Moscow offered again to hold talks with the United States on banning arms in space, but appeared to add a precondition, calling for a mutual moratorium on testing. A Government spokesman said that such talks, which the Soviet Union has proposed for September, would be “incompatible” with the continued testing of space weapons. The spokesman’s comments came at a news conference in Moscow after Tass, the official press agency, issued a new statement saying that Moscow’s offer for negotiations to ban all types of weapons in space remained open.
In Washington, the White House spokesman, Larry Speakes, called the Tass statement “good news,” saying: “The Soviets indicated in their statement that they are glad to meet. So as far as we’re concerned the meeting will take place.” Another White House official said the Administration did not consider the Soviet call for a moratorium an attempt to impose preconditions.
Two conservative Republican U.S. senators told President Reagan this week that his Administration’s compliance with the terms of an unratified treaty on nuclear weapons “could easily be interpreted as appeasement of the Soviet Union.” They urged him to repudiate the accord. Senator John P. East of North Carolina and Senator Steven D. Symms of Idaho expressed these and other opinions in a seven-page letter to the President dated July 2. The White House said the letter reached it only today and the President, who is traveling, has not seen it. The letter focused on the unratified 1979 treaty on strategic arms limitation, usually called SALT II, that President Carter put on hold after the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan that year. Mr. Reagan, then a Republican candidate, called the treaty “fatally flawed.” But his subordinates later said the United States would comply with the main terms of the accord as long as the Soviet Union did the same.
Rauf Denktash, the Turkish-Cypriot leader, said today that Greece was engaged in a secret military buildup on Cyprus and that he had asked the United Nations to stop such “craziness.” Mr. Denktash said he could confirm Turkish press reports that Greece was sending military personnel, arms and ammunition to the Greek-Cypriot southern part of the divided island.
The National Coal Board and leaders of Britain’s 180,000 miners held a second day of talks Thursday on ways to end the four-month strike that has paralyzed two-thirds of Britain’s coal industry. Meanwhile, striking miners, protesting plans to shut unprofitable pits and eliminate 20,000 jobs, blocked traffic in the Yorkshire market town of Selby and clashed outside the highly modernized pits there.
Nigeria detained a British airliner in Lagos today in the aftermath of a kidnapping in London in which a wealthy Nigerian exile was seized at gunpoint, drugged and sealed in a crate ready to be loaded on a plane. The exile, Umaru Dikko, a former Government official who has been described as the Nigerian Government’s “most wanted man,” was freed by the British antiterrorist police on Thursday night at Stansted Airport, 30 miles north of London. They broke open the crate just before the Nigerian Airways plane was due to take off. They found Mr. Dikko inside, drugged and unconscious, together with another man, who was conscious and equipped with drugs and needles.
The peaceful takeover of Beirut was completed by Lebanon’s Army, but the city’s port and airport did not reopen as scheduled. Resumption of activity at the port and airport is the third and final stage in the government’s security plan aimed at unifying the city and bringing it under control of the Government of Prime Minister Rashid Karami. The airport and port have been closed for five months. The first phase of the plan to do away with the effects of nine years of civil war was the removal from Beirut of the militia units’ heavy weapons and artillery. The second stage was the deployment of the army and clearing of barricades at crossing points between Muslim West Beirut and Christian East Beirut.
Hijackers freed 255 passengers and crew members from a commandeered Indian Airlines jet in Pakistan and then surrendered to Pakistani authorities. The hijackers were identified as Sikhs. The plane was hijacked to Lahore Thursday. The hijackers’ surrender came as a result of negotiations that ended a 17- hour ordeal for the plane’s passengers and crew, who remained aboard the A-300 Airbus in suffocating heat, with little food and water. During that time, passengers said, the hijackers threatened to blow up the plane if their demands on behalf of the Sikh radical cause were not met.
Indian officials said the release of the passengers was a “high point of cooperation and good will” between India and Pakistan, which have fought three wars and have a history of mutual suspicion and hostility. Indeed, in the weeks since the Indian Army raid in early June on the Golden Temple, the Sikh shrine in Amritsar, Indian officials have floated more than veiled hints that Pakistan was behind the terrorist campaign in Punjab that has resulted in the deaths of some 500 people in the last two years.
The three leaders of Cambodia’s resistance coalition ended three days of talks here today and said they had resolved to increase diplomatic and military offensives against Vietnamese occupation. A statement said the coalition president, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, the vice president, Khieu Samphan, and the prime minister, Son Sann, conducted their talks at the Prince’s Peking home. “The three resistance leaders decided to take new measures together to advance the just struggle of Kampuchea,” the statement said, using the Cambodians’ name for their country.
It gave no details of the new measures. An aide to Prince Sihanouk said only that the coalition would increase its diplomatic and military efforts against Hanoi, whose forces invaded Cambodia in December 1978 and installed the Heng Samrin regime in January 1979. The coalition is recognized by the United Nations as Cambodia’s government, although it holds only limited areas of the country, mainly along the Thai border.
The police threw tear-gas grenades today to disperse a crowd of 3,000 student demonstrators in front of the palace of President Ferdinand E. Marcos. It was the second protest on the road to the palace in eight days. They were the first anti-Government rallies there since the opposition leader Benigno S. Aquino Jr. was slain in August. The inquiry into his death ended today.
Mexico’s poor are bearing the brunt of the Government’s economic policies it hopes will bring the country out of its $87 billion debt. The minimum wage has increased 124 percent since December 1982 to $4.41 a day, but in the same period the official price index has risen 161 percent. The effect on the poor is believed to be worse than these official figures indicate.
Uganda’s Parliament has passed a law imposing the death penalty for the new offense of terrorism and life imprisonment for cattle rustling, the Uganda radio said today. Up to now, terrorism has not been on the statutes as a crime. The broadcast, monitored in Nairobi, Kenya, said the law allowed exiled Ugandans to be convicted of treason for actions outside the country. It also empowers the Interior Minister to declare an organization illegal and its members terrorists. Uganda has been subject to a growing insurrection, led by former government ministers who say President Milton Obote rigged the 1980 elections that brought him to power after Tanzanian soldiers overthrew the dictator Idi Amin. The country has also suffered widespread cattle rustling, a common problem in countries where wealth is often measured in livestock.
Nigeria detained a British airliner in Lagos after British antiterrorist police in London freed a kidnapped Nigerian exile who has been described as the Nigerian Government’s “most wanted man.” The exile, Umaru Dikko, a former Government official, was found drugged and unconscious in a crate ready to be loaded on a plane at Stansted Airport. Mr. Brittan protested bitterly over the detention in Lagos of the British plane, which belongs to British Caledonian Airways and was carrying 222 passengers and 17 crew members. Late this afternoon, according to reports reaching here from the West African capital, the passengers were released from custody and permitted to leave the airport. Some were able to book seats on other airlines. The crew and the plane remained under police guard.
The lowest unemployment rate in more than four years was reported by the Labor Department. The rate dropped four-tenths of a percentage point in June. It was the second large monthly decline in a row and was well distributed among all categories of workers.
Doubts about Social Security’s future financing were expressed by President Reagan in a television interview filmed Monday. He said he would never “pull the rug out” from under people now receiving the benefits, but he said “There is a possibility – well, probability – that many people, young people now paying in, will never be able to receive as much as they’re paying.” Mr. Reagan has said in the past that demographic changes were “leading inevitably towards another day of reckoning” for such benefit programs. White House officials said at that time that the President was not proposing changes in the system but suggesting it might need restructuring in the future. The politically touchy Social Security issue arose as the President completed a three-day campaign trip in which he attacked the Democratic leaders of Congress.
President Reagan addresses the General Assembly of the 1984 Texas State Bar Association Convention.
President Reagan places a phone call to Clarence M. Pendleton, Jr., Chairman of the Commission on Civil Rights.
The President and First Lady watch the movie “Operation Petticoat.”
The Rev. Jesse Jackson today requested a Justice Department investigation into South Carolina’s Democratic primary for the Senate. At the same time, the Democratic Presidential contender declined to say whether he would run as an independent candidate to challenge Senator Strom Thurmond, a conservative Republican, in South Carolina this fall. Mr. Jackson hinted at a possible candidacy at a news conference here as he expressed a desire to return some day, possibly soon, to live in his native state. Supporters here have been encouraging Mr. Jackson, who lives in Chicago, to consider the senatorial bid in the aftermath of the Democratic primary.
Senator Gary Hart, whose Presidential campaign appearances included few black organizations and only general references to civil rights concerns, today assured members of the nation’s largest civil rights organization that his new ideas did not mean an “abandonment” of their principles. “I believe that new solutions and new answers are required for new times, but I will not accept the abandonment of the principles and ideals to which this great organization is committed,” said Mr. Hart in an address at the annual convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The speech was the third of four the candidate has planned before the Democratic convention begins July 16. In the speeches, Mr. Hart, who is seeking to show how he would run against President Reagan, has avoided criticizing Walter F. Mondale, the presumed Democratic Presidential nominee.
The League of Women Voters has announced that it is considering eight cities as sites for Presidential debates this fall. The organization’s president, Dorothy Ridings, said Thursday that league officials had visited several Middle Western cities, including St. Louis; Kansas City, Missouri; Cincinnati, and Saginaw, Michigan. Mrs. Ridings said they planned to visit some cities in the East, South and West soon and that the choices would be announced later this summer.
The number of abortions reported nationwide is holding steady, with an actual decrease in the abortion rate, the Federal Centers for Disease Control said today. The centers said that in 1981, the last year for which data were available, there was virtually no increase in the number of abortions “and for the first time, the abortion rate and abortion ratio declined.” The centers began collecting information on legal abortions in 1969 and until 1981 there had been annual increases in the numbers of women undergoing the procedure. In 1981 there were 1,300,760 legal abortions reported, as against 1,297,606 the previous year, less than a 1 percent increase. “The national abortion ratio decreased slightly from 359 legal abortions per 1,000 live births in 1980 to 358 per 1,000 in 1981,” the agency said. “Since 1980, the national abortion rate decreased from 25 legal abortions for every 1,000 women aged 15-44 in 1980 to 24 per 1,000 in 1981.” Eleven deaths of women associated with abortion were reported for 1981.
Friends of the Earth has dismissed its chairman, David Brower, an environmental leader who founded the national organization 15 years ago. Officials said he had refused to carry out plans to dismiss staff members as the board of directors had ordered to deal with a $700,000 debt.
Negotiators for 6,300 nurses and 16 Minneapolis area hospitals reached agreement today, ending the largest strike by nurses in American history. The nurses walked out June 1, demanding protection from layoffs for senior nurses while hospitals pressed for more flexibility in scheduling. The strike affected nearly half the 33 hospitals in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. Nurses plan to vote Monday on the contract and a return-to-work agreement. Hospital officials said they planned to begin recalling employees Tuesday. Negotiators reached a tentative agreement Sunday but got bogged down in provisions for calling nurses back to work.
The Howard R. Hughes estate’s inheritance tax settlement was delayed when a special law failed to pass in the California Legislature because of objections by Gov. George Deukmejian. The legislation would have authorized the California State Controller to accept about 70 acres in the Los Angeles area as a part payment of the estate’s state inheritance tax.
The Rhode Island Supreme Court ruled today that the Providence City Charter made former Mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr. ineligible to run in a special election to fill the remainder of his term. In a 3-to-2 decision, the justices wrote that, according to the charter, “an official removed from office for conviction of a felony is not eligible for election to serve the unexpired portion of the term from which he or she was removed.” Mr. Cianci resigned in April after receiving a five-year suspended sentence. He had pleaded no contest to assaulting a man he believed was having an affair with his estranged wife. He had said he would meet with his attorneys and would “definitely appeal” the decision. Outside his Providence home following the court decision, Mr. Cianci said: “I always said I had nine lives; we’re at 8½ right now. I think my political future is at a crossroads. I’m disappointed but not disillusioned.”
Floods have devastated farms in a five-state area extending east and west from the Missouri River. A study group led by Richard W. Goldberg, Deputy Under Secretary of Agriculture, estimates that 53 million acres of farm land have been subjected to crop losses, and eight or nine million acres “will not recover.” Unofficial estimates of financial losses among farmers are more than $1 billion.
Jimmy Connors defeated Ivan Lendl at Wimbledon after losing the first set and advanced to the final Sunday against John McEnroe. Jimmy Connors wore out Ivan Lendl in a comeback victory today and earned the chance, however slim, to topple John McEnroe in Sunday’s final at Wimbledon. Neither is unfamiliar with the championship round here, Connors having made it five other times and McEnroe the last four years. Both have won Wimbledon twice. When Lendl, who at 24 is 7 years younger than Connors, tired in the third set, his more experienced and tenacious opponent exploited that weakness and roared to a 6–7, 6–3, 7–5, 6–1 victory.
New Zealand sisters Liz and Rose Signal become the first twins to play in the same cricket Test match, v England at Headingley.
With seven runs in the fourth inning, the Minnesota Twins effectively ended the competition tonight and beat the New York Yankees, 9–4. Kent Hrbek, the first baseman, hit a three-run homer into the upper deck in the fourth to give the Twins an 8–2 lead. With their victory, the Twins moved into a first-place tie in the Western Division with the White Sox, a fraction of a percentage point but no games ahead of the Angels. The Twins are 42–40, having won five of their last six games. They have won their last five with the Yankees.
The Astros’ Bill Doran singles five times in the second game of a doubleheader against the Montreal Expos, a 7–5 loss. Houston takes the opener, 8–2, as Joe Niekro wins his seventh straight in a complete-game performance.
Pascual Perez scattered six hits and struck out nine tonight, and Dale Murphy hit his 20th home run of the season to help the Atlanta Braves to a 5–0 triumph over the Philadelphia Phillies. Perez (9–3), who had given up 14 earned runs in his last 19⅔ innings, retired the first 10 batters.
Ron Darling confessed last night that he was “disappointed” that he had not been picked for the all-star team. Then he buried his emotions and the Cincinnati Reds in one of the dazzling performances of his rookie season with the Mets. The 23-year-old history student from Yale won his seventh consecutive start and his 10th game of the season when he pitched the Mets to a 1–0 victory over the Reds in the opening game of a doubleheader in Shea Stadium. And he got it when Hubie Brooks hit a home run down the right- field line in the sixth inning. To complete the evening, the Mets then rallied from a 5–1 deficit to beat the Reds, 6–5, and sweep their third doubleheader of the season while achieving their seventh victory in the last eight games.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1122.57 (-1.99).
Born:
Lauren Harris, British rock singer, in Essex, England, United Kingdom.
Reagan Maui’a, Samoan NFL fullback (Miami Dolphins, Cincinnati Bengals, Arizona Cardinals), in American Samoa.
Edmond Miles, NFL linebacker (Miami Dolphins, New York Giants), in Tallahassee, Florida.
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