Controls over chemical weapons were proposed by President Reagan. Speaking at a televised news conference, Mr. Reagan said that Vice President Bush would go to Geneva this month to present the draft of a proposed treaty for a worldwide ban on the production, possession and use of such weapons. President Reagan, saying a rise in the use of chemical weapons had “serious implications for our own security,” announced tonight that the Administration would propose a treaty this month to ban the production, possession and use of such weapons worldwide. In an opening statement at his televised news conference, however, Mr. Reagan asserted that the United States needed a “limited retaliatory capability of its own” in chemical weapons to deter what he charged was a “massive arsenal” built up by the Soviet Union in recent years. Mr. Reagan said that “only an effective monitoring and verification package” could ensure compliance with the treaty, and that he would propose “bold and sound verification procedures” along with the treaty. He offered no details.
On other foreign policy matters, Mr. Reagan said tonight that his Middle East peace plan calling for negotiations between Israel and Jordan was still alive, despite the rejection of such talks by King Hussein of Jordan. “That continues to be our plan,” he said, “and I believe that King Hussein still feels and believes that he would have to be an important part, being a next-door neighbor to Israel, in bringing about such negotiations.”
On Nicaragua, Mr. Reagan said the United States had only one purpose in aiding rebels seeking to overthrow the Government in Managua. That aim, he said, is to prevent the Nicaraguan Government from aiding insurgent forces in El Salvador. In emphasizing that this was the sole purpose, Mr. Reagan seemed to be distancing himself from comments he made last week – which have brought criticism in Congress — that the purpose was to get the Nicaraguan Government to bring about greater “democratic rule.”
Iraqi jetfighters and helicopter gunships attacked Iranian positions across the border near the head of the Persian Gulf, inflicting “heavy losses,” an Iraqi war communique said today. The report did not mention casualties, but said five Iraqi civilians had been killed and 18 wounded in Iranian shelling of Basra and the border towns of Mandali, Khanaqin and Khormal. Iran issued no statements on the fighting today.
Hospital officials announced today the death of an Iranian soldier under treatment for exposure to chemical weapons in his nation’s war with Iraq. It was the fourth such death reported in Vienna.
Soviet air exercises around Berlin have prompted a protest by the United States, Britain and France. The three Western allies said the military maneuvers in the air corridors linking West Berlin to Western Europe had forced Western planes to alter their normal flight patterns to the city. The United States, France and Britain are complaining to the Soviet Union about recent interference by Soviet aircraft on military maneuvers with Western flights to and from West Berlin, the State Department announced. “We have reiterated to the Soviets our firm intention to maintain free and unimpeded access to Berlin. We see no intention that the Soviets are interested in challenging those rights,” spokesman John Hughes said.
Defense ministers of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization ended a two-day meeting in Cesme, Turkey, by urging the Soviet Union to resume arms control talks, but they also reaffirmed plans to continue deployment of new nuclear missiles in Western Europe. Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger left for Washington after saying that missile deployment “is on schedule and going well.”
Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s Cabinet, alarmed by widespread damage to West German forests, called today for stricter emission controls for factories and cars in a fight against air pollution. Interior Minister Friedrich Zimmermann said the Government seeks more international cooperation, research into the causes of pollution damage and tougher emission controls. To attack air pollution carried across national borders by the wind, a special problem for West Germany, Bonn has called a European conference in Munich in June. Mr. Kohl’s Government is under political pressure at home from the opposition Green Party, which stresses environmental issues.
West Germany’s Greens Party ousted its parliamentary leadership, including its best-known politician, Petra Kelly, and installed an all-women team. “We are delighted that the men of our caucus have gone along manfully with this decision,” said Waltroud Shoppe, one of the new leaders of the environmentalist party. Kelly, stepdaughter of a U.S. Army officer, has been accused of being a publicity seeker.
More students today returned to classrooms empty of crosses, while Government and church officials sought a truce in Poland’s crucifix controversy. “The situation is calming down,” said Ryszard Domanski, director of Stanislaw Stazic Agricultural School in the rural village of Mietne southeast of Warsaw. The school had been closed temporarily after four students staged a 12-hour sit-in strike March 7 to protest the Government’s removal of classroom crucifixes. Students had refused to return to the school in opposition to a government demand that they sign a document giving tacit approval to removal of the crucifixes.
Eastern France was paralyzed by huge demonstrations by steel workers. President Francois Mitterrand, facing the broadest worker resistance to his policies so far, refused to soften plans to eliminate 25,000 jobs from the ailing steel industry.
Retired Lebanese General Antoine Lahad took formal command of the Israeli-backed south Lebanese militia and said he will not merge it with the Lebanese army until Beirut “comes to terms with the Israeli government.” He succeeds Major Saad Haddad, who died in January. Lahad, a Maronite Christian, said he intends to ensure the security and stability of southern Lebanon and of Israel’s northern border.
India’s first cosmonaut and his two Soviet colleagues linked up with the Salyut space station, and Indians were aglow with excitement and pride. Rakesh (Rikki) Sharma, 35, the latest in a series of guest cosmonauts on Soviet space flights, has become an instant hero, dominating the front pages of India’s leading newspapers. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi said the space flight thrilled the nation.
Police in New Delhi arrested about 300 people during a general strike protesting growing violence in northern India. In Parliament, the opposition demanded that Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s government step down for failing to curb violence in Punjab state that has claimed more than 125 lives in two months. Militant Sikhs are waging a campaign for greater religious and political autonomy in the state. The Sikhs, a majority in Punjab, are a minority in Hindu-dominated India.
China hopes to persuade the United States to compromise on controls for reprocessed nuclear fuels that could be used for weapons, thus opening the China market to the U.S. nuclear power industry. Zhu Qizhen, an assistant foreign minister, told American correspondents in Peking that if Washington agrees to put the question aside until it becomes a real issue in 15 or 20 years, talks on nuclear cooperation could probably be quickly completed, perhaps during President Reagan’s visit to China at the end of April.
The Senate approved an amendment that would halt U.S. aid to El Salvador if that country’s military should overthrow its government. Although the proposal, submitted by Senator Dale Bumpers (D-Arkansas), mentioned no individuals, it was apparently intended to protect moderate Jose Napoleon Duarte, the front-runner for the Salvadoran presidency, who faces a runoff election with his right-wing opponent. Later in the day, in a vote on an amendment to a Salvadoran aid bill, the Senate again refused to bar President Reagan from sending combat troops to El Salvador without congressional approval.
The head of the Honduran Air Force, General Walter Lopez Reyes, was elected by the nation’s Congress to replace General Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, who was ousted Saturday as commander of the armed forces. The new commander is said to favor close ties with Washington.
President Reagan places a call to Belisario Betancur Cuartas, President of the Republic of Colombia.
The military junta that seized power in Guinea on Tuesday, apparently with little resistance, pledged in a communique to encourage free enterprise and uphold human rights. Life appeared to return to normal in Conakry, a capital of once-graceful colonial buildings ravaged by years of hard weather and neglect.
The arrest of an accused spy was announced by the Justice Department. It said that FBI agents had seized a former Army counter-intelligence agent on charges of selling to Moscow for $11,000 information about an American double agent operation. The Government said the former agent, Richard Craig Smith of Bellevue, Washington, gave the Russians enough information to identify a double agent helping Washington learn the identify of Soviet agents.
President Reagan participates in his 23rd press conference. The President challenged Congress on a broad range of foreign and domestic issues. Mr. Reagan, in a televised news conference, repeatedly criticized the legislators for their role in such issues as Lebanon, aid for El Salvador, restrictions of the War Powers Act, prayer in public schools, his fairness toward the poor and the “sleaze factor” accusations being made against his appointees by Congressional Democrats.
President Reagan has lunch with the Secretary of the Treasury, Don Regan.
The three aspirants for the Democratic Presidential nomination went to Pennsylvania and began shaping their campaigns to the lessons of the New York primary and the demographics of the economically depressed state. The candidates’ polls in Pennsylvania show Walter F. Mondale and Gary Hart running even, with the Rev. Jesse Jackson in third place. Mr. Mondale, according to his aides, will keep up his attacks on Senator Hart’s record and character. Mr. Hart said he would ignore the negative attacks.
Jesse Jackson amplified some of his foreign policy positions in a speech in Philadelphia before the World Affairs Council. Mr. Jackson criticized President Reagan, Walter F. Mondale and Gary Hart for seeking to increase military spending and said it should be decreased.
Doctors at Cornell Medical School said they are close to an effective treatment against deadly AIDS that will require victims to take daily shots of interferon much the same way diabetics take insulin. Victims of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome lack the ability to produce gamma interferon, according to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. By replacing it through daily injections, doctors believe they can prevent the series of infections that quickly kill AIDS victims. More than 3,200 persons have contracted AIDS in the United States since 1981. Ninety-six percent of all victims die within a year.
[Ed: Sadly, this proved to be ineffective. It would be several more years before AZT offered even a modest treatment for AIDS.]
A Federal appeals panel, citing a Federal Bureau of Investigation Teletype, today ordered a hearing to determine if a convicted American Indian militant, Leonard Peltier, should receive a new trial in the 1975 shooting deaths of two bureau agents on a South Dakota reservation. The decision by a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit “is the first step in the eventual liberation of an innocent man who has paid for the Government’s misconduct with many years of his life,” said Mr. Peltier’s attorney, William Kunstler. The evidentiary hearing was ordered after Mr. Kunstler argued he had uncovered new evidence showing that a gun that Mr. Peltier carried on the day of the killings could not have been the murder weapon.
The evidence was an FBI Teletype saying that the AR-15 rifle, recovered from a car carrying several members of the American Indian Movement, contained a different firing pin from the rifle used to kill the two agents, Ronald Williams and Jack Coler. Mr. Peltier is serving two consecutive life terms at the Federal penitentiary in Marion, Illinois.
Two adjacent buildings undergoing renovation collapsed on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, killing two persons, injuring 19 others and reducing the four-story structures to “a big pile of dirt,” authorities said. The collapse caused a 20-inch water main under the buildings to snap, sending cascades of water into the street and nearby sewers. The dead men apparently were two members of a 10-man construction crew pouring cement inside the vacant brick buildings when they collapsed at 2:35 pm, Fire Department officials said. Last week, the Buildings Commission had ordered a safety inspection of the buildings.
The Interior Department said it has withdrawn nearly 140,000 acres of oil leases on the ground they should not be awarded without competitive bidding. A review showed that the 196 tracts contained geological structures known to bear oil or natural gas, said spokeswoman Elizabeth Morris of the Bureau of Land Management. Another 143 tracts, for which an acreage figure was not available, will undergo further geological review, she said.
The nation’s Roman Catholic bishops, while disavowing any attempt to form a religious voting bloc, said the church will continue to play a role in the country’s political process, although it has been criticized in some quarters for outspoken advocacy of nuclear arms control measures. “We cannot afford to abandon citizenship ourselves, nor can we permit major segments of society to be shut out from the mainstream of American political life,” the bishops said in a statement issued in Washington.
A jury found two Lynn, Massachusetts, police officers innocent of charges they took turns raping a 21-year-old woman who after a half-dozen drinks passed out in an empty bar. The jury also acquitted the owner of the tavern. He faced the same charges of aggravated rape and drugging a woman for the purpose of sexual intercourse for the November 23, 1983, incident under the state’s joint venture law, even though prosecutors acknowledged the bar owner did not participate. After 10 hours of deliberations over two days, the jury of seven men and five women found the two officers, Edward Jackson and Unree Poellnitz Jr., and the bar owner, Stephen Harden, not guilty in the incident at Ye Olde Ox Pub in Lynn.
A Federal court jury here cleared four state troopers Tuesday of charges that they defamed a Roman Catholic priest whom they mistakenly arrested as the “Gentleman Bandit” in 1979 robberies. The priest, Father Bernard Pagano, lost his bid for $5 million in damages for emotional distress. He said he would return to his church work. Six months later, while on trial in Delaware Superior Court, another man confessed to the crimes and Father Pagano, a parish priest in St. Mary’s Refuge of Sinners in Cambridge, Maryland, was exonerated.
Six current and four former Temple University employees were indicted by a federal grand jury in Philadelphia on charges of taking more than $750,000 in kickbacks from companies that sold supplies to the school and “created the impression that they were able to influence the awarding of the contracts,” an official said. The employees were charged in connection with an extortion scheme that allegedly took place from 1969 to the present, said U.S. Attorney Edward Dennis.
A countdown began for the launching tomorrow of the space shuttle Challenger on a planned six-day mission to track down and try to repair a malfunctioning satellite. All preparations for the first such repair mission to an orbiting satellite were reported proceeding smoothly toward a scheduled liftoff at 8:59 AM. It will be the 11th flight of the space shuttles, and the Challenger’s fifth. Thunderstorms and heavy rains lashed the launching base as technicians began work early this morning. But because they were mostly working indoors, checking flight systems by remote control, the storm caused no problems. The weather for launching morning is expected to be excellent. The five astronauts spent the day relaxing here at the Kennedy Space Center and reviewing their flight plans. The crew is led by Captain Robert L. Crippen of the Navy, who will be making his third shuttle flight. It will be the first trip for the other crewmen: Francis R. Scobee, Dr. George D. Nelson, Terry J. Hart and Dr. James D. Van Hoften.
Retirement communities are luring more and more elderly Americans. Social researchers say the aged are attracted to the communities not to withdraw from active life but to find the positive support of people like themselves. Researchers say the elderly are also experiencing an awakening of group pride and feelings of self-worth.
A dramatic slowing in the flow of lava from Mauna Loa volcano on the island of Hawaii gave a welcome breather to residents of Hilo, but preparations continued in case molten rock pushes into the state’s second-largest city. Scientists. keeping an eye on the lava flows were hindered by rains and high winds but a scientist said the eruption continued at a rate similar to that of the previous few days. After advancing rapidly in the early days of the eruption, which began March 25, the glowing river of lava slowed to a near crawl within about five miles of homes on the outskirts of Hilo.
Michael Frayn’s “Benefactors” premieres in London.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1148.56 (-0.20).
Born:
Sean May, NBA power forward and center (Charlotte Hornets, Sacramento Kings), in Chicago, Illinois.
Arkady Vyatchanin, Russian-Serbian backstroke swimmer, in Vorkuta, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union.
Augustin Hadelich, Italian-German-American Grammy-winning classical violinist, in Cecina, Italy.
Carolina Gaitán, Colombian actress (“Encanto”), in Villavicencio, Colombia.
Died:
Oleg Antonov, 78, Soviet airplane engineer, founder of the Antonov Design Bureau.
History Diaries 