After again narrowing the differences between Syria and Israel, Secretary of State Kissinger agreed tonight to make another attempt to bring about a troop separation agreement on the Golan Heights before returning to Washington. After five hours of talks in Damascus with President Hafez al-Assad, the Secretary was said to be convinced that negotiations were at a critical point where “one or two decisions can do it.”
Mr. Kissinger has been away from Washington nearly a month on his peace-seeking trip in the Middle East, the longest period a Secretary of State has been out of Washington on a diplomatic mission since the end of World War II. The pace of work slows a bit in the State Department, which has more than 12,000 employees, and action on some vital policy decisions is postponed when Mr. Kissinger is away. But his aides maintain that the department’s work goes on and that most of the pressing decisions do get made with Mr. Kissinger’s participation by cable and telephone.
Israel’s prime minister-designate, Yitzhak Rabin, ran into more snags in putting together a coalition cabinet and threatened to give up his efforts if problems are not resolved by Tuesday. Rabin presented his cabinet list to the Labor Party leadership but said it was being held up because Foreign Minister Abba Eban was refusing to be information minister and Finance Minister Pinhas Sapit was refusing to remain in his post. Rabin said he would call another meeting of the party leaders Tuesday and if a solution hadn’t been found by then he would give up trying to form a government.
A message from Palestinian guerrillas who had seized the school building in Ma’alot, Israel, on May 15 to the Israeli military commander in the town appears to hold the key to the ensuing sequence of events that culminated in the Israeli attack on the school in which 16 teenage Israeli hostages were killed, along with the guerrillas who had held them captive. The message was carried by a young woman, Narkis Mordechai, a lieutenant in the Israeli military reserves, who had been among the hostages. The crucial nature of the message and the controversy surrounding it, as well as other elements of the activities of that day have emerged from extensive coordinated interviews carried out by the New York Times among Israeli and Arab leaders and other persons who were involved.
White House officials said today that President Nixon was likely to visit the Middle East soon, possibly on his way to Moscow next month for a meeting with Leonid I. Brezhnev, the Soviet leader. Ronald L. Ziegler, the press secretary, said there was “distinct possibility” that Mr. Nixon would stop in the Middle East “in the near future.” He said no definite plan or schedule had been agreed on. Other officials indicated privately that such a visit was almost certain before the scheduled trip to Moscow. There was less certainty about when and where in the Middle East the visit would be. Previously spokesmen said only that Mr. Nixon “hoped” to visit the Middle East in the near future. Mr. Ziegler would not state the purpose of Mr. Nixon’s stop in the Middle East. But he noted that the President had been receiving cablegrams from Secretary of State Kissinger on his peace mission.
The press secretary said in a briefing that Mr. Nixon now expected to arrive in Moscow about June 24, but he emphasized that this, too, was not certain. There was speculation, which Mr. Ziegler did not discourage, that Mr. Nixon would leave Washington on June 22, and stop in Brussels for meetings with West European leaders at the headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization before proceeding to Moscow. Thus Mr. Nixon’s planned foreign travel plans this summer have been expanded to embrace the peace efforts in the Middle East and various issues‐in Western Europe. Mr. Nixon’s associates have repeatedly said that impeachment proceedings in the House of Representatives will not be allowed to interfere with his plans.
Egypt today welcomed President Nixon’s announced intention, to visit the Middle East and expressed hopes that such a visit would help the cause of peace.
While denouncing Northern Ireland’s striking Protestant extremists as “thugs and bullies” in a television speech, Prime Minister Wilson gave no indication of what steps London would take against the strike that is intended to bring down the provincial government. In Ulster, the feeling was that Mr. Wilson and his government decided there was no way to break the strike without a confrontation that could lead to bloodshed, and that Mr. Wilson would follow a cautious course.
Dr. Viktor Polsky, a Soviet Jewish activist, was seized in Moscow while he was on his way to consult with his lawyer about charges stemming from an auto accident, his friends reported. A 19-year-old woman was struck by Polsky’s car and injured in the incident. But Jewish sources said hospital records indicate the woman threw herself in front of the car in a suicide attempt. They claim charges are being trumped up in an effort to silence Polsky.
The new American ambassador to Nationalist China, Leonard Unger, presented his credentials in Taipei and expressed assurances of a continued U.S. commitment “to safeguard the security of Taiwan.” Nationalist officials said they considered the appointment of Unger a sign of further good relations with the United States, despite Washington’s improved ties with Peking.
Thailand King Bhumibol Adulyadej summoned Sanya Thammasak to his summer palace to express confidence in his ability to continue leading the country as prime minister. Sanya, a 67-year-old university professor, had resigned last week in the face of mounting criticism, but he agreed to reconsider at the urging of the National Assembly. Meanwhile, the nation’s powerful National Student Center demanded that Sanya exclude from his new cabinet any minister who served in the ousted military regime of Thanom Kittikachorn.
President Ferdinand E. Marcos of the Philippines said in Manila that he was opening the way for parliamentary rule and the restoration of the writ of habeas corpus to prevent summary arrest and detention. “We are trying to normalize the entire situation of arrest and detention…” he said. Marcos also said in an interview that the Philippines and the United States would not agree on a trade treaty to replace the one that expires July 3, but that he had ordered concessions for U.S. business interests in his country.
The Indian Government and press, stung by foreign criticism of the nation’s nuclear test, is reacting with anger and dismay. For the last three days, the newspapers here have published bristling editorials denouncing Western critics as “ridiculous,” “ignorant,” “difficult to understand,” “silly” and “irrational.” Today Prime Minister Indira Gandhi sternly defended the nation’s nuclear test. Mrs. Gandhi said that it was difficult to understand the outcry against India’s nuclear experiment and assured the country’s neighbors and others that there was nothing to fear from India.
Mrs. Gandhi, who was speaking at an African Liberation Day ceremony, said that the argument that India’s peaceful atomic experiment had introduced a new element of tension had no basis in fact. India, Mrs. Gandhi said, is being taunted with remarks that a poor nation cannot afford the luxury of a peaceful nuclear experiment. She added: “This same argument was advanced when we established our steel mills and machine-building plants. They are necessary for development, for it is only through acquisition of higher technology that you can overcome poverty and economic backwardness.”
Mexico’s foreign minister, Emilio O. Rabasa, implied in a news conference in Mexico City that his country would impose its own 200-mile offshore territorial limit if the World Sea Rights Conference in Caracas, Venezuela, beginning June 20, fails to do so. The conference will deal with requests of poorer nations, mainly Latin American, for territorial control extending 200 miles into the ocean. The richer nations, including the United States, favor the present 12-mile offshore limit.
The Italian vessel Mediterranea and the Belgian bulk carrier Titus collided in the Panama Canal during a driving rainstorm, a Canal Authority spokesman said. The Titus was taking on water through a hole in her bow and was expected to be beached so that canal traffic would not be blocked.
In a nationwide radio address in which he sought to explain recent economic difficulties and how his administration is responding to them, President Nixon said that the material quality of life in this country had been maintained at an “unparalleled level” despite inflation and unemployment. There are “encouraging signs today that the worst is behind us,” he said.
Investigators for the House Judiciary Committee believe they have conclusive evidence that a hush money payment of $75,000 to E. Howard Hunt was initiated on March 21, 1973, a few hours after President Nixon told John Dean that such a payment would “keep the cap on the bottle” of the Watergate scandal. The evidence, pinpointing the date of the payment to Mr. Hunt, was based on the travel records of Sherman Unger, a Cincinnati lawyer and a former Nixon administration official.
President Nixon continued to hold fast to his position that he must defend the presidency by refusing to turn over evidence sought in two major Watergate criminal cases. Ron Ziegler, the President’s press secretary, said that. Mr. Nixon reviewed the week’s events with his staff it his home in Key Biscayne. “He is determined that his defense against successive encroachments on the confidentiality of his office is right,” Mr. Ziegler told reporters.
Public belief that President Nixon was involved in the Watergate bugging or the subsequent cover‐up has shown very little change since last June, despite the release of the White House transcripts, and other intervening events, a Gallup Poll reported yesterday. In a poll of 1,543 adults 18 years and older May 10 to 13, the view that President Nixon had been involved to some extent in the scandal was expressed by 73 percent. Similar surveys showed 71 percent holding this opinion last February and 67 percent holding it early last June.
After five years of technical preparation — often interrupted by controversy, opposition, litigation and labor troubles — work on Phase 1 of the trans-Alaska pipeline has finally begun. Contractors for Alyeska, the expanded pipeline consortium, have started work on a 371-mile gravel road north from the Yukon River to Prudhoe Bay. It will open the Alaska Arctic to through travel on year-round basis, first for the pipeline builders, and then as part of the state highway system.
President Nixon signed a bill at his Florida vacation home today that allows women to join the armed forces at the age of 17. Until now, men could join the armed forces at 17, but women had to be 18 to enlist.
A survey of the nation’s defense arsenal, based on interviews with defense authorities and their critics along with a reading of military and industrial publications, indicates that the United States has left behind the “beans and bullets” logistics of Vietnam and entered a revolutionary era of weapons development. In developing nuclear weapons, there is less emphasis on mass-destruction weapons and tactical missiles, bombs and shells, and more on greater accuracy of strategic ballistic missiles.
A tape‐recorded message by a man and a woman who identified themselves as affiliates of the terrorist group that calls itself the Symbionese Liberation Army said today that Patricia Hearst and two other fugitives should regroup. The tape was broadcast by radio station KPFA which received and broadcast several tapes from the terrorists shortly after the kidnapping of Miss Hearst last February 4 from her apartment in Berkeley, California. Bill Northwood, news director of the Berkeley station, said he had been advised by the station’s lawyer not to disclose how it obtained the latest tape.
Officials of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in San Francisco declined to comment immediately on the message. The woman identified herself as “General Field Marshal Cabrella of the federated forces of the Symbionese Liberation Army.” She told Miss Hearst and William and Emily Harris, the couple whom authorities believe to be with her, that united front of urban guerrilla organizations “was forged out of an emergency meeting” after six S.L.A. members died in a gun battle and fire in Los Angeles on May 17. The man on the tape identified himself as Thunga Abdul Assad, minister of cultural affairs of the Black Liberation Army.
Seven executives of the Norfolk Shipbuilding & Drydock Corp. were sentenced to jail terms for conspiracy to bribe Navy ship inspectors. The company’s president and chief executive officer, John L. Roper III, 46, and his brother, George W. Roper II, 45, its vice president, were each sentenced to three years, all but four months of which were suspended. The Ropers and the other five executives had pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to a single conspiracy count earlier this year, in return for which the government dropped nine other counts.
The Boston Globe, reversing a policy put into effect five years ago, announced it would accept cigarette advertising. In an editorial the Globe said that it had been argued among the newspaper’s leaders that the ban amounted to censorship and discriminated against a product that it was legal to buy. The newspaper was one of the first to reject the ads on the basis of the U.S. surgeon general’s warning that smoking could injure health.
A young Russian seaman was granted asylum in Erie, Pennsylvania, after leaving a Soviet freighter on the pretext of attending a party with other crewmen. The State Department said Ivan V. Khonenko, 23, believed to be the first Soviet seaman to jump ship in the United States, would be settled in this country. Immigration officials said Khononko had left the freighter Shura Kober along with 36 other seamen to attend a party at a Russian fraternal club in the St. Lawrence Seaway port and contacted police, asking for asylum. He speaks one word of English — “defect.”
Benjamin F. Holman, director of the Community Relations Service, a Justice Department agency, warned that many cities might experience racial trouble this fall if they did not plan now to meet school desegregation problems. Holman said he feared trouble in cities where courts are ordering extensive desegregation and made public a list of “danger cities” where new court orders are likely-San Bernardino, California; Waterbury, Connecticut; New Kensington-Arnold, New Castle and Uniontown, Pennsylvania; Tucson, Arizona; Chattanooga, Tennessee; Youngstown, Ohio; Mt. Vernon and Lackawanna, New York; Omaha, Nebraska; and St. Louis, Missouri.
The mail fraud trial of businessman Glenn W. Turner went to the jury in a Jacksonville, Florida, court but deliberations were postponed for two days when one of the jurors became ill. Turner, seven of his former executives and three Turner-founded companies (Koscot Interplanetary, Inc., Dare to Be Great and Glenn W. Turner Enterprises) are charged with defrauding “persons too numerous to mention” by selling distributorships without supplying necessary merchandise.
Boxer Rodrigo Valdez of Colombia became the new World Boxing Council (WBC) middleweight champion, knocking out Bennie Briscoe of the U.S. in a bout at Monte Carlo in Monaco for the vacant WBC middleweight crown. World Boxing Association (WBA) champion Carlos Monzón had been stripped of his WBC title for earlier having refused to fight Valdez.
The Yankees send catcher Duke Sims to the Rangers for pitcher Larry Gura. Gura will go 5–1 with New York but because of reported differences with Billy Martin, Gura will be peddled to Kansas City.
Born:
Miguel Tejada, Dominican MLB shortstop (American League MVP, 2002; All-Star, 2002, 2004-2006, 2008, 2009; Oakland A’s, Baltimore Orioles, Houston Astros; San Diego Padres, San Francisco Giants, Kansas City Royals) in Baní, Dominican Republic.
Dennis Stallings, NFL linebacker (Tennessee Oilers), in East St. Louis, Illinois.
Eric Stocz, NFL tight end (Detroit Lions), in Warren, Ohio.
Kevin Hartman, American Major League Soccer player, MLS Goalkeeper of the Year in 1999, with five caps for the U.S. national team; in Athens, Ohio.
Frank Klepacki, American video game composer (“Command & Conquer: Red Alert”), in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Died:
Donald Crisp, 93, English-American film actor (“How Green Was My Valley” [1942 Academy Award winner for Best Supporting Actor], “Pollyana”).
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