Secretary of State Kissinger said that his talks with President Hafez al-Assad of Syria in Damascus had made “good progress” toward an agreement on Israeli-Syrian troop disengagement on the Golan Heights. A senior American official added that the key issue — definition of a demarcation line — had been “buttoned up” to all practical purposes. But he cautioned that the negotiations could be prolonged and Mr. Kissinger insists on returning to Washington by the weekend. Yesterday, Israel said the line proposed by Mr. Kissinger as last‐minute compromise was acceptable. Mr. Kissinger, who has kept extending his mission each week, now insists he must return to Washington by next weekend. Today was his 22nd day in the Middle East and he has told his aides that he believes the Secretary of State should not spend this long a period of time away from the capital.
The United Nations force that mans the buffer zone between Egyptian and Israeli forces on the Suez Canal front is “ready to act almost immediately” to send troops to the Israeli‐Syrian front as part of a disengagement there, a United Nations spokesman said in Cairo today. Rudolf Stajduhar, the spokesman, emphasized that the commander of the 6,000‐man force, General Ensio Siilasvuo of Finland, had received no such instructions yet.
The leader of the guerrilla group that attacked the Ma’alot school in Israel said the Palestinian resistance should attend the Middle East peace conference in Geneva if Israel recognized the Palestinians’ “national rights.” He said that these required Israeli agreement to withdraw from territory seized in 1967, to recognize Palestinian self-determination and statehood on the West Bank of the Jordan River and to carry out United Nations resolutions.
Defense Minister Moshe Dayan of Israel, in an emotional speech in Parliament, denounced the government’s initial decision last week to accept the demands of Palestinian terrorists holding students hostage at Ma’alot. He declared that he opposed that decision, which was later revoked, and insisted that terrorists who take hostages in Israel must be killed without regard to the age of the hostages. “Of course we don’t want to fight the war on the backs of our children,” he said, repeating the reason Prime Minister Golda Meir originally gave for the government’s decision. “But where do we draw the line? What’s the criteria? Old people but not young people? We will release terrorists for 16‐year‐olds but not 17‐year‐olds?”
The Soviet Union concluded trade agreement with Libya today, seemingly settling differences between the two nations. Only the barest details of the pact were announced, but Western specialists here believed the accord calls for a substantial increase in Soviet weapons aid to Libya in return for deliveries of Libyan oil. The agreement was hammered out during five days of intensive talks between Premier Abdul Salam Jalloud of Libya and Premier Aleksei N. Kosygyn.
The U.S. House Armed Services Committee defended its decision to continue development of the Air Force’s B-1 supersonic bomber as it brought a $22.6 billion 1975 military procurement bill to the floor. The bill includes a request for $449 million for the B-1. Critics have charged that the project has already had the largest cost overrun in Pentagon history and the committee conceded that the project was in financial trouble. Most Capitol Hill sources believe most of the B-1 funds will be granted, however.
The hardline Ulster Protestant movement choked the economic life of Belfast down to a bare subsistence level, halting all industries and many services. Barricades sealed off the city’s Protestant quarters and cut off most roads into and out of Belfast. Neither the government nor the strikers made a move to end the impasse.
Union leaders in London called off a two-week strike by stewards and stewardesses against British Airways because many of the 3,000 strikers wanted to return to work. No announcement was made of any settlement terms. The workers had struck for better pay and conditions.
A court in Genoa ordered the release of eight criminals held on murder, robbery and other charges in return for the life of kidnapped Mario Rossi, Italy’s assistant prosecutor. The Red Brigades, a self-styled leftwing organization that kidnaped Rossi a month ago, threatened to kill him unless the eight were released and granted safe passage to Cuba.
Italy’s National Association of Judges announced a two-day strike May 29-30 to draw the country’s attention to the chaotic state of Italian justice and to alleged attempts to undermine the independence of the judiciary. The strike will delay all penal and civil proceedings with the exception of labor disputes and trials of people in custody. The association said political powers were allowing the structure of justice to rot for lack of funds and personnel.
Former Portuguese Prime Minister Marcelo Caetano and President Americo Thomaz, who had both been arrested after deposed on April 25 in the Carnation Revolution coup d’état, were sent into exile in Brazil along with their families. The former leaders boarded a Boeing 707 of the Portuguese Air Force at the Portuguese resort of Madeira and were flown to Viracopos International Airport in Brazil and driven to São Paulo, where they were provided with apartments on the 27th floor of the São Paulo Hilton hotel.
Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam was expected to remain as head of government but returns from still inconclusive national elections show stronger-than-expected support for opposition leader Bill Snedden. Final results of the election were not expected for up to a week. Pollsters, who had predicted a decisive victory for Whitlam’s Labor Party, revised their estimates to a very narrow Labor triumph.
The Canadian government, which aided India’s nuclear energy program, is taking exception to the nuclear blast set off by India last Saturday. A government aide said a 1971 agreement with New Delhi did not extend to explosions, adding that Canada would “demand all information” from India concerning the underground test.
Pakistan’s Foreign Minister said today that his government would ask the United States and other major powers for protective guarantees against nuclear attack by India.
About 200 survivors of the Hiroshima atomic attack staged a sit-down in front of the city’s memorial tower to protest India’s first nuclear explosion. In Tokyo, representatives of Nagasaki, the other city that was atom-bombed by the United States during World War II, delivered protest notes to the Indian Embassy. Several Asian governments also voiced criticism of the test. India has said it intends to use nuclear power only for peaceful purposes.
South Vietnamese Government troops moved in force today to regain control of Saigon’s outer defenses after Communists had captured three outposts and had blown up gasoline tank at the country’s biggest oil depot. The Saigon command confirmed only that an operation as under way, but gave no details. Military sources said that the push to recapture the three outposts, about 25 miles north of the capital, began early today after reinforcements — infantry, tanks and artillery — were sent during the weekend to the Government‐controlled side of the Thị Tính River outside the village of Bến Cát. This morning, Việt Cộng infiltrators entered the oil depot at Nhà Bè, about 10 miles southeast of Saigon, and destroyed 315,000 gallons of ground vehicle gasoline, the Saigon command said.
South Vietnamese sources claim that U.S.-funded fertilizer, valued at millions of dollars and destined for sale to farmers, is being hoarded by importers for bigger profits. According to the sources, a number of importers and exporters are waiting for soaring fertilizer prices to go even higher. It is feared that the “fertilizer crisis” will be harmful to South Vietnam’s reeling economy.
Three gunmen who held hostages all night in a tearoom in Seoul, South Korea, were arrested by police and soldiers after they fell asleep. An employee telephoned the police that the men were asleep and some of the hostages grabbed the men’s weapons as the police broke in. Police originally said they believed the men were holding 32 hostages but this was scaled down to 24. None was injured. The three gunmen were identified as soldiers who had left their units. They had hijacked a car and bus, and killed a pursuing policeman before holing up in the teashop.
The government of the Philippines and President Ferdinand Marcos gave formal recognition of the Sulu Sultanate with the issuance of Memorandum Order 427, with Mohammed Mahakuttah Abdullah Kiram. Zamboanga City was acknowledged as the capital of the self-governing monarchy on the Sulu island archipelago.
Fretilin (Frente Revolucionária de Timor-Leste Independente), the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor, was founded in the Portuguese colony one month after the Carnation Revolution in Portugal, as the Timorese Social Democratic Association (ASDT).
U.S. District Judge John J. Sirica ordered President Nixon to surrender 64 tape recordings of White House conversations that had been subpoenaed by the special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski. Addressing concerns of national security raised by Nixon’s attorney, Sirica stated in his order that he would listen to individual tapes to determine whether they should be withheld from release. He stayed his order pending appeal, but declared that Mr. Nixon tried to “abridge” the special prosecutor’s independence in violation of the law and the President’s own promises. The U.S. Supreme Court would ultimately affirm Sirica’s ruling in United States v. Nixon on July 24, leading to the release of the June 23, 1972, “smoking gun” tape and Nixon’s resignation.
The House Judiciary Committee is to resume closed impeachment hearings today, and its chairman, Peter Rodino, said there would be no open sessions until the staff finished its presentation of all the Watergate evidence. One official said Mr. Rodino was “leaning” toward holding several more weeks of closed meetings.
President Nixon offered to compromise on a national health insurance plan in order to ease the passage of comprehensive health legislation this year The offer, made in a radio address, came on the eve of Senate Finance Committee hearings on different programs submitted by Mr. Nixon and members of Congress.
The Senate voted 81 to 5 to authorize $25.2 billion to aid the country’s elementary and secondary schools. It also stood firm on a compromise amendment that would reduce the busing of pupils after defeating, 61 to 26, yet another effort to toughen the busing provision. Another amendment would provide $631 million more in federal funds to aid the country’s 6 million handicapped and retarded children now in school, plus another 1 million preschool children.
“Haphazard… sloppy” investigation by the immigration service has made the United States a haven for at least 70 persons accused of being Nazi war criminals, Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman (D-New York) said. The charges against some of them include the murder of 800 Jews in Chislovich, Russia; the death of 5,000 Jews in Luboml, Ukraine, and the extermination of concentration camp inmates at Tartu, Estonia, she said. As an example, Rep. Holtzman said that Andrija Artukovic, who she said lives in Los Angeles, was the Nazi interior minister of Croatia and had been charged with ordering the deportation of thousands of Jews, Gypsies and Serbs to death camps and with actual participation in mass murders.
Marijuana smoking can have the same result as radiation poisoning and some of the blame for leading people to think it is harmless lies with inadequate federal government reports, a Senate panel was told. Appearing before an internal security subcommittee, Dr. Hardin B. Jones, a professor of medical physics and physiology at the University of California, said, “As an expert in human damage… even in those who use radiation effects… chromosome cannabis ‘moderately,’ is roughly the same type and degree of damage as in persons surviving atom bombing with a heavy level of radiation exposure of approximately 150 roentgens.”
Thirty-seven percent of all adult Americans smoke, and half of them want to quit, according to a Gallup poll released by the American Cancer Society. Of the smokers surveyed, 6% said they would be very interested in participating in a “stop smoking clinic” and 12% registered a degree of interest. “The clinics tended to be of greater interest to high school graduates, those with middle and upper incomes and those aged under 50 than to other population segments,” the report said.
A convicted murderer who once kidnapped a California official was allowed out of the Oregon State Penitentiary to visit a girlfriend and has not been seen since. Authorities opened an investigation to determine why Carl Bowles, accused kidnapper of former California Finance Director Hale Champion, had been given a pass to leave the prison. Bowles, 33, who was serving a life term for the 1965 slaying of an Oregon deputy sheriff, disappeared after authorities delivered him to a Salem motel Friday for a four-hour visit with his girlfriend. Charges against Bowles are still pending for his kidnapping of Champion, his wife, Marie, and their daughter, Katherine, from their Sacramento home in 1965.
President Nixon’s close friend, C. G. (Bebe) Rebozo, accused the Senate Watergate committee of trying to humiliate and embarrass him by subpoenaing records of every financial institution and every business he had dealt with since 1968. The Miami banker alleged in a complaint that the committee’s investigative staff had made “false misrepresentations” concerning a campaign contribution by A. D. Davis, an executive with the Winn Dixie grocery chain. Rebozo claims he took the $50,000 contribution from Davis and turned it over to proper campaign officials.
Neither Blacks or whites really want integration, and the time has come to abandon the fight to establish a racially united society, says the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Noting that it has been two decades since the U.S. Supreme Court. banned school segregation, Mr. Jackson said, “The whole notion of a melting pot is perverted imagery. It has antagonized white people and black people because of the melting pot in the integration concept… that everybody will become one race, a new race made up of all the different people in the world.” Mr. Jackson, the Chicago-based head of PUSH (People United to Save Humanity) and the former head of Operation Breadbasket, believes it is time for America to embrace ethnic pluralism instead of futilely trying to be a melting pot.
The U.S. Department of Defense created the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization as an office consolidating all U.S. ballistic missile defenses, to replace the Safeguard Program.
The U.S. Army abolished the office of Provost Marshal General, ending the term of Major General Lloyd B. Ramsey as Provost Marshal.
Fire destroyed the Cody Enterprise newspaper building in Cody, Wyoming, killing a reporter and a volunteer firefighter. The fire rekindled from ashes left in the building’s rafters from an arson fire in a neighboring alley the previous night.
The Senate passed bill today to establish a nine‐member commission to determine whether the United States should continue to participate in the Olympic Games. The commission would be appointed by the President, and include at least two athletes who participated in the 1972 Olympics. Its report to the President and Congress would be due by December 31, 1974.
The team physician for the NBA Portland Trail Blazers said today that Bill Walton, who recently signed with the National Basketball Association club for an estimated $2.5‐million, probably would undergo knee surgery within two weeks. A spokesman for the Blazers said Walton returned to Portland last week the request of Dr. Frank B. Smith for further tests.
The New York Mets broke two losing streaks — both of which belonged to somebody else — and extended one of their own tonight when they were edged by the Chicago Cubs, 2–1, on a four-hitter by Burt Hooton.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 812.42 (-6.42, -0.78%).
Born:
Brian McNichol, MLB pitcher (Chicago Cubs), in Fairfax, Virginia.
Chékéba Hachemi, Afghan feminist and writer, in Kabul, Afghanistan.
Died:
Cardinal Jean Daniélou, 69, French Roman Catholic cardinal, appointed as a professor of theology and “one of the few priests to be named a cardinal without having served as a bishop or in any other administrative function”, died of a stroke. Nine days later, the satirical French magazine Le Canard Enchaine reported that Danielou died in the apartment of a nightclub dancer, and on June 14, the Paris newspaper Le Monde published a confirmation of the story, with a columnist writing, “According to some, he died of a heart attack in the street… In fact, the cardinal died of a stroke soon after entering the apartment of a young woman who works in a Paris nightclub, whose flat he had already visited several times before.”
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