Soviet President Konstantin U. Chernenko said in a letter that West Germany will be safe from Soviet nuclear attack only if it gets rid of U.S. nuclear missiles. Replying to a message from West German Greens party leader Petra Kelly, Chernenko said, “He who deploys on his territory first-strike arms aimed at neighboring states places himself in advance under the threat of a return strike.” West Germany would be “insured against a return strike” if it got rid of weapons on its territory, he said.
Foreign Minister Claude Cheysson of France accused the Soviet Union today of trying to intimidate the Western powers and of having contempt for human rights. Speaking at the opening ceremonies of the 35th annual spring Foreign Ministers meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Mr. Cheysson, the honorary chairman for the three- day session, said the NATO countries were ready to work for agreements with the Soviet bloc but that the Soviet Union was not pursuing the same course. His comments were echoed by Vice President Bush, who told the audience at the State Department, including the 16 Foreign Ministers of the NATO alliance, that Moscow was blazing “a trail of adventurism” in the third world.
An additional Air Force aerial tanker and 400 Stinger antiaircraft missiles have been sent to Saudi Arabia, the United States announced. The arms were sent to help the Saudis improve their air, sea and land defenses against Iran. President Reagan signed the necessary papers this morning authorizing the transfer to the Saudis of the Stinger missiles and 200 shoulder-held launchers, which arrived in Saudi Arabia on Monday, according to Alan D. Romberg, a State Department spokesman.
Iran vowed to fight any American military intervention in the Persian Gulf. Meanwhile, Iraq reiterated its pledge to continue its air and sea blockade of Iran’s main oil export terminal until Iran responded to appeals to end the war. President Ali Khamenei of Iran, in a speech broadcast on the Iranian radio, assailed Washington, saying the United States was prepared to consider military assistance to the Saudis and other gulf countries and to protect shipping, provided such aid was requested and appropriate bases were provided. “If the Americans are prepared to sink in the depths of the Persian Gulf waters for nothing, then let them come,” Mr. Khamenei said.
In Baghdad, Iraq’s Information Minister, Latif Nassif al-Jassem, told reporters who accompanied the visiting Turkish Prime Minister, Turgot Ozal, that the blockade was intended to defend Iraq’s “security and independence.” His statement was distributed by the official Iraqi press agency. In a war communique, the Iraqi High Command said its forces had destroyed several Iranian infantry positions, an observation post and an ammunition dump in the last 24 hours.
The civil war, for the Lebanese, has become a way of life. The nine years of strife have shaped a country that now limps along indefinitely in a permanent state of fragmentation, more or less at war with itself. Also, for the first time since the civil war began, many Lebanese say they feel alone, ignored by the world, with nothing to wait for anymore.
A member of a Jewish terrorist underground was convicted in Tel Aviv for the attempted bombing of five Arab buses in Jerusalem a month ago. Noam Yinon, 27, a resident of the annexed Golan Heights, was convicted of hauling explosives for the group after an apparent plea-bargaining agreement. Initially, he was charged with attempted murder and sabotage. He faces a maximum penalty of 10 years’ imprisonment. The trials of 26 other men also suspected of being members of the underground network are to start June 17.
President Hosni Mubarak’s party won 391 of the 448 contested seats in the parliamentary election Sunday, according to official results announced today. The opposition gained the remaining 57 seats, its best showing since the 1952 coup. Mr. Mubarak’s National Democratic Party got 87.3 percent of the votes, and the New Wafd Party got 12.7 percent, Interior Minister Hassan Abu Basha said at a news conference. The number of opposition party seats was the highest since the military overthrew the monarchy in 1952 and was almost three times as many seats as opposition parties held in the previous 392-member Parliament. The New Wafd Party leader, Fuad Serageddin, a former Interior Minister, called the election “the funeral of democracy.”
Three Soviet generals have been killed in the last two months by Afghan rebels who shot down their helicopters near the Panjshir Valley north of Kabul, reports reaching diplomats in India and Pakistan said. The generals were not named. The diplomats in Pakistan also quoted reports that a high-ranking Soviet officer was captured by rebels in the valley in early May and that a Soviet delegation flew to Kabul to try to negotiate his release. It was not known if any discussions took place.
The withdrawal of the Soviet bloc from the Olympic Games in Los Angeles this summer was denounced by President Reagan as the “political machinations of power brokers in countries that are less than free.” In a visit to the United States Olympic Training Center at Colorado Springs, Colorado, Mr. Reagan remarked, “The Games are moving forward and they will be successful.”
In an interview Monday for Irish television, the President speculated that Soviet leaders were concerned about defections. “Frankly,” he said, “I think they don’t want to be embarrassed by having revered athletes in their country come to this country and decide to stay.”
West German union leaders turned down a compromise offer from management, and talks collapsed in a dispute over working hours that has paralyzed the country’s metals industry for more than two weeks. Employers offered to cut the present 40-hour week to 38 hours for shift workers only, but union leaders said it would not cover the entire workforce. The union wants a 35-hour week without pay cuts. Volkswagen, joining other automakers shutting down for lack of parts, laid off 95,000 workers.
France and West Germany agreed to abolish border formalities for private travelers between the two countries. The change will not apply to commercial travelers. French President Francois Mitterrand and West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl also agreed at a two-day meeting to revive cooperation in arms production by jointly developing a combat helicopter. And to emphasize postwar unity, the two leaders will attend a September memorial ceremony at the Verdun battlefield for French and German victims of World War II.
Thousands of British miners hurled rocks, bottles and nail-studded potatoes at police in the most violent clash of an 11-week-old coal strike. At least 62 people were injured, and 82 were arrested. The battle, involving 7,000 striking miners, took place outside a coke plant in south Yorkshire, 150 miles north of London. The strikers tried unsuccessfully to keep truck convoys carrying coke from reaching a steel plant. The miners struck in March over a National Coal Board plan to close unprofitable mines and cut 20,000 jobs. Police officers, some brandishing riot shields and wearing plastic helmets and others on horseback, were bombarded by stones, broken pieces of fence and clumps of grass.
Chinese-West European ties are being stressed by Prime Minister Zhao Ziyang, who left Peking for a tour of France, Belgium, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Italy. Mr. Zhao’s trip is the first by a Chinese leader involved in Peking’s new trade policy with the West. Hua Guofeng, Mao Zedong’s successor, visited Western Europe in 1979 before being squeezed out by China’s current leader, Deng Xiaoping. Britain is not on Mr. Zhao’s itinerary, apparently because delicate negotiations are under way on the future of Hong Kong. The next round of talks is scheduled to open here Wednesday.
FBI involvement in El Salvador was reported by Provisional President Alvaro Magana. He said that over the last four months the bureau had trained a Salvadoran unit that will investigate death squad activities and political murders.
A truce aimed at halting 20 years of guerrilla warfare in Colombia held through its first day, and the leader of the nation’s largest rebel group said he will try to form a legal political party. Pedro Antonio Marin, 53, better known as “Sure Shot,” said in a radio interview that he is calling an end to his rebel career as the head of the 9,000-man Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces, a Marxist group. “My intention, if this cease-fire succeeds, is to reach an understanding with the government to establish a political group that can be represented in the parliamentary process,” he said.
President Reagan visits the Olympic Committee Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado. President Reagan today denounced the Soviet bloc’s withdrawal from the Olympic Games as the “political machinations of power brokers in countries that are less than free.” “The Games are moving forward and they will be successful,” the President declared in a visit to the United States Olympic Training Center. Mr. Reagan, beginning the fifth month of his re-election campaign, said the Olympics in Los Angeles would be “the greatest ever held.” He declared the Games would be “a great morale builder for the American people” even with the absence of the Soviet Union and its allies.
President Reagan spends time with 400-500 campaign workers.
Abandonment of at-large elections for local government offices in the South is being ordered by Federal courts with increasing frequency on the ground that such systems are racially discriminatory. Civil rights lawyers say the recent flurry of decisions will open the door for the election of more black officials throughout the region.
Gary Hart opposed economic plans espoused by President Reagan and Walter F. Mondale. Using the successful commercial and sports development of the Hackensack Meadowlands as a prop, the Democratic Presidential aspirant told a group of businessmen that there must be a “third way” for the nation’s economic future.
Military recruits are filling goals easily, Pentagon officials say. From mid-June to October 1, the start of the 1985 fiscal year, young men and women can enlist, but they will not be able to report for training and duty until after October 1. Officials also say recruits now include the highest proportion of high school graduates since the end of World War II.
Navy Secretary John F. Lehman Jr. has overturned regulations on the height and reach of naval aviation candidates because they had the “unintentional effect of discriminating against women.” On January 1, the Navy adopted new human measurement standards for flier candidates, requiring longer arms and allowing a broader range of leg length, saying the changes were needed to make aviators better fit their planes. According to a study, the changes would have excluded 73% of college-age women and 13% of college-age men. Before the changes, about 39% of all women and 7% of all men were ineligible.
A jury was impaneled in Chicago in the trial of the first of four judges indicted in Operation Greylord, the 3½-year federal investigation of the Cook County court system. Judge John M. Murphy, accused of accepting $3,000 in bribes to fix cases, is charged with mail fraud, extortion and conspiracy to participate in racketeering activities in an alleged scheme involving attorneys, a police officer and an unidentified judge. Opening arguments begin today.
Frank Balistrieri, the man accused of being the leader of organized crime in Milwaukee, was sentenced to 13 years in prison by federal Judge Terence Evans and fined $30,000 after being convicted of extortion charges. Balistrieri, 66, claimed he was framed. But he was found guilty on two counts of extortion and five felonies stemming from a sports betting business. He was sentenced to a total of 40 years in prison but the sentences are concurrent and the total sentence thus is only 13 years. His two sons, Joseph and John, were also convicted of extortion and will be sentenced June 19.
Illinois Attorney General Neil Hartigan turned down a Chicago alderman’s request to seek the ouster of Chicago Mayor Harold Washington for failing to file a financial disclosure statement on time. He rejected the request of Alderman Edward M. Burke, who claimed Washington forfeited his office by missing an April 30 state filing deadline. Washington filed the document last week.
Negotiations in the 58-day strike at Las Vegas hotel-casinos were deadlocked today, but several hundred union members who earlier settled on a new contract went back to work at three of the gambling spas. A smoke bomb exploded in the early morning hours outside a vacant building on property owned by the Summa Corporation near the strike-bound Desert Inn Hotel. Summa is the parent company of the Desert Inn and four other Las Vegas resorts. “There was no damage, but it blackened one side of the building,” the police said. It was the latest in a series of bombs that have exploded or been disarmed since four unions struck the Las Vegas gambling industry April 2.
A defense attorney suggested today that an informer, James Timothy Hoffman, had lined his pockets with Government money by inventing and then promoting a drug case against the auto maker John Z. DeLorean. Under cross-examination by a defense attorney, Howard Weitzman, Mr. Hoffman admitted that his initial reports about Mr. DeLorean’s interest in an alleged drug deal were greeted with skepticism by a Drug Enforcement Administration agent, John Valestra. But Mr. Hoffman insisted it was Mr. DeLorean who proposed a drug deal to save his failing car company in Northern Ireland. Mr. DeLorean, 59 years old, is charged with conspiring to distribute $24 million worth of cocaine in a bid to save the DeLorean Motor Company, which later went bankrupt.
The heads of two mail workers unions dismissed new wage proposals by the U.S. Postal Service as “garbage” and said they were “totally unacceptable.” Moe Biller, president of the American Postal Workers Union, and Vincent Sombrotto, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, issued a joint statement that took particular aim at the Postal Service’s call for a wage freeze for present employees. Sombrotto and Biller also noted that postal management had called for “wholesale gutting” of the cost-of-living allowance part of the current contract.
The Chevrolet Citation was the cheapest car to repair ($298) and the Isuzu Impulse the costliest ($2,036) of nine cars put through a 5-m.p.h. impact bumper safety test, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety reported. In 1982, the Department of Transportation rolled back its new car bumper standard from 5-mph to 2.5-mph. The auto manufacturing industry had argued lighter bumpers would save on fuel costs. But the crash tests prove consumers and insurance companies are paying millions of dollars in needless repair costs, the industry-funded research organization said.
Agriculture Secretary John R. Block and his partners obtained more farm loans without putting up any collateral in 1983, his financial statement showed. The secretary’s statement, required by the Ethics in Government Act, listed unsecured loans of at least $1.97 million to more than $2.7 million. Last year they were $1.61 million to more than $2.4 million. Some members of Congress have expressed interest in learning how Block, an Illinois farmer, got unsecured bank loans in 1982 and 1983 for farm operations while their constituents cannot.
Lack of crowds at the World’s Fair in New Orleans has prompted a top management change and a gigantic discount sale. The fair’s marketing chief, Jeffrey Stack, has been dismissed and ticket prices have been sharply reduced.
At midday today the Moon will pass directly across the face of the Sun. Weather forecasters said the spectacular solar eclipse would almost certainly be hidden from viewers on the East Coast by heavy clouds. Nevertheless, eye specialists fear that, where the spectacle is visible, some people will suffer needless loss of vision, either from looking at the eclipse directly or through some optical device.
Block Island residents are angry at the Rhode Island authorities for repeatedly rejecting their efforts to control the summer invasion of mopeds from the mainland, 12 miles away, which they believe threatens their safety, privacy and tranquil life. The 620 year-round residents of the sandy, picture-postcard island plan to vote for secession from the state next week. Both Connecticut and Massachusetts have offered to annex the Newport County island.
The Boston Red Sox retire #9 (Ted Williams) & #4 (Joe Cronin).
The Braves overcome a 4–0 deficit to beat the Cubs, 7–4, but lose third baseman Bob Horner, who breaks his wrist diving for a ball and will be sidelined for the rest of the season. Horner broke the same wrist last year and missed the final 43 games.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1101.24 (-5.86).
Born:
Carmelo Anthony, NBA power forward and small forward (NBA All Star, 2007, 2008, 2010-2017; Denver Nuggets, New York Knicks, Oklahoma City Thunder, Houston Rockets, Portland Trailblazers, Los Angeles Lakers), in Brooklyn, New York, New York.
Justin Tryon, NFL cornerback (Washington Redskins, Indianapolis Colts, New York Giants), in Palmdale, California.
Tim Castille, NFL running back (Arizona Cardinals, Kansas City Chiefs), in Phenix City, Alabama.
Chris Porter, Canadian NHL centre (St. Louis Blues, Minnesota Wild), in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
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