Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger said today that the United States was not contemplating military action against the oil-producing countries in the Middle East, but rather was seeking a solution to rising oil prices through “amicable discussions.” He made these comments in answer to questions at a news conference. The questions were prompted by recent warnings by President Ford and Secretary of State Kissinger to the oil-producing countries. Neither had suggested that the United States might he driven to military intervention. But in some quarters their statements were interpreted as implicit threats that the United States was contemplating economic war if not military action.
In a speech Monday at an international energy conference in Detroit, President Ford warned that continued high oil prices set by the producing nations brought “dangers of confrontation” and could “threaten the breakdown of world order and safety.” A similar message was conveyed Monday by Mr. Kissinger to the United Nations General Assembly. Privately, a senior Administration official speculated earlier this week that some form of military action could not be ruled out. This contributed to newspaper speculation that military intervention was possible.
In his first public comment on the change in American leadership, Leonid I. Brezhnev today hailed President Ford’s pledge to pursue joint efforts to improve Soviet-American relations. The 67‐year‐old Soviet party chief, speaking at a Kremlin dinner in honor of the visiting Hungarian leader, Janos Kadar, said Moscow “highly acclaimed” the constructive turn in relations achieved in recent years. “Therefore,” he added, “we received with satisfaction the statement by President Ford about his personal intention and that of his Administration to continue the course for further development of relations between our countries in the same direction.”
Then, in an apparent allusion to an exchange of private messages, Mr. Brezhnev said, “on our part we told the President that we are for maintaining contacts for consolidation of good neighborly relations between our countries.” “We feel that at present there. are quite good prerequisites for continuing the new concrete acts of cooperation in various fields, in the interests of the peoples of both countries and of universal peace,” he said. Mr. Brezhnev’s conciliatory tone, coming nearly seven weeks after the changeover in the White House, took on added significance because the Soviet leader passed up an opportunity in a speech on September 7 to comment on the new Administration.
The British Labor Party suffered embarrassing setbacks to its bid for reelection when two supporters resigned and a third threatened to quit. Lord Brayley, the army minister, resigned because of an investigation into his business affairs; Lord St. Davids quit, saying the unions had too much influence on the party, and Shirley Williams, secretary for prices and consumer protection, said she would quit if Britain pulled out of the Common Market.
The Moscow City Soviet (council) gave the final written go-ahead for a group of abstract painters to hold an exhibition at the capital’s Izmailovo Park Sunday. The council’s cultural committee reportedly agreed to all conditions laid down by the artists, whose first exhibition was broken up by police manning bulldozers 11 days ago.
Soviet dissident Andrei D. Sakharov appealed to “the honest people of the world” to struggle for a revision of the recent prison sentence passed on historian and writer Mikhail Heifitz. A translation of the appeal, made in a telephone interview with a journalist in Rome, was issued by the Italian news agency ANSA. It quoted Sakharov as saying Heifitz had been sentenced in Leningrad to four years hard labor and two years’ exile partly for writing the preface to an underground edition of poems by exiled poet Josef Brodsky.
Turkish political and military leaders reacted today with dismay to the vote by the United States House of Representatives to cut off military aid to Turkey until substantial progress is made toward a military settlement in Cyprus.
In one of the strongest actions yet by any Western nation to reduce fuel bills, the French cabinet has set a $10.1 billion ceiling on spending for oil imports next year. It also has ordered cutbacks in industrial and home heating consumption.
Deutsche Krebshilfe (the German Cancer Aid Foundation), the leading European cancer treatment organization, was founded by Mildred Scheel, the wife of incumbent West German President Walter Scheel.
The international police organization, Interpol, said that smuggling of liquid hashish, a potent derivative of marijuana, is becoming a world menace and urged Interpol countries to intensify efforts against it. A U.S. spokesman told newsmen in Cannes, France, where the group’s general assembly met, that illicit production of marijuana is increasing at an alarming rate, particularly in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Morocco.
The high holidays in Israel this year have been dominated by memories of the war that erupted without warning a year ago on the Hebrew calendar. Reinforced security patrols are visible all over Jerusalem and members of the Israeli civil guard were given special permission to carry their weapons while attending Yom Kippur services in their synagogues.
Iraq has appointed a moderate Kurdish politician to head the new government of an autonomous Kurdistan, the Iraqi News Agency said. Bagdad thus went ahead with a plan to grant limited self-rule to the Kurdish areas in northern Iraq despite the continuing war conducted by the rebel Jurdish army of Mulla Mustafa Barzani. The agency said President Ahmed Hassan Bakr had asked Hashem Akrawi of the Kurdish Democratic Party to form a cabinet from the 80-member Kurdistan legislature appointed by the Iraqi government.
The government of Pakistan, led by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, dissolved the princely states of Hunza (led by the Mir Jamal) and Nagar (led by Mir Shaukat Ali Khan). The tiny Himalayan kingdom of Hunza in disputed Kashmir has lost its last vestige of independence and become part of Pakistan. Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto of Pakistan announced the merger during a tour of tribal areas along the PakistanChina border. India charged that Pakistan had no right to annex Hunza.
The U.S. Army reconnaissance drone “Tom Cat”, a Ryan Model 147 Lightning Bug vehicle that had been used for 67 missions since 1967, was shot down over Hanoi in North Vietnam while on its 68th flight.
Four persons were killed and five were wounded in a renewed rocket attack by insurgents on the outskirts of Phnom Penh last night, the military police reported today. The attack on a town just outside the capital, was the second in two days. The renewal of rocket attacks on the capital area was seen here as an effort to influence the Cambodian delegation at the current United Nations General Assembly session in New York.
The 104,000-ton Dutch tanker Metula, which leaked 60,000 tons of crude oil after being caught on rocks at the tip of South America Aug. 9, was freed by tugs, the Chile navy reported. It was towed to a harbor near Punta Arenas, Chile.
An Argentine army officer, Colonel Jorge Oscar Grassi, 49, was machine-gunned to death outside his home in Cordoba, 450 miles northwest of Buenos Aires. He was the 19th person to die in 10 days of bombings and shootings in Argentina. Police suspected the attackers belonged to the outlawed People’s Revolutionary Army. The group last week vowed to take “indiscriminate reprisals” against army officers to avenge recent alleged executions of guerrillas.
Two scientists have calculated that gases released by aerosol cans have already accumulated sufficiently in the upper air to begin depleting the ozone that protects the earth from lethal ultraviolet radiation. The calculations, by scientists at Harvard University, follow the recent discovery that these gases, used as aerosol propellants for hair sprays, insecticides and the like, while inert chemically, are highly efficient in promoting ozone breakdown. The finding has posed a new and ominous threat to stability of the ozone layer that lies primarily between 10 and 30 miles aloft. There has also been concern that the layer would be depleted by exhaust gases from a large fleet of supersonic transport planes or by extensive explosions of nuclear weapons. On September 5 Dr. Fred C. Ikle, director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, said that nitric oxides injected into the stratosphere by a nuclear war could wipe out the ozone layer entirely.
Defense Secretary James Schlesinger said that the United States was seeking a solution to rising oil prices through “amicable discussions” and was not contemplating military action against the oil-producing nations of the Middle East. However, he said that inflation, brought about in part by oil price increases, could upset the relative military balance between the Western alliance and the Soviet Union.
The higher cost of foreign oil continued to be the major factor in the worsening United States trade picture last month. The Commerce Department reports a record monthly deficit of more than $1.1 billion in its trade with foreign countries, placing most of the blame on oil imports.
President Ford is sympathetically considering proposing tax relief for lower-income workers to help them cope with inflation, according to White House officials. They emphasize that no decision has been reached yet, but insist that an administration call for tax legislation to help the poor is a distinct possibility.
The Senate Rules Committee concluded its two-and-a-half-day interrogation of Vice President-designate Nelson Rockefeller. The questioning by the nine-member panel ended with Mr. Rockefeller declining to commit himself to whether or not he would invoke the doctrine of executive privilege should he succeed to the presidency.
A dime-sized area of former President Richard Nixon’s right lung has been destroyed by a piece of blood clot that broke away from his phlebitis-damaged left leg, according to Mr. Nixon’s physician, Dr. John Lungren. The physician said the embolus, disclosed by the use of a radioisotope technique, called a lung scan, “is a potentially dangerous situation but it is not critical at this time.” He said Mr. Nixon reported experiencing no chest pains.
United States District Judge J. Robert Elliott, sighting “massive adverse pretrial publicity,” overturned the Mỹ Lai murder conviction of former Lieutenant William Calley and ordered him released “forthwith” from incarceration at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. Mr. Calley was the only man found guilty in the 1968 slayings of Vietnam civilians.
Pennsylvania Governor Milton J. Shapp proposed a $1 billion federal fuel stamp program to help low-income families pay their home heating bills. Shapp and earlier witnesses before the Senate Committee on Aging said many elderly Americans would have to choose between food and heat because of escalating home heating costs. Federal energy chief John C. Sawhill said his agency was studying the feasibility of an energy stamp to endorse any form of additional subsidy to the fixed incomes of the elderly.
Senator William Proxmire (D-Wisconsin) urged that broadcasters be given the same freedoms allowed to newspapers. In a Senate speech attacking the Federal Communications Commission’s fairness doctrine, Proxmire said papers were fair without governmental control “and I contend that radio and TV would be fair without governmental control.” The doctrine requires the broadcast media to make sure that all sides of a controversy are given air time. Proxmire, claiming the doctrine is contrary to the First Amendment, said he planned legislation to abolish the FCC rule.
Clint Murchison, a Texas realtor and financier, will build the first new hotel in lower Manhattan since the turn of the century. The planned $50 million, 20-story building is to be the final component of the World Trade Center, developed by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. The hotel is to have 800 rooms.
The Minnesota Ethics Commission has granted the state Socialist Workers Party partial exemption from the 1974 state campaign disclosure act. The decision came after nearly two months of public hearings during which party members testified that disclosing names of party contributors for elections this year would subject them to police spying and FBI harassment. The exemption releases the party from the need to report the name, address and employer of each person who contributes or makes loans of more than $150 to statewide candidates. The exemption, however, does not apply to associations, political parties, political committees or political funds.
The board of trustees of the Ford Foundation voted unanimously not to dissolve the institution, a decision foreshadowing a possible reduction of as much as 50% in its annual grants. Action on the grants, however. was postponed for at least three months. Because of the depressed security market and inflation, the foundation’s assets have dropped from $3 billion to $2 billion in the last year. The 50% reduction would apply to the $202 million annual budget, but cuts would not take effect for at least a year and current commitments would be honored.
The Air Force is seeking to sell on the commercial market 2.3 million gallons of Agent Orange, the chemical used to defoliate nearly 5 million acres of South Vietnam. A herbicide, 2,4,5-T, accounts for about 50% of the mixture and contains dioxin, which causes birth defects in laboratory animals even in concentrations “so low we cannot measure them,” according to testimony last month by Dr. Diane Courtney, chief of the toxic effects branch of the Environmental Protection Agency. Plans to market the Agent Orange were shelved last year after environmentalists complained. The amount of 2,4,5-T the Air Force lot contains is roughly equal to the amount manufactured in a year.
The Tennessee Valley Authority, which distributes power in Tennessee and part of six other Southern states, called for a voluntary 20% cutback in electricity use and warned it might have to ration power if the voluntary plan did not work. The authority is confronted with a power shortage this winter because of a short supply of coal at its steam plants. Power use can be reduced by consumers going to bed earlier, setting home heating thermostats at 68 degrees and cutting down on use of electrical appliances, TVA said. The power system is the largest in the country with a generating capacity of 24 million kilowatts. Seventy-five per cent of this power is generated at coal-fired steam facilities, 18% at hydro electric dams and 7% at one nuclear plant.
Use of drainage or sewage water to cool nuclear power plants proposed for the San Joaquin Valley was urged by speakers at a seminar in Fresno. Such usage would eliminate the need for nuclear plants to compete with agriculture for prime water supplies and would help eliminate brackish waste water, which threatens the valley’s vast farmland, they said. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s plan to build a nuclear power complex in Kern County helped spur 23 valley chambers of commerce to call the seminar to study the impact of inland power plants on agriculture.
The U.S. performs a nuclear test at the Nevada Test Site.
The first modern triathlon, an endurance multisport race, took place in the U.S. at Mission Bay in San Diego, California. The three-event race was organized by two members of the San Diego Track Club, Jack Johnstone and Don Shanahan. In order, 46 participants began by running 3 miles (4.8 km); bicycling twice around a course on Fiesta Island for 5 miles (8.0 km); and swimming from the island to the mainland.
American orthopedic surgeon Frank Jobe, a physician for the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team, performed the first ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction, now commonplace for athletes, with a tendon from one arm being used to reconstruct the elbow of the other arm. Jobe’s first patient was Dodgers pitcher Tommy John, who tore a ligament in his left elbow on July 17 in his 12th season in baseball. After staying out during the 1975 season to recover, John would continue as a pitcher for 14 additional seasons and would be the inspiration for other players to extend their careers by undergoing the “Tommy John surgery”. The pitcher quipped later, “When they operated I told them to put in a Koufax fastball. They did, but it was Mrs. Koufax’s.”
On the verge of doing what all the other American League East Division clubs had done after reaching first place, the Baltimore Orioles tonight decided instead to stay there awhile. For the second night in a row, they came from behind to beat the Detroit Tigers, this time scoring three times in the bottom of the ninth to win, 5–4. That leaves the Orioles clinging to a half-game lead with one week left in the season. A two-run single by Tommy Davis brought in the winning runs.
The New York Yankees stayed alive last night when Elliott Maddox’s single enabled them to scrounge out a 1–0 victory over the Boston Red Sox in 10 innings and cling to their position half a game behind the first-place Baltimore Orioles with only five games to play.
Bert Blyleven hurled a four-hitter and the Minnesota Twins shut out the Oakland A’s, 1–0. The A’s magic number remains four.
The California Angels routed the Kansas City Royals, 7–0. Andy Hassler (6–11) got the victory, with relief help from Orlando Pena..
The Cleveland Indians downed the Milwaukee Brewers, 8–3.
Overcoming a 5–0 deficit in the first inning and a 12–9 deficit in the 11th, the St. Louis Cardinals moved back into first place in the National League East tonight by beating the Pittsburgh Pirates, 13–12 in a 3-hour-and-41-minute struggle. Pittsburgh scored three times in the 11th to take a 12–9 lead, but St. Louis scored four times to win it. Pinch hitter Jim Dwyer’s sacrifice fly scored Larry Herndon with the winning run.
Darrell Evans and Dusty Baker slugged two-run homers tonight off Mike Marshall to highlight a five-run seventh inning as the Atlanta Braves rallied to defeat the Dodgers, 5-2, snapping a three-game Los Angeles winning streak. The loss also prevented the Dodgers from lowering their magic number to clinch the National League’s West Division title. Their lead over Cincinnati is four games. Both clubs have six games remaining and Los Angeles’ magic number for winning its first divisional championship is three.
Ken Griffey singled and tripled tonight to lead the Cincinnati Reds to a 4-1 victory over the Houston Astros. A rookie right-hander, Rawly Eastwick, came on in the eighth inning to halt an Astro uprising and preserve Clay Kirby’s 11th victory in 20 decisions.
The Philadelphia Phillies take two from the New York Mets, 6–2 and 6–3.
The Montreal Expos swept the Chicago Cubs, winning 7–1 and 3–2.
The San Diego Padres edged the San Francisco Giants, 3–2.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 649.95 (-4.15, -0.63%).
Born:
Lenoy Jones, NFL linebacker (Houston-Tennessee Oilers, Cleveland Browns), in Marlin, Texas.
Joel Prpic, Canadian NHL centre (Boston Bruins, Colorado Avalanche), in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada.
Bill Bowler, Canadian NHL centre (Columbus Blue Jackets), in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Rich Hunter, MLB pitcher (Philadelphia Phillies), in Pasadena, California.
Daniel Kessler, American musician (Interpol), born in London, England, United Kingdom.
Died:
Nicolai Poliakoff OBE, 73, Latvian-born British circus performer known worldwide for his performances as Coco the Clown.
John McCarten, 63, American film and Broadway theatre critic for The New Yorker, died of cancer.
William Sloane, 68, American publisher and writer (“Edge of Running Water”).
History Diaries 