets Act to escape punishment by confinement. The memorandum, which had been sent by Defense Minister Michael Heseltine to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, dealt with the handling of public information on the first cruise missile deliveries from the United States last fall. Its contents were printed by the newspaper The Guardian in October after the paper received the memo from an anonymous source. The paper’s editor, Peter Preston, returned the document to the Government when ordered to do so by the courts.
Twelve fishermen have been blinded and burned in less than a week by mustard gas dragged up by their trawlers from stockpiles of German weapons dumped in the Baltic Sea at the end of World War II, Danish maritime authorities said today. The seven-man crew of the trawler Heldarf Tendur could still not see today after hauling in a leaking grenade of the deadly gas from waters between Sweden and the Danish island of Bornholm on Thursday. Maritime authorities said more than 30 trawlers had been contaminated this year. The Allies ordered the Germans to dump at least 100,000 tons of mustard gas weapons off Bornholm after World War II to prevent future use.
A United States Marine Corps helicopter carrying 29 American and South Korean troops crashed early today, killing nine soldiers, American military officials said. The officials said the helicopter was participating in a joint American-South Korean military exercise when it crashed 24 miles north of Pohang. Pohang is 170 miles southeast of Seoul. “There were nine people killed but we don’t know” whether they were Americans or South Koreans, said a Pentagon spokesman in Washington.
Major U.S. maneuvers in Honduras will begin April 1, earlier than planned, the Defense Department announced. They will take place a week after the first round of the presidential election in neighboring El Salvador. American officials in San Salvador have said they do not expect the election to result in a clear winner and that they believe a runoff election is likely, with an increase in violence during the runoff campaign. The Pentagon said the maneuvers would continue during the campaign for the second vote.
The military Chilean Government reimposed a state of emergency tonight that gives commanders power to order curfews, prohibit public gatherings, and ban publications. The Interior Minister, Sergio Onofre Jarpa, announced the measure, effective at midnight, for an initial period of 90 days. It comes four days before a scheduled “day of national protest” planned by labor activists and the political opposition, and the day after bombs felled two electricity pylons.
Under pressure from the courts, state governments and Congress, the Reagan Administration has tentatively decided to stop reviewing and cutting off Social Security disability benefits for 18 months, Administration officials said today. Social Security disability benefits will continue under a policy reversal by the Reagan Administration. Administration officials said they were planning to announce a suspension of eligibility reviews and an 18-month moratorium on termination of the benefits. The Administration’s changes in the federal guidelines were strongly opposed by both Democrats and Republicans. It withdrew its proposals so that they would not be a political issue in an election year, White House officials said.
The Reagan Administration has retreated another step from its plan to impose lifelong censorship and expanded polygraph, or lie-detector, testing of officials to guard national security secrets, according to correspondence made public this week. Robert C. McFarlane, President Reagan’s national security adviser, said in a March 20 letter that the censorship and polygraph provisions in a Presidential directive last year would not be reinstated “for the duration of this session of Congress.” Congress is expected to adjourn in October. His letter, to Representative Patricia Schroeder, Democrat of Colorado, followed an earlier Administration promise to suspend the provisions for an unspecified period. The letter was released by the Congresswoman’s office.
The consumer-price increase slowed to four-tenths of 1 percent in February as rises in food prices abated and gasoline and clothing prices declined. The rise in January was six-tenths of 1 percent. The moderate rise in the Consumer Price Index reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics was hailed by the Reagan Administration as a sign that inflation was still in check.
President Reagan enjoys lunch with a group of Tau Kappa Epsilon alumni.
President Reagan begins work on his speech for the Gridiron Dinner the following evening.
The Kennedy Center asked Congress to free it from the $30 million in interest that it owes on the construction bonds that were issued to build the memorial to President John F. Kennedy in Washington. The request had the support of major agencies of the Reagan Administration.
Senator Gary Hart charged today that Walter F. Mondale had not set forth a positive program in their contest for the Democratic Presidential nomination, but had instead “dedicated his recent campaign to tearing me down.” “To win in 1984, we must give the voters a real alternative to the President and positive reasons to support us,” the Colorado Senator said. “To date, my principal opponent, Walter Mondale, has failed to meet this test.” The setting for his speech and a news conference was the state’s House of Representatives Chamber, with reporters sitting at the legislators’ desks. Mr. Hart and Senator Christopher Dodd, one of the few major Connecticut Democrats supporting him, also criticized Mr. Mondale for campaigning so little in Connecticut, where Mr. Hart is considered the favorite in next Tuesday’s Presidential primary.
Walter F. Mondale pressed his appeal yesterday for the sizable Jewish vote in the New York primary by deploring a Middle East policy of “illusion” or “confusion.” President Reagan suffered from illusions, he said, in counting on Saudi Arabia to act as America’s broker in the area, and in hoping to get Syria out of Lebanon by “pressuring” Israel. Senator Gary Hart, Mr. Mondale’s principal opponent for the Democratic Presidential nomination, exemplified confusion over moving the American Embassy in Jerusalem, the former Vice President said. Mr. Mondale cited a television program in which he said Mr. Hart had called such a move part of an overall package. He traced what he depicted as shifts by Mr. Hart on the embassy and added, “This record is impossible to follow.”
Archbishop Bernard F. Law was installed as Boston’s eighth bishop. He succeeds Humberto Cardinal Medeiros, who died last September. In ceremonies in Holy Cross Cathedral, the 52-year-old archbishop appealed for ecumenical goodwill and an end to abortion.
The special prosecutor requested by Edwin Meese 3rd will probably not be provided by the Justice Department until early next week at the earliest. Administration officials said the law requires the department to conduct a preliminary inquiry first. Mr. Meese, the Presidential counselor, asked Attorney General William French Smith this week to appoint a special prosecutor to conduct a “comprehensive inquiry” into all the allegations raised about him to expedite Senate hearings on his nomination as Attorney General.
Explorer Scouts joined homicide detectives today in a search of a thickly overgrown area for victims of a killer who apparently preys on prostitutes. The area, just north of a runway approach to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, is one-quarter mile from where the remains of one victim were uncovered last August. Discoveries of the 15th and 16th victim on Wednesday and Thursday brought to 28 the number of dead and missing linked to the case. The bodies of the first five victims, all identified as prostitutes, were found in or near the Green River in the summer of 1982.
Thousands of people marched in Fall River, Massachusetts today to protest the conviction of four men of raping a young woman in a bar in nearby New Bedford. The police said there were 7,000 to 10,000 protesters. Among them were Virgilio Medeiros and Jose Medeiros, the two defendants who were acquitted among the six tried in the case. It was the second demonstration in the area in two days. The police estimate 3,000 to 4,000 people participated in a candlelight vigil in New Bedford only hours after John Cordeiro and Victor Raposo were convicted Thursday. In a separate trial another jury convicted the other two defendants, Daniel Silva and Joseph Vieira, last Saturday. Sentencing for all four convicted has been scheduled for 10 AM Monday. They face a maximum of life imprisonment. People of Portuguese descent dominated the orderly march today, which started at the Fall River Government Center and then to the gray stone courthouse where the six defendants had been tried.
Girl Scout officials announced today that they had blocked the sale and distribution of about 700,000 boxes of cookies after reports this week that needles and paper clips had been found in some of the cookies. The move will cost the Greater St. Louis Girl Scout Council about $1 million, said Carolyn W. Losos, the council’s chairman. The police said objects have been found in eight boxes of cookies, sold to a total of five families. In the latest incident, the police said a woman in suburban St. Ann was stuck Thursday night by a pin lodged in a Thin Mint cookie. X-rays later revealed sewing needles and bent paper clips inside three other boxes the woman had purchased.
Radioactive gas escaped today from the Savannah River Plant, the largest producer of plutonium and tritium for the nation’s nuclear arsenal, but officials said the release posed no danger to health. The tritium gas was released between 5:45 and 7 AM after equipment malfunctioned at a tritium separation facility, Federal officials said.
Thunderstorms pounded Texas and Oklahoma yesterday with heavy rain and hail, while a Rockies snowstorm moved east. The storms have been blamed for 27 deaths this week. Four people died on highways in Colorado as a new storm piled up snow. Flood watches or warnings were posted in northern Texas and sections of Oklahoma. Rainfall of more than an inch an hour was reported in Texas, forcing some creeks out of their banks.
Five people suffered minor injuries in a 22-car pileup on Interstate 30 just east of Dallas in heavy rain yesterday morning, a Department of Public Safety spokesman said. A funnel in a Dallas suburb took the roof off a fast food restaurant. The snowstorm that howled out of the Rockies last weekend, plunged 235,000 homes in Kansas and Missouri into darkness; parked over Michigan for two days, and moved east yesterday.
First baseman-designated hitter Willie Aikens, now with the Toronto Blue Jays, is released from prison.
Andrea Schone skates a ladies world record 3-km (4:20.91).
The Men’s Figure Skating Championship in Ottawa is won by Scott Hamilton (USA). It is Hamilton’s 4th world title. Brian Orser of Canada won the silver medal.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1154.84 (-1.04).
Born:
Brandon Marshall, NFL wide receiver (Pro Bowl, 2008, 2009, 2011-2013, 2015; Denver Broncos, Miami Dolphins, Chicago Bears, New York Jets, New York Giants, Seattle Seahawks), in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Jon Link, MLB pitcher (Los Angeles Dodgers), in Columbus, Ohio.
Died:
Shauna Grant [Colleen Applegate], 20, American pornographic actress, committed suicide.
History Diaries 