A government of national unity based on power sharing by the two major political groups, the Labor Party and the Likud bloc, was approved by Israel’s Parliament. Shimon Peres then took the oath as Israel’s eighth Prime Minister, succeeding Yitzhak Shamir. The Parliament voted the new Government into office after more than eight hours of debate. The vote was 89 to 18, with 1 abstention. As the debate Thursday proceeded into the night, the 12 other legislators left before the vote was taken. The vote came after seven weeks of political wrangling, culminating in three days of round-the-clock negotiations.
The new Government is based on a carefully balanced power-sharing agreement between the two major political sides. Under its terms, Mr. Peres will serve as Prime Minister for the first half of the 50-month term, and the Likud leader, Yitzhak Shamir, will serve as Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister. In the second 25 months, the two men will reverse roles. Mr. Peres immediately pledged to withdraw Israeli troops from Lebanon as soon as the northern border can be secured. He also called on King Hussein of Jordan to join in peace talks. “From this platform and at this special moment,” he said, “I call on King Hussein of Jordan to come to the negotiating table to reach true peace. Jordan will be able to bring its proposals and the new Government will discuss them seriously, on the assumption that Jordan will also be open to proposals that come from our side.” Mr. Peres also called for “immediate and vigorous action” to get control of Israel’s inflation-plagued economy.
Mr. Peres made no mention of West Bank settlement policy or the other politically sensitive issues that divide the nine different parties that make up the new Government. They range across the ideological spectrum from moderates who would be willing to make territorial concessions for peace to hard-line conservatives who would oppose any withdrawals. Despite its internal tensions, the new Government will command a 97-seat majority in the 120-seat Parliament. It also seems united on the need to impose economic austerity measures and to execute an orderly withdrawal from Lebanon. The concept of a rotating prime ministership is novel, and the Parliament will have to adopt special legislation to legalize it. Mr. Peres and Mr. Shamir head a 25-member Cabinet, the largest in Israeli history, that includes 12 Labor members and 12 Likud members. The 25th minister is Yosef Burg, the head of the pivotal National Religious Party.
A U.S. report accusing Moscow of arms treaty violations will not be released soon, according to Reagan Administration officials. One official said the delay was ordered by the White House at least until after Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko meets with President Reagan and Secretary of State George P. Shultz at the White House on September 28.
Friends of Andrei D. Sakharov confirmed today that the physicist’s wife, Yelena G. Bonner, had been sentenced to five years of internal exile on a charge of anti-Soviet slander. They said they assumed that she was appealing the sentence. The friends said reliable sources had told them that Miss Bonner’s trial was held last month in Gorky, the large Volga River city to which Dr. Sakharov was exiled in 1980 in an apparent effort to isolate him from Western contacts here. As a center of the Soviet military-industrial complex, Gorky is off limits to foreigners. Dr. Sakharov’s friends said they had no word on his health. They added that they did not think that the place of Miss Bonner’s exile would be identified by the authorities until the appeal.
The second game of the world chess championship match in Moscow between Soviet grandmasters Anatoly Karpov and Gary Kasparov ended in a draw on the 47th move. Chess experts said that Kasparov, the reigning world champion, had held a significant advantage when the pair adjourned on the 41st move Wednesday night.
Egypt announced that the multinational hunt for mines that damaged 18 ships this summer in the Red Sea and Gulf of Suez will end late this month. Not one mine has been found. U.S., British and Italian vessels involved in the search “will leave during the second half of September, but probably some French units may remain and continue the search,” said Defense Minister Abdel-Halim abu Ghazala. Egypt at first accused Iran and Libya of sowing the mines but later focused its suspicions on Libya alone.
Iraq reported another attack on shipping in the Persian Gulf today, apparently in a drive to tighten its blockade of Iran’s oil terminal at Kharg Island. A military spokesman in Baghdad said the Iraqi Navy today set afire a “middle sized” vessel heading from Iran’s Nowruz oil field near the head of the gulf and about 50 miles northwest of heavily defended Kharg Island. There was no immediate independent confirmation of the report, nor of Iraqi claims earlier today and on Wednesday that a vessel had been hit south of Kharg and that four ships in a convoy had been destroyed.
At least nine Indonesians were killed and 53 injured in clashes in Jakarta between troops and civilians, officials announced. A crowd of 1,500 people described by the Government as Muslim extremists rampaged through Jakarta’s port, burning down three shops and stoning a police station and a Protestant church. Jakarta police fired into mobs that rampaged through a slum in the Indonesian capital, setting fires to shops, buildings and vehicles in the worst rioting in a decade. The violence erupted when about 1,500 youths, many armed with long knives, crowbars and cans of gasoline, gathered at a local mosque in the sprawling shantytown of Priok to protest the arrest of a Muslim leader. The mob then swept through the slum, the ministry said. It was the worst rioting in Jakarta since 1973, when scores died in violence directed against Chinese and Japanese businesses.
More than 1,000 youths protesting against “Yankee imperialism” and shouting “Yankees are assassins!” trapped former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger inside the Argentine government palace in Buenos Aires until police managed to clear a path to his car. The incident prompted him to cancel a speech before a foreign affairs group. Kissinger, who met with President Raul Alfonsin at the palace, is on an unofficial visit aimed at improving Argentina’s relations with the United States and international lenders.
Mayon Volcano in the Philippines spewed volcanic ash and steam more than five miles into the air for the fifth day, showering six towns with debris and forcing the evacuation of more than 16,000 people from 35 villages. The Philippine News Agency reported that a farmer was killed by scalding steam. President Ferdinand E. Marcos ordered government agencies mobilized “to meet any contingency in the area,” which is on Luzon island about 200 miles southeast of Manila.
Pope John Paul II, touring eastern Canada, interrupted his schedule to meet sailors of the Polish schooner Gdania, docked at St. John’s, Newfoundland. “It was the dream of a lifetime,” said Woycek Wiersbecki, the Gdania’s skipper, who ignored a warning from Polish consular officials against seeking a meeting with John Paul. Wiersbecki gave the pontiff a sweatshirt from the Gdansk Yacht Club, and the Pope gave rosaries to Wiersbecki and his 14 crewmen.
An official of a missionary order said today that two Roman Catholic priests — a Briton and a Sudanese — had been kidnapped by anti-Government guerrillas in the southern Sudan, in addition to the abduction of an American priest that was reported earlier. Bishop Cornelio de Wit, Superior General of Mill Hill Missionaries in London, said the priests were kidnapped September 4 from their mission in Bentiu. He identified the priests as the Rev. Peter Curtin Major of Syracuse; the Rev. John Ashworth, a Briton, and the Rev. Zachariah Chatin of the Sudan.
The Soviet Union has signed a $102 million loan agreement with the new military Government of Guinea, gaining a share in the West African nation’s bauxite mines and ending a period of cool relations between the countries, Guinean officials said today. The official Conakry radio said the agreement, which was signed Tuesday, provided for refurbishing the Kindia mine, south of the capital. Guinea’s bauxite deposits are the largest in the world, but production is greater in Australia. The loan seemed to end a chill between the two countries that began in 1975, when President Ahmed Sekou Toure distanced his Government from Moscow. Mr. Sekou Toure died in March after 26 years in power.
Britain and Nigeria agreed today to work toward improving relations, which have been strained since the kidnapping two months ago of Umaru Dikko, an exiled Nigerian politician. Officials said that after a meeting between the Nigerian Foreign Minister, Ibrahim Gambari, and a special envoy of Britain, Roger du Boulay, Nigeria asked Britain to limit the damage done to relations by the Dikko affair. A spokesman for the British High Commission here described the talks as “comprehensive, frank and most cordial.” Relations between Nigeria and Britain worsened after Mr. Dikko, who was wanted by the Nigerian military Government on accusations of corruption, was found drugged in a crate about to be loaded aboard a Nigerian plane.
Six dissidents hunted by South African police took sanctuary in the British Consulate at Durban and refused to leave. British officials said they will not be forced out. The six, members of the United Democratic Front and the Natal Indian Congress, were sought by police as part of a clampdown on opponents of the government. Meantime, violence flared again in the black township of Soweto, where police fired tear gas and fatally wounded a demonstrator.
The problem of illicit drug production appears insoluble. For a century, the world’s drug traffickers have outwitted or evaded almost every drug-control strategy tried. In country after country, they bribe scores of public officials, turn drug-producing regions into autonomous, armed camps and lure so many citizens into the illicit drug trade that local and national economies become hopelessly reliant on the easy “narcodollars.”
An unarmed Minuteman III missile launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in Santa Barbara County made a successful 4,200-nautical-mile flight to a target in the Marshall Islands, an Air Force spokesman said. Three dummy nuclear warheads separated and struck the missile range on the Kwajalein Atoll in the western Pacific about 30 minutes after liftoff, Staff Sgt. Fred Bolinger said. “From everything we know right now, it was a successful launch,” he said. It was the 103rd operational test launch of a Minuteman missile, Bolinger said. The tests, directed by the Headquarters Strategic Air Command, check randomly selected Minuteman missiles from around the country to ensure they are reliable, Bolinger said.
Walter F. Mondale, his voice faintly tremulous, told an audience that included many hecklers in Tupelo, Mississippi, that politicians should keep their “nose out of religion.” The Democratic Presidential nominee defended his views in the face of hostile questions on abortion, religion, and homosexual rights.
New York Governor Cuomo, in a broad discussion of his views on religious belief and public morality, said that Roman Catholics should practice their religion by setting an example for other Americans, not by seeking to enact laws that impose their views on the rest of the country. Mr. Cuomo addressed an audience at the University of Notre Dame, where the department of theology had asked him to lecture on the role his Catholic faith played in governing.
President Reagan meets with Roy Acuff and then heads over to the Grand Ole Opry for Mr. Acuff’s 81st birthday celebration. President Reagan, on stage at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, paid homage to Roy Acuff at a celebration of the country singer’s 81st birthday. Mr. Reagan posed a choice between what he termed his “program of progress” and a Democratic version of America “wringing her hands,” divided by envy and determined to “knock opportunity.”
The Reagan-Bush TV commercials include a scene of a woman who looks at the camera with conviction and says of President Reagan, “I think he’s just doggone honest. If anybody has any question about where he’s headed, it’s their fault. Maybe they don’t have a television.”
A balanced budget would be mandatory under a proposed constitutional amendment approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee. The vote was 11 to 4. However, the proposed amendment, which President Reagan has made a campaign issue, is not likely to pass Congress.
Senate and House conferees agreed on legislation to assist states in treating and preventing child abuse and encouraging adoption of children with special needs. The legislation includes provisions requiring states to establish procedures to protect seriously handicapped infants from withholding of lifesaving medical treatment — the so-called Baby Doe cases. “This compromise protects civil rights of handicapped infants,” said Senator Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), a sponsor of the Baby Doe provision. The bill must get final approval from the full Senate and House.
The Senate Environment Committee voted to expand the “superfund” toxic waste cleanup program to $7.5 billion, clearing a major obstacle to enactment this year of legislation increasing the government’s response to the problem of hazardous wastes. It now goes to the Senate Finance Committee for consideration of the tax portions of the bill.
The Justice Department has reached an agreement with 87 defendants, including the General Motors Corporation, to pay more than $14 million in cleanup costs at a hazardous waste site in Michigan. The agreement calls for cleaning up a 40-acre tract operated by Berlin and Farro Liquid Incineration Inc. in Swartz Creek. The case, developed by the Environmental Protection Agency, the Justice Department and the State of Michigan, would settle a dispute with 83 companies, three towns and a school district. The defendants would pay for the removal and cleanup of the hazardous wastes on the surface of the site, and General Motors would pay more than $8 million in cleanup costs.
The NASA space shuttle orbiter Challenger’s mission STS-41-G launch vehicle moves to the launch pad at Cape Canaveral. The shuttle Challenger, balanced atop NASA’s stout crawler-transporter, yesterday inched its way to the launch pad where the rocket plane will be fine tuned for its sixth flight next month. Designed to zip around the world in just 90 minutes, Challenger needed about six hours to make the 3-mile trip from the rocket assembly building to its oceanside pad at the crawler’s snail-like pace. The ponderous journey began at 10:30 AM, EDT, an hour behind schedule because of last-minute snags.
Challenger officially is scheduled to blast off on its eight-day mission October 1 but officials with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration say the date probably will slip to October 4 because of frequent processing delays. At the pad, the launch schedule remains tight. “I’ve been told they don’t have any contingency days once they roll it out,” Robert Crippen, Challenger’s commander, said in a recent interview. “So if we ran into a problem (at the pad), it would probably mean a day for day slip.” Crippen’s six crewmates are Jon McBride, Sally Ride, Kathryn Sullivan, David Leestma, Marc Garneau, and Paul Scully-Power — the largest crew yet to make a shuttle flight. Ride was the first American woman in space and Sullivan will become the first to conduct a spacewalk by assisting Leestma in a demonstration of orbital refueling techniques. Garneau is the first Canadian to get a shuttle flight.
Negotiators for General Motors and the United Automobile Workers worked against a midnight deadline to reach agreement on a new contract to replace the 1982 pact in which the workers made concessions. Experts say a strike by the 350,000 union workers at the nation’s largest manufacturing company would indicate that both sides were unable to break with their contentious past.
Recovery teams in Shields, Kentucky today found the last of four bodies of coal miners killed when a slab of rock fell on them, but the workers had to run for safety when loose rock began falling around them. All reached the mine entrance safely after a second section of the shale roof in the Bon Trucking Company’s Burger No. 2 mine began crumbling, said David Jones, administrator of the state medical examiner program. Four men died in the mine Wednesday, Willard Stanley, the state Mines and Minerals Commissioner, said. They were Mike King, 19, Johnny E. Lipfird, 34, Danny R. Simpson, 27, and Bill Worthington, whose age was not given. Harvey L. Napier, president of the Bon Trucking Company, declined comment until the recovery work was done. The company operates four underground mines and one surface mine in Harlan County.
The government announced a valuable new tool in its war against illegal narcotics — an agreement that will make it tougher for traffickers to hide their profits in the Cayman Islands, part of the British West Indies. The agreement with the British government, implemented through Cayman Island legislation signed into law August 27, will help U.S. prosecutors track money that may have been laundered through island companies or deposited in banks there, the Justice Department said. Historically, traffickers have used the strict business secrecy laws in the Caymans and other Caribbean islands to hide proceeds of criminal activities.
Leaking radioactive water contaminated two workers at a nuclear power plant, and officials began lowering pressure inside the reactor so they could repair the spill. The workers were decontaminated by taking showers, said a spokesman at the Trojan nuclear facility, 25 miles northwest of Portland, Oregon. The spokesman said the leak was inside the reactor building and did not pose a hazard.
A man described as the godfather of Colorado drug trafficking was at large after a daring escape engineered by four armed men on a busy interstate highway. James Orlando Quintana, 46, was being returned from Colorado to the federal prison at Leavenworth, Kansas, where he was serving a 15-year prison term for conspiracy to distribute heroin. He had gone to Denver to testify at a hearing. Deputy Sam Lucero brought Quintana from Denver to Kansas City International Airport, where the deputy rented a car to take Quintana back to Leavenworth. Lucero, 35, and Quintana were not far from the airport when a car carrying four men armed with shotguns forced the rental car off Interstate 29, police said, and overpowered the deputy.
A Rhode Island judge and a state panel ordered a school board to give striking teachers a 7% pay raise they won last year and to resume classes by Monday. It was the central issue in their two-week-old walkout. Meanwhile, teachers ended walkouts in three Michigan districts and one in Chicago, but elsewhere strikes continued by more than 5,000 teachers in six states, affecting at least 92,000 students.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ended a nine-week boycott of a supermarket chain after the stores agreed to increase economic opportunities for blacks. The agreement with the chain, Food Lion Inc. was reached Saturday in Charlotte, North Carolina, where the company has its headquarters, Denton Watson, the N.A.A.C.P. director of public relations, said Wednesday. He said N.A.A.C.P. officials had gone to Charlotte Saturday to re-enforce the boycott, and Food Lion told them it wanted to negotiate. The number of black employees of the chain will be doubled; the amount of deposits in black banks and dealings with black insurance companies will be increased; the number of contracts with black concerns will be increased; and the number of philanthropic contributions by Food Lion to black institutions will increase.
The Burning Tree Club was punished by a county judge in Rockville, Maryland, for not admitting women. The judge, Irma S. Raker, declined to rule that the celebrated “club of the Presidents” must admit women, but held that because it does not do so, it must lose a $186,000-a-year real estate tax exemption.
Hurricane Diana raked the coast of North Carolina with 100-mile-an-hour winds that ripped the roofs from buildings and continued to spread torrential rain and high winds inland. But by late afternoon weather forecasters said the storm was slowly losing its power. Its winds fell to 50 miles an hour, and officials downgraded Diana to a tropical storm.
The New York Yankees beat the Toronto Blue Jays, 6–1. The Yankees won because of a basic tactical decision of their catcher and pitcher to make the plan unpredictable. Rick Cerone, behind the plate, altered the location of the pitches by changing the target. Because of that, the Yankees split the four-game series with the Blue Jays and are still in fourth, where they started the week, three-and-a-half games behind second-place Toronto. The Yankees struck in the fourth. Scott Bradley, making his first major league start, doubled and soon scored when Mike Pagliarulo pulled the ball over the first-base bag for another two-base hit. He, in turn, came in on a triple by Omar Moreno. That blow sent Toronto’s starter, Leal, from the game. Willie Randolph brought Moreno home with a fly out to center. There were no other great crescendos in the contest except for Don Mattingly’s 22nd home run with the bases empty in the fifth.
The California Angels downed the Cleveland Indians, 7–3. Fred Lynn hit a three-run homer in the seocnd and a solo shot in the seventh to pace the Angels. Jim Slaton went 8⅔ innings for the win, striking out seven and giving up seven hits. Don Aase got the final out for his 7th save.
Gary Ward hit a three-run homer, his 18th, and Bobby Jones had two RBIs to lead the Texas Rangers to a 9–7 win over the Mariners at Seattle. Frank Tanana (15–13) gave up seven hits, walked three and struck out four in seven innings for the victory.
At Shea, the Pittsburgh Pirates beat the New York Mets, 14–4, as Jim Morrison leads the attack with 6 RBIs on 4 hits. The cheering turned to booing in Shea Stadium yesterday as the Pittsburgh Pirates, struck out and shut out by Dwight Gooden the night before, rose up and devastated the Mets. Gone was the Gooden heat that struck out 16 batters Wednesday night. Gone was the crisp fielding that supported the rookie as he made baseball history. Gone was the sense of panting down the home stretch of the pennant race. The Pirates, a last-place team since April 25, sprang from their handcuffs and gave the Mets their worst beating of the season. They scored five runs off Walt Terrell in six innings and nine off Ed Lynch in the next two innings while Larry McWilliams was muzzling the Met batters. And Morrison, who struck out three times against Gooden, celebrated yesterday by driving in six runs with four hits.
The Philadelphia Phillies routed the St. Louis Cardinals, 10–2. Juan Samuel drove in four runs with a two-run homer and a single, and Mike Schmidt added his 31st homer and three RBIs, at Philadelphia as the Phillies prevented the Cardinals’ Joaquin Andujar (19–12) from becoming the first 20-game winner in the majors. Andujar lasted just four innings and was charged with the first six Phillies’ runs.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1228.25 (+27.94).
Born:
Darryl Tapp, NFL defensive end (Seattle Seahawks, Philadlephia Eagles, Washingotn Redskins, Detroit Lions, New Orleans Saints, Tampa Bay Buccaneers), in Portsmouth, Virginia.
Jon Corto, NFL defensive back (Buffalo Bills), in Orchard Park, New York.
Jesse English, MLB pitcher (Washington Nationals), in Oceanside, California.
Nabil Abou-Harb, Arab-American filmmaker, in Marietta, Georgia.
History Diaries 