Secretary of State Kissinger ended three days of talks with Leonid Brezhnev in Moscow, with both sides aiming for concrete agreements during President Nixon’s expected visit to the Soviet Union in June. But the leaders left unclear whether they had achieved the “conceptual breakthrough” on arms issues that Mr. Kissinger sought at the talks.
Six weeks after her husband was exiled by the Soviet Union, Mrs. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn announced that she and her family would leave Moscow on Friday to join Mr. Solzhenitsyn in Switzerland.
Việt Cộng forces ambushed a 66‐truck Government military convoy in the Central Highlands today, destroying or immobilizing at least half the vehicles, military sources said. The convoy had started to climb the tortuous An Khê Pass, a classic ambush site 240 miles north of Saigon, when Việt Cộng troops attacked behind a barrage of shells, the sources said. Two Government soldiers were reported killed and three wounded. A militia company of about 160 men in jeeps and armored vehicles was escorting the convoy, bound for Pleiku. It was supposed to be protected from the air by an A‐1 Skyraider, but the flight was canceled because of bad weather, the sources said.
They said that 10 trucks were destroyed and 26 blocked in the middle of the convoy by wrecked vehicles. The rest returned to the port city of Quy Nhơn, 30 miles to the east, or made it to the district capital of An Khê to the north. Communist troops committed 122 violations of the cease‐fire in the 24 hours ending at dawn today, the command said, in a step‐up of dry‐season fighting. In one attack, military sources said today, saboteurs crept into the 25th Infantry Division’s headquarters at Củ Chi, 18 miles northwest of Saigon, and blew up two tanks containing 12,500 gallons of helicopter fuel.
In Cambodia, insurgents hurled a hand grenade into a state hospital in the capital of Phnom Penh today, killing four cooks there, a hospital spokesman said. In January the hospital was hit by 122‐mm. rocket fire, killing two persons.
Senator Harold E. Hughes (D-Iowa) said that the Senate Armed Services Committee heard testimony from several witnesses that indicated President Nixon violated the law by permitting U.S. combat troops to enter Laos and Cambodia between 1969 and 1972. Testimony involved ground operations that took place after enactment of legislation which forbade further commitment of U.S. forces in the two nations.
Artillery screamed across the Golan Heights between Israel and Syria for the 16th consecutive day, and Israel’s military command reported two Israeli soldiers wounded and a U.N. truce observation post damaged. Syria said the shelling lasted nearly 14 hours, the longest day of fighting since the October war. In Damascus, a Syrian military spokesman said the Israelis started the artillery exchange, adding that the firing spread to several sectors. He said the Israelis suffered some losses. The Israeli spokesman said that the Syrians started the firing and that it spread all along the front. He said the United Nations post near Tel Masra came under fire
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir pledged again that her country would not give up Syrian territory captured in 1967.
Informed sources said today that Egypt had agreed to pull back any artillery from the east bank of the Suez Canal that had been placed there in violation of the Egyptian‐Israeli agreement on troop disengagement. The Egyptian promise is understood to have been made to General Ensio Siilasvuo of Finland, commander of the United Nations Emergency Force in the Middle East. General Siilasvuo conferred by telephone here this morning with Lieutenant General Mohammed Abdel Ghany el‐Gamasy, the Egyptian Army’s chief of staff, and then flew to Jerusalem for a meeting with Moshe Dayan, the Israeli Defense Minister. The United Nations Command yesterday conducted its regular weekly inspection in Sinai of the forward zones of Egypt and Israel, each of which is restricted to 7,000 men, 30 tanks and six batteries of shortrange artillery.
Syria, backed by Algeria, Tunisia, Iraq and the Palestine Liberation Organization, is fighting a suggestion by Egypt that the 21-nation Arab League put off its scheduled summit meeting in April until September, sources in Tunis said. They said Syria hoped for an early summit to reaffirm Arab unity because it is preparing for crucial negotiations with Israel on disengagement of forces on the Golan Heights. Syrian complaints that Egypt’s disengagement agreement with Israel had left Syria isolated in her negotiations over the Golan Heights have split an Arab ministers’ conference in Tunis and shattered a spirit of solidarity and optimism among the 21-nation Arab League. A sharp Syrian attack on Egyptian policy drew a surprise visit by Egypt’s Foreign Minister, Ismael Fahmy.
AFL-CIO President George Meany told Congress that the Arab oil embargo and other trade developments have left Administration trade reform proposals worse than no trade reforms at all. Urging the Senate Finance Committee to kill the House-passed trade bill, Meany said the nation was “clearly in a recession” and claimed that the 1973 trade surplus came at the expense of the consumer.
Senate investigators charged that American oil companies acted together in the Middle East to help increase oil prices and company profits. Senior members of a Senate investigating subcommittee said the corporations had no incentive to keep Arab nations from raising prices, since their own profits rose at the same time. Indeed, staff members said they had documents indicating the companies had agreed to limit production.
Great Britain announced that it is suspending economic aid and arms sales to Chile in disapproval of the nation’s right-wing military junta. Foreign Secretary James Callaghan said in Parliament that “our policy towards the junta will be governed by a desire to see democracy restored and human rights fully respected in Chile.”
The Trades Union Congress, Britain’s largest labor organization representing some 9.5 million workers, gave an initial endorsement to the Labor party government’s new budget, raising hopes that unions will accept a “social contract” by moderating wage demands. That hope was tempered, however, when a member union representing 1.5 million workers announced a ban on overtime starting April 15 in its effort to win a big wage increase.
President Georges Pompidou said that France favors consultations with the United States but would not agree to giving America the right to supervise the Common Market’s development. Presiding over a cabinet meeting, the president was also quoted as saying that the problem of transatlantic relations should not be dramatized or become impassioned.
West German Chancellor Willy Brandt’s government officially approved a new two-year pact with the United States to contribute to the upkeep of American military forces in that country. Details were not announced, but Bonn sources said that payments to the United States for the fiscal years 1973-74 and 1974-75 will be about $2.24 billion, compared with about $2.06 billion for the previous two fiscal years.
United States and Mexican authorities disclosed that an American diplomat stationed in northwestern Mexico had disappeared last Friday and was presumed to have been kidnapped. The diplomat was identified as John Patterson, Vice Consul at Hermosillo, but a spokesman at the American Embassy in Mexico City refused to say how Mr. Patterson was seized or whether any ransom demands had been made.
Rebels have again seized control off Asmara and a group of military officers told Ethiopians today that the armed forces would protect civilians from mass killing. The statement broadcast by the government radio in Addis Ababa was the first direct mention of the possibility of major violence a month after the army mutinied at Asmara, leading to the resignation of the government and pledges of reform by Emperor Haile Selassie. The radio did not comment on today’s statement attributed to officers of tank, antiaircraft and army aviation units. “The armed forces will always protect the people from. the horrors of mass killing,” it said in English and Amharic.
A collision killed 70 train passengers in Magude, in Portuguese Mozambique, at the time an African colony of Portugal. The southbound Rhodesian railway passenger train crashed into a stopped freight train that had been hauling tank cars of oil and gasoline.
Mamadou Dia, the first Prime Minister of Senegal, who had been jailed since December 17, 1962, was pardoned by President Léopold Sédar Senghor, along with former Interior Minister Valdiodio N’diaye and Information Minister Ibrahima Sarr, and 14 other political prisoners. Dia, N’Diaye and Sarr had spent 11 years in prison after plotting to overthrow the government of the West African nation.
A former official of the Securities and Exchange Commission testified at the Mitchell-Stans trial that a reference to a $200,000 cash contribution to President Nixon’s re-election campaign by Robert Vesco was deleted from an S.E.C. action against Mr. Vesco after Maurice Stans was read the paragraph and said, “Uh-oh, that gives me a problem.”
The White House said it was possible that some of the 42 tape recordings sought by the House Judiciary Committee might not exist. “It would depend on where the conversations took place,” said a spokesman, who said he understood that “a good deal” of the conversations had been recorded, “but I don’t know how much.” After seeking further information from the President’s lawyer, the spokesman declined to elaborate. The figure 42 for the number of tape recordings sought by the committee was specified by the White House itself on March 11 when, in an effort to picture the committee request as irresponsible, it released portions of a letter from John M. Doar, special counsel to the committee.
President Nixon told a Republican fundraising banquet that “candidates who support this administration will have a strong case to take to the people this fall.” Mr. Nixon, who did not mention Watergate, said “peace and prosperity” were the two issues that could win for Republicans. For the first time in the memory of long‐time Republicans, not a single Republican Governor was on hand for the dinner. One party official said that it would earn less than any comparable event in this decade. But there was an ample sprinkling of Senators and Representatives in the audience, and Mr. Nixon was warmly received. On the question of the nation’s economy, Mr. Nixon said, “The prospects are this economy is going to be on the upturn and unemployment on the downturn again.”
A proposal to finance presidential and congressional election campaigns with public tax funds won a key test in the Senate when a move to delete the provision from a broader bill was defeated. By a vote of 61, to 33, the Senate rejected an Attempt by Senator James B. Allen, Democrat of Alabama, to delete the public financing provision from a campaign reform bill. The margin of the vote encouraged supporters of public financing. But they face what is expected to be a long floor battle — and a filibuster from Senator Allen and other opponents who plan to offer numerous other amendments to scuttle or reduce the public funds for campaigning.
Negotiations between the administration and Democratic congressional leaders over a new emergency energy bill broke down, raising the question of whether the two sides can agree on a range of measures. “We’ve agreed to disagree,” Senator Henry M. Jackson said after a two‐hour meeting with William E. Simon, the Federal energy administrator, and Roy L. Ash, director of the Office of Management and Budget. Mr. Jackson, Washington Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Interior Committee, said in an interview that he and Representative Harley O. Staggers, Democrat of West Virginia, who is chairman of the House Commerce Committee, had agreed to introduce tomorrow their own, revised bill to substitute for the measure vetoed by President Nixon.
A House subcommittee called on the Nixon Administration today to pay greater attention to the violation of human rights in foreign countries. A report issued by 8 of the 11 members of the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on International Organizations and Movements asserted that “the prevailing attitude” of the Administration favored power politics at the expense of human rights. This, it said, “has led the United States into embracing governments which practice torture and unabashedly violate almost every human rights guarantee pronounced by the world community.” The 51‐page report charged that the United States had “disregarded human rights for the sake of other assumed interests” in relations with South Vietnam, Spain, Portugal, the Soviet Union, Brazil, Indonesia, Greece, the Philippines and Chile. The report, submitted under the name of the subcommittee chairman, Representative Donald M. Fraser, Democrat of Minnesota, makes 29 recommendations for improving United States policy on international human rights issues.
The Cost of Living Council lifted wage and price controls from the $5 billion coal industry, a move it said should substantially increase coal production. The council said 10 of the 15 biggest coal producers had made commitments to boost production, open new mines and reduce their volume of exports. CLC added that the 10 also agreed to limit price increases on coal through November 12 and to begin negotiations on a new contract with the United Mine Workers.
Seaman Apprentice Jeffrey G. Allison, convicted in 1972 of setting a fire that caused $7.5 million damage to the aircraft carrier Forrestal, has disappeared from the Navy’s corrections center in Portsmouth, N.H. The center’s director, Commander R. A. Helgemoe, confirmed that Allison and two other prisoners were missing. He said all three were “base parolees,” meaning that they were not confined to the brig but lived in quarters because of their good records as prisoners. Allison, 21, son of an Oakland, California, highway patrolman, would have been eligible for parole in about 13 months.
The Bureau of the Mint asked Congress for authority to change the metal content of the copper penny. But Director Mary T. Brooks said the change did not necessarily have to be to aluminum, as originally proposed. Mrs. Brooks also told a House banking subcommittee hearing that the mint had no intention of changing the copper penny in 1974 and would avoid a change as long as possible. The switch would become necessary if the price of copper tops $1.50 a pound. Mrs. Brooks said an alloy of up to 70% copper and 30% zinc would be something the mint would agree to.
The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod ruled “with sincere regret” that dissident students graduating this spring from the “seminary in exile” in St. Louis were ineligible for placement as ministers unless additional requirements were met. In a related ruling, a commission said any congregation that accepts a dissident graduate as its minister could forfeit its membership in the synod. Most students walked out of Concordia Seminary in St. Louis in January over a doctrinal dispute and formed the seminary in exile.
Gulf Oil stockholders filed suit in federal court in Washington, D.C., seeking $1 million in damages from company executives for making illegal campaign contributions to President Nixon and others. A similar suit filed in New York City by American Airlines stockholders seeks $100,000 in damages from a former board chairman for giving $55,000 of company funds to Mr. Nixon’s reelection campaign. The Gulf suit seeks an order forcing Vice President Claude C. Wild Jr. and other executives to pay the $1 million damages and other costs to the company out of their own pockets.
The GAC Corp. of Miami has agreed to warn prospective land buyers that the company’s financial future is uncertain and that it may not be able to make promised improvements on property, the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced. HUD’s interstate land sales office said that until GAC filed amended property reports all future land purchasers could rescind their contracts at any time. The action came a day after GAC, one of the nation’s largest land developers, signed a consent order agreeing to make restitution of $17 million to past purchasers of what the Federal Trade Commission called worthless land
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 871.17 (-12.51, -1.42%).
Born:
Aubrey Haynie, American bluegrass fiddler, mandolin player, and songwriter, in Tampa, Florida.
Amar Neupane, Nepalese novelist; in Chitwan, Nepal.
Aram Margaryan, Armenian wrestler and 2002 60 kg world champion; in Yerevan, Armenian SSR, Soviet Union.
Died:
Eduardo Santos Montejo, 85, President of Colombia 1938 to 1942.
Wilhelm Herget, 63, German fighter ace with 73 shootdowns during World War II, committed suicide.
History Diaries 