Libyan troops and demonstrators ringing the British Embassy in Tripoli held 25 people captive for most of Wednesday, but allowed the group to return home in the evening, Britain’s Foreign Office announced. In London, the police continued to hold the Libyan Embassy under siege, 36 hours after the fatal shooting of a British policewoman. Intensive negotiations with the occupants of the building produced only slight signs of progress. Under the terms of the end of the siege at the British Embassy in Tripoli, the Libyan capital, members of the group, including women and children, were allowed to return home and to move freely within the city, according to the Foreign Office.
The British police surrounded the Libyan Embassy in London Tuesday morning after Yvonne Fletcher, a 25-year-old policewoman, was killed and 10 Libyan dissidents were wounded in a burst of submachine-gun fire that the police said came from a window in the embassy. The shooting occurred during a demonstration held outside the embassy in protest against the Government of Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi. Libyan troops and demonstrators surrounded the embassy in Tripoli on Tuesday in what British officials said was an apparent response to events in London.
British officials reported that three unidentified Britons had been arrested in Libya, apparently in retaliation for the detention of three Libyans at Heathrow Airport here on Tuesday. The Libyans were freed today. One of the Britons was believed to be an employee of British Caledonian Airways, which flies regularly between London and Tripoli.
The police cordoned off St. James’s Square, the site of the shooting, and erected huge sheets of blue plastic across access roads to block the view into it. Most offices and shops in the neighborhood, including some in fashionable Jermyn Street, were told to close. Marksmen from the elite D-11 branch of the police, who wear distinctive dark-blue berets, were posted on roofs and at windows, along with closed-circuit television cameras, and vans and buses full of reinforcements were parked two blocks away at the end of Pall Mall.
The square is one of London’s most historic. The Royal Institute of International Affairs and the London Library are both situated there, and during World War II both General Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Free French under General Charles de Gaulle had their headquarters there.
It was uncannily still this afternoon, and Miss Fletcher’s hat still lay in the street where she fell, along with the helmets of four policemen, including her fiancé, who rushed to try to help her. The police said it was too dangerous to attempt to pick them up because of the chance that someone would open fire from the embassy again.
President Reagan learns that demonstrators outside of the Libyan Embassy in London were fired upon leaving 11 wounded and 1 English Police woman killed. Reagan is also informed today that U.S. Intelligence clearly shows that the shooting was ordered by the Libyan Government. Reagan writes in his diary that “Kadafi must be insane.”
The NATO allies initiated a new approach to the Soviet bloc in an effort to break a long deadlock in the negotiations in Vienna on reducing conventional forces in central Europe, Administration officials said. Under the plan, the NATO countries would no longer insist that the two sides agree on how many troops they now have in the region.
Chemical weapons would be banned under a United States proposal offered by Vice President Bush. Addressing the Geneva Conference on Disarmament, Mr. Bush said the United States was “willing to pay the price” of openness by allowing inspections on short notice to verify compliance.
Iraq reported attacking “two large naval targets” near Iran’s major oil export terminal on Kharg Island. There was no immediate comment from Iran, and the intelligence office at Lloyd’s of London insurance underwriters, which monitors reports of shipping damage, said it had no confirmation of the attacks. Baghdad radio said the action by its air and naval forces proved that Iraq has “complete control” over the northern sector of the Persian Gulf.
Details of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s peace plan for the Iran-Iraq war appeared in the semiofficial newspaper Al Ahram. It calls for a cease-fire, an international peacekeeping force and observers to monitor the truce. It would define which country started the war and which is responsible for its continuation and provide for a settlement through arbitration, mediation or international negotiations. Iran has already turned down the Egyptian initiative, saying the matter is “not even negotiable” and that Egypt is not qualified to present a peace plan because of its aid to Iraq.
Syria warned that it would shell Israeli settlements in response to any attacks on Palestinian refugee camps in its territory, but Israel said it would not be deterred from punishing terrorists. Commenting on reports that Israel is considering military action in response to the recent wave of guerrilla attacks, Syrian Defense Minister Mustafa Talas said his troops are ready for action. In Jerusalem, Communications Minister Mordechai Zippori said, “The Syrian defense minister knows full well that there is a great gap between his words and his capacity to carry them out.”
The Israeli military is preparing plans that may keep the army in Lebanon until the end of 1984, Deputy Chief of Staff General David Ivri said. “At the same time,” Ivri told state radio, “it is preparing alternative plans in which, if the political echelon decides to change the deployment in Lebanon, the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) will be ready.” Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, facing a general election in July, is under pressure to withdraw the army from Lebanon, where 577 Israelis have died since the 1982 invasion.
Evidence is mounting in Israel that one of the Arabs who hijacked an Israeli bus last week was captured alive and later killed. The Israeli Army denies the accusation. Relatives and neighbors in the occupied Gaza Strip identified the slain terrorist as a man who was photographed by an Israeli newspaper as he was being led, handcuffed, from the bus by two security agents.
Two unarmed U.S. helicopters, one of them carrying two American Senators, were shot down over Honduras during a flight near the border with El Salvador, Congressional and Administration officials reported. They said the entire party, which included Senator Lawton Chiles of Florida and Senator J. Bennett Johnston of Louisiana, was rescued without injury. An aide to Senator Chiles said he had been told that the helicopter carrying the two Senators was hit in three places — a rotor blade, one door and one window.
A Sandinista heroine is unacceptable to Washington as Nicaragua’s Ambassador to the United States, diplomats in Managua said. Nicaragua’s nomination of Deputy Foreign Minister Nora Astorga generated opposition from United States intelligence officials because of her role in the 1978 murder of a top military officer in the Somoza Government.
Prime Minister Vere Bird won another five-year term in the eastern Caribbean nation of Antigua and Barbuda when his Labor Party made an almost clean sweep in Tuesday’s general elections. The Labor Party won 16 of the 17 parliamentary seats at stake, an increase of three from its 1980 share, according to final official results released today. Mr. Bird, 73 years old, defeated Charles Hewlett of the United People’s Movement. The Prime Minister called the election a year ahead of schedule because of opposition charges of corruption and mismanagement in his party. It was the first election in Antigua since it gained independence from Britain in 1981.
France’s Socialist leaders said they will submit the government to a vote of confidence in the National Assembly today to pressure their Communist partners into a clear commitment to government economic policies. The Socialists hold an absolute majority in the assembly, and there is no danger of their losing and being forced out. The intent is to put pressure on the Communists, a junior partner in the governing coalition, with an implied threat of dismissal of the four Communists in the Cabinet.
Anti-Communist guerrillas from Cambodia said they beat Vietnamese troops attacking a key rebel base today, killing more than 100 soldiers along the Thai-Cambodian border. Major Kon Saruen, commanding a battalion of the Khmer People’s National Liberation Front, said his men repulsed a Vietnamese infantry charge on the fringes of Ampil, 25 miles northeast of the Thai border. Major Saruen said only four of his guerrillas were killed and that six others were wounded. The guerrillas are fighting to topple the Vietnamese-installed Government in Phnom Penh and oust the 170,000 Vietnamese troops in Cambodia.
Sri Lankan government officials said that more than 50 people have been killed during the past week of unrest among the Tamil minority. Unofficial estimates put the death toll much higher. Most of the dead were reported to have been shot by soldiers in the northern city of Jaffna, where Tamil activists have conducted a campaign for autonomy. President Junius R. Jayewardene extended for the 12th consecutive month the nationwide state of emergency imposed in response to renewed violence.
Indian police clashed with rioters protesting the killing of a Hindu leader by Sikh militants in Chandigarh, capital of Punjab state, leaving at least 30 injured, including 11 policemen. The riots broke out during a funeral procession for Inder Pal Gupta, killed Tuesday by a grenade blast that wounded seven. Authorities ordered schools in the city closed until Monday and imposed an overnight curfew. Militant Sikhs in Punjab are waging a violent campaign for greater autonomy.
A Roman Catholic commission expressed deep concern today over what it called Prime Minister Robert Mugabe’s “astonishing” criticism of a bishops’ report detailing what it said was army atrocities in the province of Matabeleland. The statement was issued hours after Mr. Mugabe again attacked “notorious enemies and their agents,” an allusion to Joshua Nkomo, the opposition leader, and his followers. On Saturday Mr. Mugabe criticized seven bishops for the report of atrocities by soldiers in a drive against dissidents in the southern province that is Mr. Nkomo’s stronghold.
Mr. Mugabe said the bishops should stay out of government affairs and accused them of supporting his opponents. Today the Commission for Justice and Peace in Zimbabwe said it was “deeply concerned by the astonishing statement by the prime minister.” It said the remarks cast doubt on the bishops’ ability “to make an unbiased assessment of the situation.” The bishops said troops had starved local residents and listed what they said were cases of killings, torture, rape and beatings.
President Reagan signed a bill delaying cost-of-living increases for federal military and civilian retirees. The adjustments that were due for federal military retirees in May will be delayed until December 31 under the bill. Increases for civilian retirees will be effective January 1, rather than June. In a statement, Reagan said the postponement is estimated to save $5.6 billion over the next five years and the law will base regular adjustments in retirement pay on the same formula now used to compute changes in Social Security benefits.
Walter F. Mondale appeared to have won a decisive victory tonight in Missouri’s Democratic caucuses that would add to his advantage in delegates and momentum as the campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination goes into its second half. Mr. Mondale, at a news conference tonight in a hotel near Cincinnati, said, “It looks like we have a solid win, a good verdict in the state of Missouri.” “I said earlier we had a chance of getting the delegates we need by the convention in San Francisco,” he added. “I believe this result pushes those chances forward some more.”
Walter F. Mondale has re-established a big lead over Gary Hart as the Presidential choice of Democrats nationally, according to the Gallup Poll, and more of his supporters than Mr. Hart’s say they back their choice strongly. In California, however, where Democrats will hold the party’s last major primary June 5, a poll released yesterday by Mervin D. Field shows Senator Hart leading the former Vice President, 42 percent to 37 percent. The Rev. Jesse Jackson was favored by 15 percent, and other candidates divided 6 percent.
Warning that “justice shall not be bought,” a federal judge in Chicago sentenced a former Cook County traffic court clerk to six years in prison for crimes uncovered during the federal government’s Operation Greylord investigation. Harold Conn, 56, the first of 17 persons indicted in the FBI’s 32-year undercover investigation, was also fined $2,000 for his March 15 conviction on charges of extortion and racketeering. U.S. District Judge John A. Nordberg suspended the sentence pending an appeal, and Conn remained free on $4,500 bond. In the Greylord investigation, FBI agents infiltrated the Cook County Circuit Court system, the largest and busiest trial court in the nation.
A drug that chemically exercises the heart is a safer and more accurate way to test heart attack patients than walking on a treadmill, the method now most commonly used, doctors said. The technique’s developers say it can predict the chances of a patient’s having another attack — or dying from heart failure — twice as accurately as current tests, according to an article in the New England Journal of Medicine. The test uses a drug called dipyridamole to stimulate the heart into pumping blood as quickly as if a patient were at peak exercise, yet without most of the danger such exercise poses for someone who has just had a heart attack.
The chief witness in a state tax scandal walked away a free man after a judge in Boston handed down a suspended sentence. Suffolk Superior Court Judge James P. McGuire, assenting to Attorney General Francis X. Bellotti’s recommendation, gave former tax examiner Stanley J. Barczak a suspended two-year jail term and two years of unsupervised probation. Barczak had pleaded guilty March 22, 1983, to a charge of conspiracy to solicit bribes. In return for Barczak’s testimony against others in the Revenue Department, the attorney general’s office promised to recommend a suspended sentence.
The U.S. attorney’s office and the FBI have begun investigating reports that some of Philadelphia’s canine police officers are failing to control their dogs and ordering the animals to attack unarmed pedestrians. “We are looking at this from a criminal point of view,” said Luther Weaver III, chief of the major crimes section of the U.S. attorney’s office. “Civil rights violations are a priority of the entire Justice Department and of this office. We’re going to be extremely aggressive in our pursuit of this case,” Weaver said.
Hospitals and other medical facilities would be required to take new precautions to protect workers from ethylene oxide, a sterilizing agent that can cause cancer and reproductive disorders when breathed in high concentrations, under rules announced by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Work on the Seabrook nuclear plant in southeastern New Hampshire was suspended by its builder. Citing “financial pressures on the company,” Public Service of New Hampshire laid off 5,200 workers and halted all work on both reactors at the site. Experts said the move could be a prelude to bankruptcy. Others said it could be the first step in canceling the entire project in an 11th-hour effort to keep the utility solvent.
The rural electrification system has prompted a debate in the Reagan Administration. At stake is the extent to which the Federal Government will continue to subsidize the nearly 50- year-old system, which includes about 1,000 consumer-run nonprofit cooperatives that serve 25 million people in 46 states.
President Reagan meets with the Catholic Clerical Leadership.
The case against John Z. DeLorean on charges of cocaine trafficking went to trial in Los Angeles. A Government prosecutor described the auto manufacturer as “a man with a dream” who “turned that dream into a nightmare.”
Archibald Cox, the Watergate special prosecutor who was dismissed by President Nixon in 1973, is being forced into retirement at the Harvard Law School but will teach at Boston University Law School next year. Mr. Cox, 71 years old, an expert on constitutional law, was named to the Boston post today after 39 years on the Harvard faculty. He taught for two years past Harvard’s mandatory retirement age before university officials said he must quit this year. “I won’t be allowed to teach anymore,” he said of the Harvard situation. “I’m presumed to be senile.” Mr. Cox first went to Washington in the Truman Administration and served as Solicitor General in the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations. He was fired by President Nixon after insisting that the Oval Office tape recordings be turned over to Watergate investigators.
The hiring of a kosher inspector in the resort city of Miami Beach, Florida has brought protests from the American Civil Liberties Union. With the hiring of Manish Spitz, a 32- year-old Orthodox rabbi, Miami Beach has regained its status as the only city in the nation with a kosher inspector on its payroll, officials said today. Rabbi Spitz, the dean of Yeshiva and Kollel Zichron Eliezer Torah Institute in Cincinnati, replaces Joseph Kaufman, who was removed from the $24,000-a-year job last November. But members of the Miami chapter of the liberties group say that the hiring may violate the constitutional mandate against an established religion.
An immigration official’s assertion that one-fourth of the workers in the electronics concerns in the Silicon Valley region near San Jose, California, are illegal aliens has drawn an angry response from Hispanic leaders. “I think it’s a real gross distortion,” said Esther Medina, executive director of the Mexican American Community Services Agency. Fernando Chavez, president of the Mexican-American Political Association, the son of the farm labor leader Cesar Chavez, called the estimate “ridiculous” and “ludicrous.” But Harold Ezell, regional commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, is sticking by his estimate. He says that, if anything, the actual percentage of illegal workers is probably higher. Mr. Ezell issued his estimate Monday as his agency marked the opening of a new office here with 19 arrests in raids at two electronic concerns.
The NASA Space Shuttle Challenger is flown back to Kennedy Space Center via Kelly Air Force Base atop its 747 transporter.
Experts assessing the space shuttle’s newly demonstrated ability to service satellites in orbit conclude that it will be of major interest to space operations of the government, especially of the Pentagon. They say it will probably not be of substantial commercial benefit in the immediate future. Lieutenant General James A. Abrahamson of the Air Force, who starts duty this week as manager of the satellite weapons project for the Defense Department, said the military was “clearly a potential customer” of shuttle servicing missions. However, General Abrahamson, the former head of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s shuttle program, would not comment on specific discussions between NASA and the Pentagon.
Joan Benoit runs a world record female marathon (2:22:43).
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1156.51 (-8.06).
Born:
Red Bryant, NFL defensive tackle and defensive end (Seattle Seahawks, Jacksonville Jaguars, Arizona Cardinals), in Galveston County, Texas.
Sam Paulescu, NFL punter (Denver Broncos, Dallas Cowboys, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Washington Redskins), in Fullerton, California.
Dante Ridgeway, NFL wide receiver (New York Jets), in Chicago, Illinois.
James Marten, NFL tackle (Oakland Raiders), in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Marcos Mateo, Dominican MLB pitcher (Chicago Cubs, San Diego Padres), in San Cristobal, Dominican Republic.
America Ferrera, American actress (“Ugly Betty”), in Los Angeles, California.
Died:
Francis De Wolff, 71, British character actor (“A Christmas Carol”, “From Russia with Love”).
John Lee Mahin, 81, American screenwriter, of emphysema.
History Diaries 