The U.N. General Assembly has marked Human Rights Day with the unanimous adoption of a treaty outlawing torture. But a U.S. delegate, Richard Schifter, while saying the United States welcomes the treaty, added that this country “sincerely regrets that it limits the implementation provision of the convention,” which provides that investigations can be made only when the accused country has accepted the competence of an investigating committee. General Assembly President Paul Lusaka, on the other hand, said adoption of the treaty was “a major step toward creating a more humane world.”
The Polish Government indicted four security officers today in the kidnapping and killing of a pro-Solidarity priest. It also criticized a student sit-in protesting removal of crucifixes from schools. The government spokesman, Jerzy Urban, said at a news conference that homicide indictments for Captain Grzegorz Piotrowski, Lieutenant Leszek Pekala and Lieutenant Waldemar Chmielewski were sent to court today. Mr. Urban added that a fourth officer, Colonel Adam Pietruszka, was charged with aiding and abetting the three others in the kidnapping and murder of the pro-Solidarity priest, the Rev. Jerzy Popiełuszko, in October. The four security officers could face the death penalty if convicted, Mr. Urban said. The trial of the four security police officers will be held in the northern town of Torun and could start this month, Mr. Urban said. Colonel Pietruszka is the highest-ranking official implicated in the priest’s killing.
Thousands of police armed with hundreds of warrants swooped down on Mafia suspects in northern Italy and Sicily and made at least 110 arrests in a major crackdown on organized crime. Earlier roundups were staged after evidence was supplied by former Palermo Mafia boss Tommaso Buscetta. Authorities declined to say whether the new arrests were linked with information from Buscetta, whose brother-in-law was slain last weekend as an apparent warning to potential informers.
Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou says Greece no longer follows NATO policies as a matter of course because that means “continual subservience.” He said at a meeting of peace groups on Monday that Greece had transformed its foreign policy during his three years in power. “Greece has been liberated from the policy of one-sided adherence to one specific bloc because for a small country this means continual subservience,” he said. Hundreds of delegates from 28 countries, including the official peace movements from the Soviet bloc, are attending the meeting. It was arranged by a Greek group known as Movement for National Independence, World Peace and Disarmament, which is backed by the governing Panhellenic Socialist Movement.
Albanians who practice their religion or who criticize the government are serving long sentences in labor camps, Amnesty International said today. Suspects are routinely beaten to force confessions and are denied the right to legal counsel, the rights group said in a report titled “Albania: Political Imprisonment and the Law.” “Trials have generally been concluded within a day and Amnesty International knows of no political trials in which the defendant was acquitted,” it said. The report said official information and evidence from former camp inmates suggested that there were thousands of political prisoners, many of them charged with religious activity, punishable by a minimum of 10 years’ imprisonment to death. Religious institutions in Albania were outlawed in 1967.
Ships and aircraft of the United States and Israeli navies began a joint antisubmarine warfare exercise in the Eastern Mediterranean today, the Defense Department said. Pentagon officials said that except for a medical evacuation drill last summer, it was the first time the two countries had practiced military maneuvers since President Reagan’s agreement a year ago to increase military cooperation between the two countries. Michael I. Burch, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, said the maneuvers involved ships in the task force accompanying the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Eisenhower, which ended a port visit in Haifa Bay in Israel on Monday. Defense officials declined to specify what ships and aircraft were taking part in the maneuvers, but they described the exercise as small and brief. Mr. Burch said the exercise was to last “a few days.”
A minor party in Israel’s government announced that it is resigning from the coalition after a three-month dispute over a Cabinet post. Yitzhak Peretz, a minister without portfolio since the government was formed in September, said his Shas (Sephardic Torah Guardians) Party voted to pull out of the coalition after it failed to get the Interior and Religious Affairs Ministry. Despite the loss of the party’s four Knesset seats, the coalition will retain 98 of 120 seats.
The Soviet Union has agreed to help Syria build its first nuclear reactor, the official Syrian news agency said in Damascus. It reported that Kamel Baba, the Syrian electric power minister, made the announcement on his return from a visit to Moscow. Soviet experts have chosen three tentative sites for the nuclear plant, the news agency said, but it did not disclose the locations. On June 7, 1981, Israel bombed and destroyed a French-supplied nuclear reactor in Iraq.
The White House accused Iran of taking actions that encouraged the Arab terrorists who hijacked a Kuwaiti airliner last week and killed two American officials. The Reagan Administration also demanded that Iran either prosecute the hijackers or turn them over to another country for trial. Secretary of State George P. Shultz, meanwhile, urged “strong action” against terrorists such as those who directed the hijacking of the Kuwaiti jetliner. Continuing his public encouragement of the use of force against terrorists, Mr. Shultz said in an news conference on his way to Britain today that a tough response would “command broad support” if handled carefully.
Earlier, two American ex-hostages of the hijacked airliner arrived in Kuwait with other freed passengers and said they had seen no evidence of Iranian complicity in their six-day ordeal. But there were reports from Karachi that two Pakistani passengers said on arriving there that the Iranian authorities had supplied the hijackers with weapons, ropes, and handcuffs. Later in the day, the Americans left Kuwait in a United States Air Force plane for West Germany, where the bodies of the two slain Americans were taken today from Tehran.
The safety system in the plant in Bhopal, India, where poison gas leaked last week was not “up to American standards,” according to a Union Carbide inspector. The employee, C. S. Tyson, who inspected the Indian plant in 1982, said it was not clear to him whether it now met American standards after two years of improvements. But he also said that the Indian management and workers had not been asking enough “what if” questions to plan for emergencies.
Mother Teresa came to Bhopal today to comfort victims of the gas disaster, visiting them in hospitals and homes and kneeling in prayer at a special evening mass for those who died and others who are still suffering. The 1979 Nobel Peace Prize winner, who is revered as the Saint of Calcutta for her work among the destitute, homeless, lepers and orphans, drew large throngs wherever she went to assess the crippling effects of the gas leak from the Union Carbide plant here. “It is terrible suffering, nothing like this has happened before,” she said after coming out of a home in Phuta Makbura where three people died. The neighborhood is near the plant. Several thousand Bhopal residents have perished in the world’s worst disaster involving a chemical plant.
Japan officially accepted an agreement with the United States to end the hunting of sperm whales in 1988, a Foreign Ministry official announced. The decision will allow Japan to catch 400 sperm whales in the north Pacific in both the 1984 and 1985 whaling seasons in spite of a U.S. law providing for a 50% cut in fishing privileges in American waters for nations that do not abide by decisions of the International Whaling Commission, the official said.
Jean-Marie Tjibaou, leader of the New Caledonia separatists, said today that, despite the slaying of 10 Melanesians last week, including two of his brothers, he was willing to negotiate with the French. “We are imbued with a new nationalism,” he said.”We are ready to discuss the restitution of political power. We have now organized ourselves to discuss and to win.” The separatists are demanding an independence formula under which voting rights would be granted only to Melanesians, who number 62,000 of the total population of 145,000. The French position has been that all New Caledonians should vote.
Puerto Rican fugitive William Morales was found guilty in Mexico City in the 1983 murder of a Mexican policeman and the wounding of another and was sentenced to 12½ years in prison, his attorney said. The policeman and two of Morales’ associates were killed in gun battles near the city of Puebla in May, 1983. Morales reportedly made bombs for the Armed Forces of National Liberation, which seeks Puerto Rico’s independence from the United States. But he was found innocent of illegal storage of explosives, his attorney said.
A statement issued in Mexico City today by the Salvadoran insurgents declared a cease-fire for the Christmas and New Year’s holidays. President Jose Napoleon Duarte said last week that he was prepared to suspend military operations at Christmas if the guerrillas agreed. Fighting in the civil war has traditionally subsided during the holiday season. The insurgent declaration was signed by the Revolutionary Democratic Front, the political wing, and the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, the military wing. It said the guerrillas would “suspend all offensive military action” from the beginning of December 24 to the end of December 26 and from the beginning of December 31 to the end of January 3. The declaration is an extension of an accord worked out in a 12-hour meeting in Ayagualo last month. That agreement, which the guerrillas said would remain in effect, would allow unhindered travel by civilians from December 22 to January 3.
In San Salvador, President Duarte is “analyzing and considering” the guerrilla announcement of a holiday cease-fire, his press secretary, Oscar Reyes, said today. Meanwhile, the rebels freed 43 soldiers captured two weeks ago in fighting at El Salto, 35 miles southeast of the San Salvador. The soldiers, who appeared to be in good condition, were turned over to International Red Cross and Roman Catholic Church officials.
Western countries aiding Ethiopia are largely to blame for the extent of the famine there, according to senior Ethiopian officials. Dawit Wolde Giorgis, the head of Ethiopia’s relief commission, asserted that the Ethiopian authorities had predicted the famine early this year and that the donor countries had shown generosity very late. “What makes us angry and deeply sad at the same time,” said Dawit Wolde Giorgis, head of Ethiopia’s Relief and Rehabilitation Commission, “is that what is happening in many parts of the country now could so easily have been prevented.” In Washington, Administration officials rejected Mr. Dawit’s assertions.
Representative Mickey Leland, Democrat of Texas and chairman of the House Subcommittee on Hunger, said the Ethiopian charges were “absolultely ridiculous.” In May, the agency received an appeal from the Ethiopian Government for about 200,000 tons of food aid, an agency spokesman said. In June, the United States earmarked approximately 30,000 tons of emergency food assistance, he said. The official said the Marxist Government’s first priority was the celebration of the 10th anniversary of the overthrow of Halie Selassie. But on September 30, after the event, the Ethiopian Government sent out requests for one million tons of additional food aid, the official said.
[Ed: Marxists and Starvation. What a surprise… Not.]
President François Mitterrand of France told African leaders today that his country had no obligation to force Libyan troops out of Chad because it had no mutual defense pact with its former colony. But Mr. Mitterrand, addressing a 37- nation summit meeting, said those African countries that had defense agreements with France could count on “total and immediate” French military intervention in case of foreign aggression. France and Libya announced last September that they had agreed to a simultaneous withdrawal of their forces from Chad. France completed its pullout last month, but 3,000 to 5,000 Libyan soldiers remain in northern Chad. French and African delegates said Mr. Mitterrand had told the African leaders that renewed French intervention in Chad would risk a war with Libya and that was out of the question because of economic and political considerations in France.
Mauretania military coup under Colonel Maawiya Ould Sid’ahmed Taya.
Uganda’s opposition Democratic Party charged that 1,500 people are being held without trial in appalling conditions under government detention orders. The party newspaper Munnansi said the orders have been signed since December, 1980, when President Milton Obote returned to power. It added that the detainees are being held in cramped conditions at Luzira prison near Kampala and are being denied food and medicine.
President Reagan meets with President Seyni Kountche of the Republic of Niger.
Bishop Desmond Tutu, the winner of the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize for his nonviolent campaign to end South Africa’s policy of apartheid, delivered a Nobel lecture today that called on those who would be peacemakers to work for justice throughout the world. The 53-year-old general secretary of the South African Council of Churches, who is also the Anglican Bishop of Johannesburg, devoted much of his 30- minute speech to a restrained catalogue of the ways that South Africa’s policy of racial separation breeds injustice and violence. “There is no peace because there is no justice,” he told the hundreds of Norwegians and visiting clergy crowded into the Aula, the National University auditorium in which the Nobel Peace lecture is traditionally delivered the day after the prize is presented.
Edwin Meese 3d’s planned departure from the White House for the Justice Department is prompting concern among some White House aides and conservatives, who foresee an apparent vacuum in the top management of the Reagan Administration’s domestic policies. White House aides said President Reagan planned to resubmit Mr. Meese’s name for nomination as Attorney General by mid-January. They add that the President had received assurances from the Senate leadership that Mr. Meese, the White House counselor and a close friend of the President’s, would appear before the Judiciary Committee for quick hearings sometime in late January, and said Mr. Meese would probably take over the Justice Department in February. Senate Judiciary Committee aides say they expect no substantive opposition to Mr. Meese, whose nomination to succeed William French Smith was delayed by an investigation involving Mr. Meese’s financial dealings with people who subsequently received Federal jobs.
The President and First Lady host a Christmas Party for Members of Congress.
The National Academy of Sciences, the nation’s most prestigious scientific body, gave its seal of approval to the controversial theory that a nuclear war could drastically alter Earth’s climate, plunging the Northern Hemisphere into a freezing darkness that has come to be called “nuclear winter.” A nuclear exchange involving only half the world’s arsenal, the academy said in a long-awaited report, could put enough dust and smoke into the atmosphere to blacken the sky for six to 20 weeks. If the war occurred in spring or summer, the loss of sunlight could cause temperatures throughout most of North America and Eurasia to fall by 18 to 55 degrees.
[Ed: More recent work suggests the effects of “nuclear winter” were heavily exaggerated. A cautionary tale about mixing politics and science. You end up with unwise politics and shoddy science.]
Newly elected Senate Majority Leader Robert J. Dole (R-Kansas) circulated a draft memorandum suggesting that Social Security’s cost-of-living increases be held down as part of any spending freeze, congressional sources disclosed. These sources, who asked not to be identified by name, also said that Dole expressed support in his memo for President Reagan’s overall plan to reduce deficits through spending cuts and use tax increases only as a “last resort.”
The price of a first-class stamp next year will be 22 cents, under a decision by the United States Postal Service board, according to Postal Service sources. One source said the increase from 20 cents would take effect by March.
Twin-engine trans-Atlantic service is planned by Trans World Airlines, starting next April. The carrier said that two daily flights, one to Paris and one to Frankfurt, would be made with Boeing 767 airliners that would be upgraded to ensure maximum safety. Under current rules, twin-engine airliners must fly within 60 minutes of a suitable airport.
The grounding of 180 helicopters in the aftermath of a crash of one taking off from an oil rig off the China coast was ordered by the Federal Aviation Administration. Five people were killed in the October 31 crash. The emergency order involves Sikorsky S-76A helicopters.
The E.P.A. was held in contempt of court by a federal district judge for failing to comply with a court-imposed deadline for issuing standards for emissions of airborne radioactive materials. The contempt order, which was issued by Judge William H. Orrick in San Francisco, also cited William D. Ruckelshaus, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.
CBS producer George Crile, testifying in New York in retired General William C. Westmoreland’s $120 million libel suit against the network, denied viewers were misled by an interview in the documentary that prompted the suit. Westmoreland, who commanded U.S. troops in Vietnam from 1964 to 1968, claims he was libeled by the 1982 broadcast, which accused him of conspiring to underestimate enemy strength in 1967 to make it appear U.S. forces were winning. Crile is a co-defendant in the suit.
Bionic heart patient William J. Schroeder took a five-minute ride in a wheelchair to view his hospital’s Christmas tree, and officials said there is a “remote” chance he will leave the hospital in Louisville, Kentucky, by Christmas. Schroeder and the desk-sized machine providing compressed air to power his artificial heart were wheeled from his private room by nurses to the hospital lobby so he could see the 5½-foot, artificial tree decorated with white doves. “He was grinning the whole time he was there,” said Donna Hazel, a hospital spokeswoman.
A man killed in a fire after a 35-hour standoff with agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Washington state has been tentatively identified as Robert J. Mathews, a white supremacist wanted in the shooting of a bureau agent and a $500,000 robbery, the authorities say. Tests indicated that he died from smoke inhalation when flares fired by police ignited the house he occupied on Whidbey Island in Puget Sound. He had been the object of a search since November 24 when he escaped from about 20 FBI agents who surrounded a motel in Portland, Oregon. An agent was wounded in an exchange of gunfire.
A federal appeals court in Philadelphia overturned a lower court ruling that would have restored Social Security disability benefits to more than 10,000 persons nationwide. The appeals court upheld the Reagan Administration’s decision to terminate benefits for some recipients when the Health and Human Services Department in April, responding to widespread problems in the Social Security disability program, suspended periodic review of disability determinations in some cases.
County commissioners in Odessa, Texas, have decided not to pay for a second liver transplant for a 5-year-old girl who is a ward of the county. Mary Evelyn Mosqueda, a patient at Dallas Children’s Medical Center was born with biliary atresia, which prevents her liver from secreting bile. She has outstanding medical bills of $180,000. County Attorney Gary Garrison said the county cannot afford to pay them and has no legal liability to do so. The child underwent a liver transplant in June at the University of Minnesota Hospitals but her body has rejected the liver.
A Seattle taxi driver believed killed in an automobile accident lay unaided near the wreckage for almost five hours today before a medical examiner’s investigator discovered he was alive. Martin Joseph Waskosky, 29, was listed in critical condition in a coma at Harborview Medical Center, suffering from head and leg injuries. Seattle Police Detective Eric Norberg said the taxi Mr. Waskosky was driving went off a steep embankment and struck a carport, the top of a parked car, and the deck of a house. Detective Norberg said rescue workers could not feel Mr. Waskosky’s pulse and believed he had died. When Harley Hudgens, a medical examiner’s investigator, and an assistant tried to move the body four hours later, Mr. Waskosky “kind of raised his arm to his head and mumbled, ‘Oh, God,’ ” said Mr. Hudgens, who had him taken to the hospital.
A bizarre fish tale in the big-money world of bass tournaments ended quietly in a federal court in Marshal, Texas. Four Louisiana men pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges for operating a ring that swindled $231,000 in prize money from seven Texas bass fishing contests. The prize-winning fish were smuggled live from Florida in a specially equipped tank in a pickup truck, according to federal authorities. The fish were concealed in fishing-boat bait wells during contests, where high-stakes prizes are becoming increasingly prevalent.
Five of the people charged in a federal investigation into illegal hunting for big game animals and the sale of parts of animals illegally killed have entered guilty pleas in Federal District Court in Billings, Montana. The five are among more than 30 people who were arrested in October. Tom Williams, a resident of Alaska, pleaded guilty Monday to one count of selling a bighorn sheep cape and head and was fined $1,000 and placed on probation for three years, during which time he may not fish or hunt for sport. Mr. Williams will be allowed to continue to earn his living as a trapper.
The right to die with dignity campaign is led by three little-known organizations operating in a suburban Los Angeles house and two crowded offices on West 57th Street in Manhattan.
No more whooping cough vaccine will be sold by Connaught Laboratories Inc., the company said, because of sharply increased rates for liability insurance. Experts said the move would worsen shortages of the vaccine, which is used to protect nearly every American infant against the potentially fatal disease.
The theory of “nuclear winter” has been assessed for the Federal Government by a committee of scientists in a 193-page report. The panel said that despite great uncertainties there was a “clear possibility” that a major nuclear war would generate enough smoke and dust to blot out the sun in the earth’s Northern Hemisphere, causing severe drops in temperature.
“Doug Henning & His World…” opens at Lunt-Fontanne NYC for 60 performances.
Outfielder Fred Lynn, a free agent, signs a 4-year, $6.8 million contract with the Orioles.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1178.33 (+6.07)
Born:
Josh Butler, MLB pitcher (Milwaukee Brewers), in Auburn, California.
Sandra Echeverría, Mexican actress and singer, in Mexico City.
Rose Kemp, English musician, in Carlisle, Cumbria, England, United Kingdom.
Died:
George Waggner, 90, American director and writer (“The Wolf Man”).
History Diaries 