Two American officials flew to the Golan Heights to inspect the area around the town of El Quneitra, in southwest Syria, whose fate has become a major issue in Secretary of State Kissinger’s efforts to bring about a Syrian-Israeli troop separation agreement. Joseph Sisco, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, and Harold Saunders, the National Security Council’s expert on the Middle East, spent four hours in the El Quneitra area. They were accompanied by General Mordechai Gur, the Israeli chief of staff, who has strongly argued on security grounds against the return to Syria of the three hills surrounding El Quneitra, which is now a ghost town.
Mr. Kissinger resumed his discussion with Israeli officials tonight after having taken most of the day off. He flies to Damascus for a meeting with President Hafez al‐Assad of Syria tomorrow afternoon, before returning to Jerusalem in the evening. After two hours of talks tonight, American and Israeli officials expressed guarded optimism about the prospects for negotiations. This has been their line for the last several days. Mr. Kissinger, speaking with newsmen, said that although “we still have very tough hurdles ahead of us,” he felt that “both sides are beginning to move toward a serious examination of each other’s position.” Shimon Peres, the Israeli spokesman, said: “We estimate that the Syrian position is still basically tough but for the first time we detect a readiness for an agreement.”
No reason was given officially for the visit by the American aides to the Golan Heights, the first time members of Mr. Kissinger’s party have seen the area that has become a central point of discussion. American officials said privately that the two men had wanted a first‐hand look at this area because of the disputes that have swirled around the town and the hills. Mr. Kissinger hopes to get an accord in the coming days before he has to return to the United States in a week’s time. But American officials cautioned that it was quite possible that Mr. Kissinger would have to return to Washington without an agreement.
Premier‐designate Yitzhak Rabin tonight indicated readiness to form a new government with the Independent Liberal party and the Civil Rights Movement. He was expected to present a list of potential Cabinet ministers to the central committee of his Labor party within few days. However, some political analysts here regarded this report as a move by the Labor party to put pressure on the Orthodox Jewish National Religious party to agree to join a coalition. The party has refused to join Mr. Rabin, but many Labor party leaders still believe the religious party leaders can be persuaded to change their minds.
Syrian and Israeli forces were locked in heavy artillery fighting on Mount Hermon tonight, a Syrian military spokesman said. Summing up the day’s operations, the Syrian spokesman said that Syrian forces directed heavy fire at Israeli positions and that armored units clashed with Israeli tanks. He said that the headquarters of an Israeli mechanized battalion, a radio communications post, two ammunition dumps and some military installations had been destroyed. Direct hits were scored on several Israeli posts and support points and some armored and tracked vehicles, damaged, the spokesman said. Last night, President Hafez al‐Assad spent several hours inspecting troops at the Golan Heights front.
Heavy losses in officers, shortages in technical personnel and a command structure shaken by controversy have weakened, according to some western experts, the Israeli Defense Force since it ended the October war on a note of triumph 60 miles from Cairo. As a result of these problems and an increase Egyptian and Syrian arms stocks, some Western staff officers assessing the military situation in the Middle East see the balance of power shifting toward the Arabs.
Sudanese President Jaafar Numeiri charged that a Libyan plot to overthrow his government had been uncovered. Numeiri said he blamed Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi for interfering “in our internal affairs.” Libya had no official comment on the charge, but a spokesman said Sudan has made similar claims before.
Stalled East-West troop cut negotiations resumed in Vienna after a one-month recess and neither side made new proposals, a spokesman for the Western allies said. The meeting was the 33rd since talks on reducing North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Warsaw Pact forces in Central Europe began six months ago.
Soviet authorities sealed off Red Square with a 8-foot-high fence that allowed passersby and tourists only a knothole view of one of the world’s best-known public squares. The Communist Party newspaper Pravda said that the square and the Lenin mausoleum within it would remain closed until Nov. 1, reopening just in time for the annual November 7 celebration of the 1917 Bolshevik revolution. Pravda said only that the closure was connected with repair and rebuilding. Several heavy cranes and excavators were parked in the square.
The Vice President of Portugal’s ruling military junta said that Lisbon would have no choice but to continue, and if necessary, intensify, the war against the Mozambique guerrillas if they refuse the junta’s offer of cease-fire. So far the rebels have rejected any proposals that did not contain assurances that Portugal recognizes Mozambique’s right to independence. General Francisco da Costa Gomes, Portugal’s Chief of Staff, made his statement at a news conference in Mozambique, where he is making a fact-finding visit.
Far from resigning his role in international affairs, former Chancellor Willy Brandt of West Germany hopes to exercise even greater influence as an elder statesman, according to close associates. One said that Mr. Brandt had come to the conclusion that a new move toward French-German cooperation was the essential core of a drive to get the floundering movement for European unity going again.
The United States will cause a strategic naval arms race with the Soviet Union if it beefs up its base on the island of Diego Garcia, a new U.N. report says. The report tells of Pentagon plans to lengthen the airfield runway on the British-owned island to handle B-52 bombers and to deepen the lagoon to accommodate a dozen ships. If that happens, the report says, the Soviet Union will “almost certainly search for a similar base in the area and a new strategic naval arms race will have begun.”
A 7.1 magnitude earthquake struck China’s Yunnan province at 3:25 in the morning local time, and killed at least 1,200 people and possibly as many as 20,000 in and around the Chinese city of Zhaotong. Two large cities and several smaller towns have been heavily damaged by the severe earthquake that hit southwest China, according to information gathered from maps and from the U.S. Earthquake Information Center in Boulder, Colorado. The center said the quake registered 7 on the Richter scale and Chinese maps show the cities of Chaotung and Ipin near the epicenter. The characters on the maps indicate a population between 100,000 and 500,000 for each of the cities. A dozen smaller cities are clustered around the epicenter.
Three Japanese women have scaled 26,650-foot Mt. Manaslu in the Himalayas, a message received in Katmandu, Nepal, said. But the victory of the highest peak ever climbed by women was marred by the death of one of the party’s members, 30-year-old Teiko Suzuki. The message said she was killed May 3 when she slipped and fell while trying to prepare the expedition’s Camp 5 at high altitude.
In Colombia, police in Bogotá rescued all the passengers and crew of a hijacked Avianca Boeing 727, 19 hours after the jet had been taken over by three men who were armed with pistols and sticks of TNT. A group of police, posing as members of a flight crew, shot two of the hijackers while the hostage pilot used karate chops to subdue the third one. The flight from Pereira to Bogota had been diverted on a course to Cali, back to Pereira and then onto Bogota.
The Brazilian Bar Association asked for an end to censorship, secret arrests and “inhuman and degrading treatment of prisoners” in Brazil. The association’s appeal was delivered to Justice Minister Armando Falcao and published in a Brasilia newspaper. The publication was unusual because censors rarely pass strong criticism of the military regime, especially in questions of civil rights.
A Roman Catholic priest known for his close contacts with leftist Argentine guerrillas was shot and fatally wounded as he left his small church in suburban Buenos Aires, police said. They said the Rev. Carlos Mujica was hit with machine gun fire as he emerged from the Church of San Francisco Solano in the Mataderos district. The attackers escaped.
President Nixon told his family Friday night that he would not resign from office so long as one member of the Senate supported him, his daughter, Mrs. David Eisenhower, said in a news conference. Mrs. Eisenhower’s statement was the first indication from the White House that Mr. Nixon entertained the belief that the House might vote impeachment. the President and his spokesmen have consistently said that Mr. Nixon does not believe he will be impeached. Mrs. Eisenhower and her husband strongly defended the President in 40 minutes of questions and answers today.
Vice President Ford said that he assured President Nixon that he was not among those “trying to jump off his ship of state.” Discussing what he called “a long talk” he had with the President on Friday, Mr. Ford said that some of his recent speeches touching on the Watergate case had been misinterpreted by the news media, He made his remarks in a commencement address to 2,000 graduates at Texas A&M University. His remarks appeared to confirm reports that the President had expressed some unhappiness over the Vice President’s comments about the way the White House has been dealing with Watergate. Government in Washington “isn’t about to sink,” Vice President Ford said. He said that Congress should be sure of the facts before it took any action against President Nixon in the Watergate scandals.
President Nixon made disparaging remarks about Jews and called Judge John Sirica a “wop” during White House conversations on Feb. 28 and March 20, 1973, with John Dean, according to sources with direct knowledge of the President’s comments. Copies of the tape recordings of the two Oval Office conversations were turned over by the White House early this year to Judge Lee Gagliardi of the Federal District Court in New York for use in the Mitchell-Stans trial.
The liberal Americans for Democratic Action urged Congress to reject any move to grant President Nixon immunity from prosecution in return for his resignation. The ADA, which is holding its national convention in Washington, also renewed its call for Mr. Nixon’s impeachment and said that “when” he was impeached by the House he should turn the Presidency over to Vice President Ford until the Senate decided the matter.
The Miami Herald joined the growing list of newspapers calling for the impeachment of President Nixon. The newspaper based its position on the release of edited transcripts of presidential conversations, which it called “a reckless maneuver, for the documents have appalled the country by and large.” Meanwhile, three California newspapers, the Sacramento Bee, Bakersfield Californian and Palo Alto Times, urged the President to resign. The Bakersfield and Palo Alto papers had supported Mr. Nixon in 1972.
What urban leaders contend is a turnabout in Nixon administration policies regarding mass transportation has thrown plans of more than a dozen cities to build modern rapid transit systems into confusion. City leaders maintain that the administration is backing away from earlier assurances that federal aid would be available to pay up to 80% of the cost of their transit systems. With the prospect of federal aid, the cities had planned accordingly, and tax measures were approved by voters in several cities to raise local funds to qualify for federal grants.
A young Army mechanic charged with stealing an Army helicopter and flying it to the White House has been refused bail. U.S. Circuit Judge Joseph H. Young ruled that a member of the military had no constitutional right to bail and refused to release Pfc. Robert K. Preston, 20, who is being held at the Ft. Meade, Maryland, stockade. Preston is to be arraigned Thursday for his court-martial on charges of stealing the helicopter, damaging it, assault with a deadly weapon and illegally entering the White House grounds last February 17.
While the number of college students who have used marijuana continues to rise, the rate of increase has slowed over the last two years, according to a Gallup Poll survey. Fifty-five percent of the students interviewed said they had tried marijuana at least once. That is a 4% increase over fall of 1971 but compares with a 46% increase between 1967 and 1971. Interviewers also found that worry over political morality had replaced anger over the Vietnam war as a chief concern and that nearly 4 students in 10 believed that violence sometimes was justified to bring about change in society.
The new Democratic coalition endorsed Howard Samuels for the Democratic nomination for the New York governorship in the first test of strength in the race. Mr. Samuels won with 70.3 percent of the vote. Representative Ogden Reid of Westchester received 22.4 percent of the vote, and Representative Hugh Carey of Brooklyn, 1.7 percent.
A New Jersey Superior Court judge ordered all parties involved in the removal of the Boeing 707 jetliner belonging to Robert Vesco, the fugitive financier, from a Panamanian airport on Thursday into his courtroom tomorrow to determine whether any international laws were violated. Alwyn Eisenhauer, the pilot who landed the plane at Newark International Airport on Friday, deactivated the controls to make sure that the plane could not be flown out of Newark by anyone but himself. He said he took the jet to recover more than $55,000 he said was owed him by a company that Mr. Vesco controlled.
Six people were killed and 35 injured in the crash of a Greyhound bus near Charleston, Missouri. The bus, traveling from Chicago to Memphis, sideswiped an overturned truck, tearing the right side of the bus open.
A series of tornadoes struck southern Michigan, killing one woman in Pinckney, where a twister ripped through a house. One person suffered injuries in nearby Hell, Michigan, where one house was destroyed and three were severely damaged. The National Weather Service, which lost an office wall to a storm that struck the Detroit Metropolitan Airport, said its reporting system was in chaos but that a number of tornadoes had been spotted as the storm center moved eastward Saturday night toward Ohio.
Human Kindness Day festivities on the grounds of the Washington Monument ended in rock- and bottle-throwing, looting of concession stands, vandalism and beatings as a crowd numbered in the tens of thousands turned angry. Police said several persons had been taken to hospitals after being beaten by youths, and there were at least 10 arrests. Mounted policemen armed with tear gas pellets broke up crowds of jeering youths who were throwing bottles. A police spokesman said the crowd became unruly after many persons attending the annual festival “smoked marijuana and drank liquor.”
“Tubular Bells” by Mike Oldfield hits #7 on the American Top 40.
ABC Records releases Steely Dan single “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” from the “Pretzel Logic “album; it peaks at #4 in the US, making it their biggest hit.
Born:
Mike Rathje, Canadian NHL defenseman (San Jose Sharks, Philadelphia Flyers), in Mannville, Alberta, Canada.
Kevin Brown, British-Canadian NHL right wing (Los Angeles Kings, Hartford Whalers, Carolina Hurricanes, Edmonton Oilers), in Birmingham, England, United Kingdom.
Dieter Kochan, NHL goalie (Tampa Bay Lightning, Minnesota Wild), in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.
Craig Reichert, Canadian NHL right wing (Mighty Ducks of Anaheim), in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
Simon Aspelin, Swedish tennis player; in Saltsjöbaden, Sweden.
Died:
Eleanor Tennant, 79, American tennis player who was the first female player to turn professional.
[Ed: When a conservative president is losing Oklahoma, it’s getting close to time to fold your hand.]
History Diaries 