President Reagan met today with Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Robert C. McFarlane, the national security adviser, to discuss how to revive arms control talks with the Soviet Union. This was the first detailed discussion Mr. Reagan has had on foreign affairs since his re-election last Tuesday. Administration officials said the emphasis was on relations with the Soviet Union over the next four years and, in particular, on how to revive the suspended talks. Mr. Reagan said throughout the campaign and in his first news conference after his victory that he planned to give the highest priority to seeking arms reductions with the Soviet Union. Larry Speakes, the White House spokesman, said before the session that no decisions were expected from the meeting. Rather, he said, “it was an opportunity for them to brief him on the direction of their thinking, and at some time in the future he would give them directions.”
Chancellor Helmut Kohl is seeking an early meeting with President Reagan to urge the United States to improve East-West relations and revive discussions with the Soviet Union on medium-range nuclear weapons in Europe, a Government official said today. The early meeting would “enable Mr. Kohl to present the wishes of European governments,” the official said. Mr. Kohl has spoken of holding talks in Washington before the end of the month, but the official said there is no agreement on a date. Mr. Kohl, in a newspaper interview published here today, said Mr. Reagan had an “open ear” on arms proposals because he wanted to “go down in history with a contribution to peace.”
Poland’s Communist authorities called in organizers of Warsaw’s newly formed human rights committee and said they could face five years in prison if they persist in their activities, committee members reported. Rights committees were set up in Warsaw, Krakow and Wroclaw to monitor police activities after the killing last month of Father Jerzy Popiełuszko, a priest who supported the outlawed Solidarity trade union. Among those receiving summonses in Warsaw were a historian named Jan Jozef Lipski, a founder of the disbanded workers’ rights group KOR, and Janusz Onyszkiewicz, Solidarity’s former national spokesman. Committee members said they received the warning after being summoned by the prosecutor and municipal authorities. They were told the committee is illegal, the activists said.
Representatives of Western, Communist and Third World countries met in Versailles, France, in the most comprehensive attempt yet to coordinate efforts to protect the environment from hazards such as acid rain and toxic waste. About 500 industrialists, government officials and others attended the opening of the three-day World Industry Conference on Environment Management. In Madrid, meanwhile, the world’s largest conservation group, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, ended a 10-day conference with appeals for the protection of hundreds of threatened species of plants and animals.
The Spanish government has had indirect peace talks with the leader of the Basque separatist group ETA, and he is ready to negotiate an end to the violence in northern Spain, the Madrid newspaper El Pais said. The paper quoted a high government official as saying the contacts — through French officials — were established with Domingo Iturbe Abasolo of ETA (an acronym for Basque Homeland and Freedom).
Lebanon decided today to return to the troop withdrawal negotiations with Israel after the Israeli Army in southern Lebanon released three Shiite activists and reportedly promised to free a fourth soon. Lebanon sent its decision to Israel through the United Nations Middle East representative, Jean-Claude Aime. A Foreign Ministry spokesman in Jerusalem said later that Israel had agreed to resume the talks on security arrangements for northern Israel and withdrawal of the 12,000 Israeli troops from Lebanese territory occupied in 1982. A United Nations spokesman said Lebanese and Israeli officers would meet in the southern Lebanese town of Naqura on Thursday morning at the headquarters of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, known as Unifil.
An aide to Indira Gandhi has been arrested by officials investigating the assassination of India’s Prime Minister. Officials investigating the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi have arrested a member of her security team and interrogated several of her bodyguards in what the prosecutor today called “a criminal conspiracy.” Magistrate O. P. Gogne rejected an application for bail today from the arrested man, Jagtar Singh, a Sikh who was a member of the Prime Minister’s inner security ring. His arrest on October 31, the day Mrs. Gandhi was assassinated, had not been disclosed previously.
Maneka Gandhi, the estranged sister-in-law of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and a bitter opponent of his mother, Indira, announced today that she would run against Mr. Gandhi in the general election next month. Maneka Gandhi combined the announcement with a series of stinging remarks about Mr. Gandhi and his ruling Congress Party. The party, she said “has thrived on broken promises, corruption and a debasement of all political values.”
Vietnamese border guards killed 15 Chinese soldiers and captured two others after the group penetrated 800 yards inside Vietnam on Friday, Radio Hanoi said today in a broadcast monitored in Bangkok. China and Vietnam have fought sporadically along the border and have exchanged artillery fire since their brief war in 1979.
A visiting American civil rights group in Bangkok says that Vietnamese Government officials are widely involved in the arrest and torture of Cambodian citizens. The three-member group, representing the Lawyers Committee for International Human Rights of New York, interviewed former inmates of Cambodian prisons, former Cambodian Government officials now in exile, and international experts. The team, which conducted most of its interviews in rebel-held areas of Cambodia along the Thai border, was not allowed to visit the rest of Cambodia, which is under the control of the pro-Vietnamese Government installed in Phnom Penh in late 1978 and under virtual Vietnamese occupation. “In Cambodia, there simply does not exist the recognition of civil liberties or human rights on a basis recognized by the world community,” said Floyd Abrams, the constitutional expert and First Amendment lawyer, who is a member of the American team.
Hundreds of students stormed and occupied the offices of the ruling Democratic Justice Party overnight to press demands for full democracy in South Korea. Early today, policemen broke through a wall and arrested 264 students. On Wednesday night, demonstrators threw stones at the party building in the center of Seoul and smashed furniture, demanding an interview with the party chairman and calling for a free press, full labor rights, an end to interference by the Government in campus activities and the lifting of a ban that bars 99 people from politics until 1988. Hundreds of riot policemen ringed the party building after the students forced their way in and occupied the ninth floor. About a dozen students were arrested before the occupation began, the police said. Before breaking through the wall 13 hours into the occupation, the police fired tear gas in a bid to drive out the protesters.
Japanese officials today denied American reports that Japan had agreed to end all commercial whaling by 1988. With an emotion unusual for official statements, the director of Japan’s Fishery Agency, Hiroya Sano, categorized the attitude of the United States as “outrageous” and “unfair” at a news conference this morning. Agency officials said that Japan had agreed only to limit its hunting of sperm whales and to withdraw a protest against an International Whaling Commission ban on sperm whaling. Tatsuo Saito, deputy director of the Fishery Agency, said that Japan had not agreed to withdraw its objection to a separate commission decision imposing a worldwide five-year moratorium beginning in 1986 on all commercial whaling, as Malcolm Baldrige, the United States Secretary of Commerce, announced Tuesday in Washington. The commission’s rulings are not binding, and the filing of an objection enables Japan to violate the ban.
The Chinese Ministry of Public Security, declaring that “it is good to have some people executed,” said China’s use of capital punishment contributed to a 30% reduction in the crime rate during the past year. Under fire from international human rights groups, the ministry held its first news conference with foreign journalists since the beginning of a year-old anti-crime campaign, in which an estimated 5,000 Chinese have been executed. One Chinese official said recently that his country hopes to eventually limit the death sentence to murderers.
A key Philippine opposition leader and critic of President Ferdinand E. Marcos was fatally shot. The mayor of Zamboanga City, Philippines, a vocal and longtime opponent of President Ferdinand E. Marcos, was shot to death by an unknown gunman who then eluded scores of policemen searching for him. Cesar Climaco, 68, one of the Philippines’ most colorful opposition figures, had denounced Marcos’ policies in almost daily telegrams to the presidential palace and had not cut his hair since 1972 to protest Marcos’ imposition of martial law. A statement from Marcos described Climaco as a “leader of exceptional courage” and said the government “will spare no effort” to arrest those responsible. Climaco was the second prominent member of the Philippine opposition to be slain in the last month.
Several CIA officials objected to discipline over the agency’s production of a manual for Nicaraguan rebels, contending they were being made “scapegoats” to protect senior agency officials, according to Reagan Administration and Congressional informants. The informants said several of the six C.I.A. employees who were punished had refused to accept the discipline by balking at signing letters that were being placed in their personnel files. The sources said those objecting to the discipline maintained they had had no role in approving the original manual, which counsels the C.I.A.-backed rebels on “selective use of violence” to “neutralize” Sandinista officials. The term “neutralize” has been interpreted by many in the United States intelligence world and by Nicaraguan rebel leaders to mean assassinate.
A Salvadoran official sidestepped a proposal by rebel leaders to discuss a formal cease-fire in the five-year civil war. As an alternative, the Salvadoran Minister of the Presidency, Julio Adolfo Rey Prendes, said in a televised debate in Los Angeles that the Government would seek an “end of violence” in general. He specifically referred to stopping economic sabotage by rebel units. The comments by Mr. Rey Prendes appeared to indicate that the government’s strategy in future negotiations with the rebels would be to pursue specific agreements to reduce the level of violence in the war without making formal territorial or political concessions.
Bolivia was paralyzed by a general strike today, and the opposition urged the government to resign and call early elections. The Workers Federation, which staged a 48-hour general strike last week, called an indefinite stoppage last night, saying it would continue until President Hernan Siles Zuazo acted to improve food supplies, raise wages, control prices and cut unemployment. Most public and private sector activities, including the key mining industry, were at a standstill. Only a few stores opened and few buses ran in the capital. The union wants the government to alleviate hardship for workers faced with inflation of over 1,000 percent a year. As political parties opened a national discussion sponsored by the Roman Catholic Church to try to solve the crisis, the government rejected resignation calls from all major opposition groups.
Santiago Archbishop Juan Francisco Fresno called Chile’s state of siege “a grave reverse for understanding and peace” and charged that the government of General Augusto Pinochet has “sewn confusion” about the Roman Catholic Church. In a pastoral letter he ordered to be read in all churches Sunday, Fresno said that the crackdown on political opposition and the press has provoked “disquiet, fear and anguish.”
Zimbabwe’s main opposition leader, Joshua Nkomo, denied that his party was behind the recent killings of officials of the ruling party of Prime Minister Robert Mugabe. Nkomo told reporters that three senior members of his party have been arrested in a southern border town where a government official was killed. He said Mugabe is trying to discredit the opposition because it is the main obstacle to his plans for a one-party state.
With joyous ease and the sureness of experience, two space-walking astronauts captured a second wayward satellite today and hauled it into the cargo bay of the shuttle Discovery for the dramatic completion of the first salvage operation in space. “We have two satellites latched in the bay,” Captain Frederick H. Hauck of the Navy, the commander, radioed to Mission Control when the job was done, and a “super job” it was, Mission Control told the astronauts. The space shuttle Discovery, carrying the two salvaged satellites, was scheduled to end its eight-day mission with a landing Friday morning at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The two space walkers, Dr. Joseph P. Allen and Commander Dale A. Gardner of the Navy, could hardly believe how much easier it was, following modified procedures, to retrieve Westar 6 than it was to haul in Palapa B-2 on Monday.
A deficit of about $200 billion for the next fiscal year is now forecast by Reagan Administration budget officials if no actions are taken to cut spending or raise revenue, according to Administration officials. The new deficit projection would mean an increase of nearly $30 billion over the Administration’s projection of last summer. However, Administration officials indicated there was doubt whether even the new projection was high enough since it is based on assumptions that some officials fear are too optimistic.
President Reagan hosts a luncheon in honor of Richard E. Leakey, Director of the National Museums of Kenya and Board of Directors of the National Geographic Society.
President Reagan receives a brief report from the Task Force on Legal Equity for Women.
Baby Fae rallied again and gave signs she may be defeating her body’s attempt to reject her baboon heart, according to officials of the Loma Linda University Medical Center in California. She was reported to be holding her own. Her body began rejecting the new heart six days ago. And after her heart and kidneys began to fail Monday night, doctors gave her stronger anti-rejection drugs. They also connected her to a mechanical respirator to help cut her need for energy and calories. At a news conference today, Dr. David B. Hinshaw, a surgeon on the Loma Linda University faculty, said immunological tests, which showed abnormal results in the rejection episode, were giving about the same results as before the rejection crisis began.
[Ed: Unfortunately, the optimism is unwarranted. Her kidneys are shutting down and putting stress on her heart. The end is coming with shocking suddenness.]
A Croation Cabinet minister under the Nazis was arrested at his home near Los Angeles on a new extradition request by Yugoslavia, Federal officials announced. A spokesman for the Yugoslav Government said the former minister, 84-year-old Andrija Artukovic, was wanted to stand trial in Yugoslavia for the wartime persecution and murder of more than 200,000 people.
Key Federal civil rights protections should not be reduced in the name of judicial economy and federalism, according to Associate Justice Harry A. Blackmun of the Supreme Court. Speaking at New York University Law School, Justice Blackmun said that although state governments and courts had grown more sensitive to civil liberties in recent years, the Federal courts still had a crucial role in overseeing their actions.
An arrest warrant for physical abuse of children has been issued for the leader of a religious commune where children were dangled from a ceiling by ropes and kept bound in sleeping bags for days at a time, authorities announced in Dallas, Oregon. Being sought was Pastor Ariel Sherman, who was described as a “Jim Jones-control-like leader who is not questioned by his followers on what he does or why he does it.” The reference, by Polk County Deputy District Attorney Dale Anderson, was to the People’s Temple cult leader who led 900 of his followers in a 1978 mass murder-suicide ritual in Guyana. Sherman disappeared Saturday.
A former CIA official who testified that Communist militia forces were not militarily important in the Vietnam War seemed to express a different view a year ago in a deposition brought out in federal court in New York. George A. Carver, the agency’s top specialist on Vietnamese affairs from 1966 to 1973, was on the witness stand for a fourth day in the $120-million libel suit filed against CBS by retired General William C. Westmoreland, former commander of U.S. forces in Southeast Asia. Westmoreland, 70, claims he was defamed by the 1982 broadcast “The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception,” which accused his command of systematically understating enemy strength in the months before the Communists’ 1968 Tet Offensive. The intent, CBS said, was to convince officials in Washington and the American public that the war was being won.
Florida Governor Bob Graham granted a 30-day reprieve from jail today to Rosemary Furman, a secretary who has been denounced by the Florida Bar Association as practicing law without a license. Mrs. Furman had been scheduled to report to jail for a 30-day term by noon Thursday. Her attorneys had asked for a 60-day reprieve, the maximum, to prepare a request for a full pardon. Mr. Graham said Tuesday he did not believe Mrs. Furman should be jailed. The Florida Supreme Court said Mrs. Furman ignored its order not to give legal advice to the mostly poor clients who bought legal forms at her Northside Secretarial Service.
Nearly 200 cases alleging injury from the Dalkon Shield intrauterine device have been settled out of court for about $38 million, officials said in Minneapolis. The agreement was reached between 198 plaintiffs and the A.H Robins Co., of Richmond, Virginia, maker of the contraceptive. Almost 10,000 claims alleging injuries and death from the device have been filed. Robins and insurance carriers have paid $244.4 million in settlements and verdicts on almost 6,300 claims.
Although top Administration officials refuse to discuss details of the 1986 budget process, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Samuel R. Pierce Jr., said he wants to add 45,500 families to those receiving federal help paying their rent. Departing from Administration policy of keeping budget details secret until the President approves them, Pierce added that he would like to avoid cutting grant programs designed to attract private money to urban development.
Smokers struggling to kick their habits in today’s eighth annual Great American Smokeout will have a cheering section that will include Margaret M. Heckler, Secretary of Health and Human Services, who asked non-smokers to lend moral support to smokers trying to quit. The American Cancer Society sponsors the event, asking smokers to quit for just one day. Mayor Thomas Whalen 3rd of Albany agreed to help his secretary, Roberta Miller, quit. He signed a pledge to “provide fruit and peanuts as need be.” Miss Miller said she expected a hard day since she lighted up whenever the phone rang. “I can’t hear without a cigarette,” she said.
The Defense Department today selected Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh as the site for a $103 million Software Engineering Institute. Senators John Heinz and Arlen Specter, both Pennsylvania Republicans, announced the decision. The Government institute, to be housed in a new building, is expected to employ 250 scientists, technicians and support staff in five years.
A federal judge today rejected a request by a group of residents to block construction of a 2.4-mile parkway that would cut through their neighborhood on its way to Jimmy Carter’s planned Presidential library. Judge William C. O’Kelley ruled in favor of a group of state and Federal defendants and refused the residents’ request to halt work on the parkway, which former President Carter has said is “inseparable” from construction of his Presidential library east of downtown Atlanta. A coalition of neighborhood and historical groups had filed suits saying the environmental review for the $20 million road was invalid and the agencies failed to consider alternatives. But Judge O’Kelley said: “The defendants acted reasonably and in good faith objectivity, even though at times certain conduct may have been less than praiseworthy.”
The national Centers for Disease Control said today that dioxin contamination at a site where 32,000 Boy Scouts camped in 1981 was unlikely to have caused harmful effects and those who were exposed need not seek medical attention. Worried parents have flooded the Scouts’ national headquarters with calls following reports that the toxic chemical had been discovered at Fort A. P. Hill, where the scouts held their national jamboree. The Centers for Disease Control, however, said preliminary findings indicated that the chance for harmful exposure was “exceedingly remote.”
Federal aid for Western irrigation projects is drying up. Officials and politicians told a 17-state conference that water users will have to put up some of their own money for projects from now on and farmers and ranchers must unite with cities, environmentalists and Indians if they want even small Federal water projects in the West.
Canadian amateur astronomer David H. Levy co-discovers his first comet, Comet Levy-Rudenko. Levy went on to discover 23 comets, either independently or with Gene and Carolyn Shoemaker. He co-discovered Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 in 1993, which collided with the planet Jupiter in 1994.
Amedeo Modigliani’s “La Reveuse” (The Dreamer), an oil canvas of a reclining nude, sold for a record $4.6 million in New York, the highest price ever paid for a work of art by the Italian artist, according to Sotheby Parke Bernet. Painted in 1917-18, “La Reveuse” offers the only horizontal image in Modigliani’s work and is one of only several paintings of a reclining nude by the artist in private hands, according to the description in the Sotheby’s auction catalogue. It shows a nude woman, her body painted in warm hues of orange, lying on a white pillow against a dark burgundy background.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1206.93 (+0.33)
Born:
Zackary Bowman, NFL cornerback (Chicago Bears, New York Giants, Miami Dolphins), in Anchorage, Alaska.
Derrick Jones, NFL defensive end (Atlanta Falcons), in Los Angeles, California.
Marija Šerifović, Serbian pop singer (“Molitxa”), in Kragujevac, Serbian SFR, Yugoslavia.
Died:
Cesar Climaco, 68, Filipino politician (mayor of Zamboanga City), assassinated, probably by the Philippine military.
History Diaries 