The United States announced that Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had persuaded representatives of both Israel and Syria to reach an agreement on separation of their troops and a pullback within the Golan Heights. Israel and Syria agreed on an accord to separate their forces on the Golan Heights. Syrian and Israeli military officers are to sign the accord in Geneva on Friday, the first time the two governments have formally agreed on anything since the armistice that ended the Israeli war of independence in 1948. Secretary of State Kissinger, who worked out the agreement in a month of intensive personal diplomacy, plans to leave for home tomorrow.
President Nixon declared that the Syrian-Israeli accord would be followed by further United States diplomatic initiatives in the Middle East aimed at establishing a permanent peace. Mr. Nixon, who is planning a trip to the area next month as part of the effort, said the diplomacy would involve all governments in the area.
Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko of the Soviet Union flew home from Damascus as the Soviet Union urged an “all-encompassing settlement” of the Arab-Israeli dispute. In a joint statement with the Syrian government, Moscow indicated approval of the disengagement agreement and reported Syrian support for Soviet involvement in future negotiations.
Israeli officials regard the accord as the best possible agreement Israel could hope to negotiate under difficult circumstances. They feel that it promises a cease-fire and an early return of prisoners but that it gives little hope for an end to the old hostility. Militarily, the agreement is regarded here as a calculated risk. Its value will depend on whether and how long the cease‐fire is observed, officials say, and whether the Syrians attempt to use their new positions along the buffer zone to stage new guerrilla activity against the Israeli, settlements on the occupied part of the Golan Heights. The Whole thing is a gamble,” a senior Israeli said tonight as congratulatory toasts were being drunk in Premier Golda Meir’s office. “But it’s a gamble we couldn’t afford not to take.”
In Syria, where information about the accord was limited, there was talk of disengagement as a development that could lead to real peace. But only a few high officials knew the details and there was no official comment.
The Arab states, Iran and other oil-producing nations have sharply increased the amount of money provided or pledged to the World Bank this year for its lending activities in the underdeveloped world. Officials of the bank, formally known as the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, disclosed here today that the oil‐producing lands had agreed to put up approximately $600‐million of such capital since the start of the fiscal year last July 1. Total borrowing of the bank in that period is almost $2‐billion.
A search was underway in northern Ethiopia for a 24-year-old American nurse kidnaped Monday from a missionary hospital by members of a guerrilla group, the State Department reported in Washington. The nurse, Mrs. Deborah Dortzbach of Freedhold, New Jersey, was abducted in a helicopter by four armed men seeking medical aid. Another nurse at the American Evangelical Hospital, Mrs. Assa Strickwerda, 54, a Dutch national, was also seized and later found dead, shot in the forehead, in a valley near the mission. The kidnappers are believed to be members of the Eritrean Liberation Front, a group that has been holding five employees of the Tenneco Corp. since last March.
North Vietnamese forces with tanks counterattacked the South Vietnamese armored troops who had driven them out of the village of Long Nguyên, 25 miles north of Saigon, but were driven back, the Saigon military command said. Other scattered fighting and shelling brought the casualty toll for both armies to near 1,000 killed, wounded or missing in two days of fighting.
In Cambodia, Communist gunners fired 50 rounds of 105-mm. artillery into Svay Rieng and launched a ground assault against a government outpost at Prasot.
The U.S. Senate passed a revived bill to authorize a $1.5 billion additional U.S. contribution to the foreign aid loan funds of the International Development Association. The 55-27 vote sent the bill to the House which defeated a similar measure 248 to 155 on January 23.
The 24 member nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development meeting in Paris considered a draft agreement for nations to stop putting up trade barriers in an effort to correct trade deficits. Christopher Soames, Common Market spokesman, declared that only continued liberalization of world trade could stave off a slide into a 1930s-style depression. He warned that unchecked inflation could lead to “a breakdown of our societies as they are today.”
The general strike that crippled Northern Ireland and toppled the provincial coalition government was called off by its organizers, who urged a “phased” return to work. A few hours later in London the British government announced that a form of direct rule was being imposed on the province. The Ulster Workers Council called for an end of the strike less than a day after achieving one of its main objectives, the collapse of the provincial government, but it did not get a promise of new elections that it had demanded from Britain.
Italians staged a four‐hour general strike this morning following a bombing at an anti‐Fascist rally in the northern city of Brescia yesterday. Six persons died in the bombing and scores were injured. The bombing, one of Italy’s worst since World War II’ and the first calculated violence of this dimension at a political meeting, was denounced by political and labor leaders as the work of extreme rightists whose activities have been under investigation for some time. The general strike, called by Italy’s three major labor unions to demonstrate “indignation and grief” over the attack, involved every sector of the work force except for a few emergency services.
France’s President Giscard announced an immediate ban on government wiretapping and restraints against the press, and said that he would work toward welcoming political refugees. Giscard told the first meeting of his cabinet, “We are here to change France. France is a liberal country and we must set our sights even more firmly in that direction.”
French publisher Maurice Girodias was ordered to leave the U.S. after he had announced that he planned to publish a book titled President Kissinger. The Immigration and Naturalization Service had received an anonymous complaint that permission for Girodias to remain in the U.S. had expired in January.
Two Americans being held in India on charges of spying have no connection with the U.S. government, the State Department said in Washington, Richard Winn Harcos, 27, and Anthony Allen Fletcher, 30, both of San Francisco, were arrested in Calcutta on April 26, 1973, and charged with acts “prejudicial to the safety or interests” of India. Harcos was arrested in the dock area of Calcutta with scuba-diving gear. Fletcher was seized later at a hotel. Originally Indian police said the two men were suspected smugglers.
South African police stood guard at the Loraine No. 3 gold mine in the Orange Free State as workers and management negotiated to end a pay dispute that spawned rioting in which two African miners were killed and five injured. Smoke from a beer hall that burned during the night hung over the mine near Allanridge as 3,000 workers remained in their barracks awaiting the outcome of the talks. The rioting reportedly began when some workers were prevented from going underground for the night shift.”
The House Judiciary Committee completed its closed hearings on the Watergate cover-up, leaving the members divided and uncertain over whether the evidence implicated President Nixon in any impeachable misconduct. Several Democrats said that what one called “a prima-facie case” had been made against the President. But several Republicans agreed with a colleague who called the case “not overwhelming.”
President Nixon will nominate eight new members to the general advisory committee of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Harold Melvin Agnew, head of Los Alamos, N.M., Scientific Laboratory, will be the new chairman, replacing John J. McCloy. Among nominees will be John A. McCone, chairman of the board of Henry International Co. of Los Angeles.
Senator William Fulbright’s defeat in the Arkansas Democratic primary could produce a leadership shift in two of the Senate’s most important committees, Foreign Relations and Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. Senator John Sparkman is in line to succeed Mr. Fulbright as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, but if he does, Senator Sparkman would have to relinquish his chairmanship of the banking committee, which would go to Senator William Proxmire of Wisconsin.
The House of Representatives voted to let the Office of Economic Opportunity die on June 30, but to transfer most of the few remaining O.E.O. programs to a new Community Action Administration program.
The House Rules Committee voted to allow unlimited amendments to a bill continuing government controls on the domestic sugar industry. It will be the first time such amendments have been allowed in the 40-year history of sugar legislation. The action clears the way for open. debate next week. The bill extending the program for another five years sharply cuts federal payments to sugar producers, continues import quotas for 32 nations, broadens federal protection of sugar workers and lifts an excise tax on the refined product.
Great numbers of classified documents are destroyed annually before being either reviewed or declassified, James B. Rhoads, head of the National Archives, told the Senate. Most of the material, however, was boring and would never be sought by the public, he told a subcommittee on intergovernmental relations which is investigating government secrecy. Senator Edmund S. Muskie (D-Maine) said such a system “amounts to burying history.” But, said Rhoads, “the paper work produced in one year by the federal government would fill the archives entirely.” He estimated that only 2% or 3% of each year’s production of federal documents were “worthy of preservation.”
John W. Dean 3d has testified that former Attorney General John Mitchell gave him a “go ahead” to impose a condition on James R. Hoffa that would prevent him from seeking the Teamsters’ union presidency for 10 years in return for release from Federal prison. In a deposition, a copy which was made available here, the former White House counsel said that he had originally suggested adding the usual condition of executive clemency for Mr. Hoffa, which was signed by President Nixon two days before Christmas 1971. But, according to the Dean deposition, it was Mr. Mitchell who “told me to go ahead and prepare appropriate language” outlining the condition to inserted in the commutation Mr. Hoffa’s 13-year sentence for his conviction on Federal charges of jury tampering and mail fraud.
A federal grand jury is reportedly investigating allegations that employees of the Security National Bank, based in Hempstead, Long Island, were required to contribute to a secret political fund when they were promoted. Justice Department sources said records of the secret fund were destroyed when the investigation began earlier this year.
Nearly 1,000 midshipmen, ordered back to Annapolis early from pre-graduation week leave, took a second final examination in a navigation course in which cheating might have occurred. Naval Academy officials ordered the extra test after learning that some of the 965 middies had prior knowledge of the May 21 test and had written answers in reference books they were allowed to take into class. There was no immediate comment from academy officials but midshipmen said between 60 and 150 persons were being questioned in the investigation and other reports said at least eight students might be dismissed.
Two American Indian Movement leaders were foiled when they tried to make a citizen’s arrest of an FBI agent in a federal courtroom in St. Paul, Minnesota. Russell Means and Dennis Banks, on trial in connection with the armed occupation of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, last year, claimed that agent Gerald Bertinot Jr. had illegally monitored telephone calls coming out of Wounded Knee during the occupation and had perjured himself by saying he had not broken the law. U.S. District Judge Fred Nichol, however, refused to permit the arrest. Nichol has already ruled that while the monitoring was illegal, the agents were innocent of misconduct.
About 1,000 residents of New Britain, Connecticut, a Hartford suburb, returned to their homes after being evacuated three times since a gasoline leak began emitting explosive vapors Tuesday. Fire Capt. Gordon Alling said the source of the leak was narrowed down to two Exxon storage tanks at a service station. “Meanwhile,” he said, “we’re flushing the sewers continuously.” Residents had been asked to leave a two-square-mile area and power was shut off to minimize the danger of an explosion.
Lightning struck and killed four teenage girls, ranging in age from 14 to 15, in the St. Louis suburb of Manchester, Missouri, who were on their way home on the last day of classes at John F. Kennedy Catholic High School. Thunderstorms left five persons dead in the St. Louis area as police reported that four girls, whose bodies were found near the high school they attended, were killed when a bolt of lightning struck a clump of trees in which they were standing. A woman golfer also died when lightning struck a tree under which she was sheltering. Elsewhere, severe storms, high winds and hail swept the midlands from the Central Plains to Ohio and several persons were injured. Dense fog cut visibility to near zero along Chicago’s lakefront and caused traffic delays in Wisconsin.
The UEFA Cup, a knockout tournament for the winners of the cup-winning soccer football teams in Europe, was won by Feyenoord, the 1974 champion of the Netherlands’ KNVB Eredivisie, after the team had played to a 2-2 draw with Tottenham Hotspur (the 1973 English League Cup winner) in the first leg of the two-game final on May 21 in London. With the champion determined by the aggregate score of the two games, the winner of the second leg would win the UEFA Cup. Playing at home in Rotterdam, Feyenoord won, 2 to 0 on goals by Wim Rijsbergen and Peter Ressel, for an aggregate score of 4 to 2 overall.
The visiting Mets lose to the Reds, 3–2, when Tony Perez clubs a 10th inning homer off John Matlack.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 795.37 (-18.93, -2.32%).
Born:
Aaron McGruder, American writer, comic strip artist known for “The Boondocks”; in Chicago, Illinois.
Steve Cardenas, American martial artist and TV actor; in Hampton, Virginia.
History Diaries 