The Western allies declared today that they welcomed the planned resumption of Soviet-American negotiations next month and would do their part “to bring about an improved East-West relationship and increased cooperation.” In a communique issued at the end of the two-day Foreign Ministers meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the allies called upon the Soviet bloc nations “to adopt a similarly positive approach toward genuine detente.” This annual December meeting was noticeably free of tensions and disagreements. There was no reported wrangling over the final communique and the concluding session this morning ended about two hours earlier than scheduled, reflecting the few contentious items on the agenda.
The U.S. cleared the way for Polish membership in the International Monetary Fund by lifting its objections to Polish membership in response to Warsaw’s release of political prisoners, a senior Reagan Administration official said. American opposition to Poland’s attempts to join the I.M.F. started after the Solidarity trade union movement was repressed. As a member of the organization, Poland could obtain credit more easily to pay its foreign debt, which amounts to about $35 billion.
Solidarity underground leader Zbigniew Janas ended three years of hiding from authorities Friday and said he will resume a normal life unless he is arrested. Janas, a former member of Solidarity’s national commission, met his lawyer at a downtown bus stop and took a bus to his Warsaw home. He acted one day after the third anniversary of the imposition of martial law, which suppressed the later-outlawed free trade union. “This is some kind of shock for me since I have come home for the first time after three years,” said Janas as he sat in his living room, his 7-year-old son in his arms. “If they do not put me in jail I will try to start living an ordinary life again.” Janas said, however, that he has not given up on Solidarity. “My basic duty is striving for the restoration of Solidarity as a trade union, but I still do not know by which methods now,” he said. “The cause of Solidarity still exists and I am not going to forget about it.”
A political trial in Yugoslavia is regarded as the most significant there in a decade. After 15 days of testimony in a Belgrade courtroom, the trial of six relatively unknown intellectuals who are accused of holding meetings with the purpose of “abolishing the existing government” of Yugoslavia is seen as part of an important and abrupt swing toward more repressive government policies. But despite the gravity of the charges the trial is entirely open and different from political trials in other Communist countries.
The refusal of a Federal judge in Manhattan to extradite a member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army convicted of the murder of a British soldier was greeted with fury here by several Conservative Members of Parliament. “This judge has given the seal of approval to murder, maiming and terrorism,” said Jill Knight, a Conservative M.P. for Edgbaston, a district of Birmingham. “He should understand that he has also given the green light to terrorists all over the world, who will know that so long as they use the excuse that their acts are political, the law will protect them.”
Joseph Patrick Thomas Doherty, who faces life in prison if extradited to Britain, had contended that he could not be returned here under the British- American extradition treaty because it contains an article prohibiting extradition if an offense can be considered “one of a political character.” Judge John E. Sprizzo of Federal District Court said the facts in Mr. Doherty’s case “present the assertion of the political offense exception in its most classic form.”
Meanwhile, a British soldier was jailed for life today for the murder of the road manager of the pop group Bananarama in Belfast. Pvt. Ian Thain was the first soldier to be found guilty of murder on duty in Northern Ireland. He was 18 years old at the time he shot Thomas Reilly, 23, during disturbances in August 1982.
Forty East Germans who have occupied the West German Embassy in Prague for several months began a hunger strike today to dramatize their demand to be allowed to emigrate to the West. In a petition printed today in the mass-circulation daily Bild, the refugees announced their action and accused West German officials of putting pressure on them to return to East Germany without guarantees that they would ultimately be allowed to resettle here. Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s Government expressed regret and said the Red Cross had been asked to send a doctor and two nurses to Prague to care for the protesters. A total of 69 East Germans were officially reported to be in the building tonight; some of them are reported to have been there for more than three months. The hunger strike did not include 14 children, other young people and the sick.
The United States has begun an investigation to piece together the details of the hijacking of a Kuwaiti airliner to Iran last week, Reagan Administration officials said today. A report in Kuwait today that the United States had sent a special combat unit to the Middle East to free those aboard the airliner was denied by a spokesman at the Pentagon. The Kuwaiti report was in the newspaper Al Qabas, which did not give any source for the article. The State Department refused to confirm or deny the Kuwaiti newspaper’s report, but department sources suggested that in situations such as this there is an advantage to the United States in a deliberately ambiguous response.
Tens of thousands of residents continued for the third day today to flee Bhopal, emptying entire neighborhoods before a Union Carbide chemical plant is restarted Sunday to neutralize its stock of poisonous gas. The Government helped evacuate hundreds of residents from the area around the plant where the gas leaked last week, killing at least 2,000 people. All educational institutions in the city have been closed until December 23, and 10 of them have been converted into camps to house refugees moved from the area around the Union Carbide Corporation plant. A railway official reported this evening that three special trains had left for the townships of Bina and Itarsi. Three more were scheduled to steam out of Bhopal later tonight for the same destinations.
Two top officials of Union Carbide India Ltd., arrested last week on charges of criminal negligence in the Bhopal gas leak, were granted bail today by a high court judge, the Press Trust of India reported. The two men are Keshub Mahindra, a leading Indian industrialist who is chairman of the company, and V. P. Gokhale, managing director.
President J. R. Jayewardene, trying to end Sri Lanka’s ethnic violence, introduced draft legislation today by which his Government would share some of its powers with districts and provinces. The proposal would amend the 1978 Constitution to allow the creation of district and provincial councils that the President said would have considerable autonomy in local areas. Most of Sri Lanka’s Tamils, who make up 17 percent of the population of more than 15 million, live in the north. Tamil militants have been fighting for a separate nation. The President presented the proposal to an “all-party conference” of groups that have been trying to negotiate a settlement to the conflict between the Tamils and the majority Sinhalese.
The Vietnamese Government put 21 men on trial today on charges of trying to overthrow the Communist regime through espionage, sabotage and guerrilla warfare. The trial, which is being held in public and covered on television, is expected to last four to five days. Some of the defendants have been identified as officers of the former South Vietnamese military. A 29-page indictment read by a judge said the defendants were backed by Chinese and Thai officials in their five- year effort. The indictment says the defendants had clandestine dealings with five Americans at the United States Embassy in Bangkok. In Washingotn, a State Department press officer called the Vietnamese allegation of United States involvement in a plot “a total fabrication.”
An agreement to return 2,746 Cubans to their homeland from the United States was announced. The Cubans are criminals and mental patients who came to the United States in the 1980 boatlift from the Cuban port of Mariel. White House officials said the agreement opened the way for the resumption of normal emigration from Cuba, which has, in effect, been suspended since 1980. Larry Speakes, the White House spokesman, emphasized that the agreement “does not signal any change in U.S. policy toward Cuba.”
The 20-year-old government of the northern Central American nation of Belize appeared headed for defeat early today at the hands of its conservative opposition. Prime Minister George Price, 65 years old, who led Belize to independence three years ago, was unseated in his own assembly district by a 25-year- old city councilman, Derek Aikman, according to unofficial returns.
Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, the director of a Nicaraguan opposition newspaper, said today that censorship was stifling the paper but that he had no intention of going into exile in protest. Interviewed at Miami’s airport as he prepared to board a flight to Costa Rica, Mr. Chamorro said that comments he made Thursday in Washington had been misinterpreted by journalists who reported that he was going into “voluntary exile” in Costa Rica.
The police in South-West Africa detained a freelance journalist today and said she would probably be charged under two laws, including the Official Secrets Act. The journalist may be held for 48 hours without being charged. The detention of Gwen Lister, a 31- year-old South African journalist, followed reports of a police order to intercept mail addressed to Miss Lister and sent by her. The police accuse her of aiding insurgents in the territory, also called Namibia, which is controlled by South Africa. The order, addressed to the Postmaster General in Windhoek, the capital of Namibia, was delivered to Miss Lister’s mailbox. It was not clear whether this was by mistake or design. Miss Lister, who is freelancing for the BBC’s Africa Service and a radio station in South Africa called Capital Radio, is a former political editor of The Windhoek Observer, an irreverent weekly newspaper that opposes South African control of Namibia.
A commitment to a $100 billion cut in the annual budget deficits by 1988 was announced by President Reagan. He said he was committed to spending reductions to bring about such a result by 1988. Responding to reporters, Mr. Reagan brushed off reports that his plans have been paralyzed by a dispute in his Administration over how much to cut the military budget to lower the deficits. Several of his top budget advisers said it appeared to them that the President would not accept their proposal to reduce projected military spending by $58 billion over three years. Without that, the President would need to add to his sweeping package of domestic spending reductions to reach his goal.
President Reagan and Vice President Bush participate in a ceremony to receive 1985 Presidential Inaugural license plates.
The President and First Lady meet with Rev. William “Billy” Graham in the Solarium.
A Congressional subcommittee pressed Union Carbide officials today for assurance that the chemical disaster that struck Bhopal, India, was unlikely here, but its members appeared to find little comfort. “The one thing I wish I could tell you is what happened over there,” said Warren M. Anderson, the company’s chairman. “At this point, we don’t know.” Some witnesses criticized the Environmental Protection Agency, which has not established emission standards for methyl isocyanate, the chemical involved in the Bhopal disaster. Jack W. McGraw, deputy assistant administrator for solid waste and emergency response, said there were no standards because the chemical “is never expected to be emitted into the air under normal circumstances.”
U.S. industrial production rose in November after a two-month slump, encouraging economists to strengthen their forecasts. The Federal Reserve Board reported that production at factories, mines and utilities rose four-tenths of 1 percent last month.
Former Bell telephone companies were granted permission by a federal court to enter various lines of business other than local telephone service. Judge Harold H. Greene of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia modified his 1982 order for the breakup of the Bell System and gave seven companies permission to pursue a wide range of telecommunications and computer sales ventures abroad and various domestic enterprises.
William J. Schroeder was able to talk and strength returned in his right arm and leg after his stroke Thursday night. Doctors for the artificial heart patient said he appeared to be recovering “brilliantly.” Although Mr. Schroeder’s speech is slurred, he talks “intelligibly, a little slowly, but certainly can carry on a conversation and tell you what he wants,” Dr. Allan. M. Lansing, chief medical spokesman for the Humana artificial heart team, said at a news conference. Mr. Schroeder, a 52-year-old retired Federal worker, also showed continuing improvement in the ability to move his right hand and leg during the day, Dr. Lansing said. The right side of Mr. Schroeder’s body became weak immediately after he suffered the stroke. This afternoon he could squeeze his doctors’s hands and use his fingers but there was a little weakness of the right side of Mr. Schroeder’s face, Dr. Lansing said. Mr. Schroeder’s vision was unaffected.
An artist’s right to display a poster critical of the Reagan Administration in Washington’s subway stations was upheld unanimously by a federal appeals panel. The panel said subway officials had violated the First Amendment by banning the poster while allowing other political advertising, but it left open the possibility that political advertising could be banned altogether from subway stations.
Nuns whose views on abortion differ from the Vatican’s were reportedly threatened with expulsion from their orders by the Vatican unless they publicly renounce their beliefs published in a newspaper advertisement in New York on October 7. The 24 nuns who face expulsion were among the 97 signers of a statement sponsored by Catholics for a Free Choice, asserting that Roman Catholics hold diverse views on abortion.
A Western sheriff’s pursuit of two Montanans accused of kidnapping an athlete and killing her would-be rescuer ended with the sheriff singlehandedly capturing the men. He had been on their trail for five months. Don Nichols, 53 years old, and his son Dan, 20, had been hiding in the mountains of southwestern Montana.
A six- member jury convicted a Georgia man Thursday of burning a United States flag while the Republican National Convention was in Dallas last summer and sentenced him to a year in jail and a $2,000 fine, the maximum punishment. The man, Gregory L. Johnson, an avowed Communist revolutionary from Atlanta, was found guilty of desecrating a venerated object, a misdemeanor. Mr. Anderson, 28 years old, testified that he did not burn the flag in front of Dallas City Hall on August 22, but said he supported the political protest. Mr. Johnson and his lawyer, Stan Weinberg, contended that the burning was protected by the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech. Mr. Weinberg said he would appeal. Mike Gillett, an assistant district attorney, said he would prosecute three other people charged in the incident.
A federal district judge refused today to issue an order limiting comment about the spy case against a former agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and two people charged as Soviet intelligence agents. But he warned defense attorneys to stop their criticism in the news media of the government’s investigation of the case. Judge David Kenyon said he would consider issuing the order sought by prosecutors later if defense lawyers kept trying the case “on the courthouse steps.” The prosecutors sought the order after defense lawyers’ attacks on the government’s case were published by the news media. The lawyers called the charges against Richard Miller, the first FBI agent indicted for espionage, a “joke” and “ridiculous.” United States Attorney Robert Bonner described the comments as “gratuitous press fodder.” Mr. Miller, 47 years old, was arrested in October and charged with conspiring to pass secret FBI documents to two Soviet emigres, Nikolay and Svetlana Ogorodnikov. In today’s hearing, defense attorneys said they needed to make statements to the news media outside the courtroom to protect their clients’ reputations.
Wyeth Laboratories said today that it would produce 8.4 million doses of whooping cough vaccine in 1985, a move that a Federal official said would significantly ease a projected shortage of the vaccine. Wyeth, which said in June that it had ceased production of the vaccine, said today that it had kept its manufacturing line open and has been selling the vaccine to another producer. Philip Horn of the Federal Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta said that even with the production from Wyeth, the vaccine against the potentially fatal respiratory illness would remain in short supply from now to February of 1985. But he said the supplies from Wyeth would meet most of the demand for vaccine in the rest of the year if they are up to Federal standards.
An Oklahoma gunman herded seven adults and an infant into the back room of a small bank today and opened fire, killing four and wounding three before he fled in a car, the authorities said. The Federal Bureau of Investigation said it was not immediately known how much money the gunman took from the the First Bank of Chattanooga and Geronimo in this southwestern Oklahoma town of 800 people. The gunman reportedly ordered the group into the back room, forced them to lie on the floor and then shot them. The infant was not hurt, but her parents were among the wounded. The authorities set up roadblocks in search of a man in his late 20’s. He reportedly had a mustache, shoulder-length hair, green eyes and a thin build. The Oklahoma Highway Patol issued a report for a blue Buick LeSabre.
The Attorney General of Nebraska was convicted in state court today of lying about his personal business dealings, a verdict that could lead to his impeachment and ouster from office. A jury found Attorney General Paul Douglas guilty of perjury, a felony charge, but acquitted him of obstructing Government operations, a misdemeanor. Mr. Douglas, 57 years old, who maintained he had done nothing wrong, was indicted by a grand jury in June after the failure of the Commonwealth Savings Company of Lincoln. He was convicted of lying about his business dealings with the company and one of its officers.
The trial of Mayor Roger Hedgecock was interrupted today for at least two and a half weeks while a state appeals court considers whether the Mayor was improperly charged. The Fourth District Court of Appeal, in an unusual move, will consider a defense motion that the felony perjury charges against Mr. Hedgecock be reduced to misdemeanors.
The gun used in the slaying of a radio talk show host in June was found in a search of an Idaho house used by a member of a group accused of plotting to overthrow the government, the police said today. Don Mulnix, the Denver chief of detectives, said the man, Gary Lee Yarbrough, 29 years old, of Sandpoint, Idaho, was being held in Boise, Idaho. The .45-caliber gun was found October 18. Mr. Yarbrough has not been charged, Mr. Mulnix said, adding that he was the first suspect identified since Alan Berg, 50 years old, was shot 12 times in his driveway on June 18. Mr. Berg, who was Jewish, was outspoken in his views against racism. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is reported to be seeking three or four others in Mr. Berg’s killing. They, like Mr. Yarbrough, are thought to be members of a neo-Nazi, white-supremacist group, the White American Bastion, which the FBI says the group planned to over throw the Government by 1999.
Atlanta’s five- year-old rapid rail transit network will open five new stations here Saturday, marking the first extension of the system into the city’s populous and affluent northern suburbs. Officials of the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority, commonly referred to here as Marta, say the $453 million extension of the north-south line will provide an important test of the system’s ability to lure the suburban commuters with whom its long- term success must ride. “The challenge we face now is to see if we can reach those people who have a choice, to get them out of their cars and onto the train,” said Kenneth M. Gregor, the general manager of the transit authority. Federal officials and transportation experts say the authority has designed one of the most efficient and cost-effective urban rail systems in the United States.
Prehistoric skulls with brains intact were found by archeologists in Florida, in the floor of a pond 15 miles west of the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral. The brains in the two skulls were said to have retained much of their original shape and extensive amounts of DNA.
Beards, which have been allowed in the U.S. Navy since the 1970’s, will be banned under an order to be issued by the Chief of Naval Operations, Navy Secretary John F. Lehman Jr. said today.
Larry Bird started a run of 17 unanswered points by making a 20-foot jump shot as the Boston Celtics broke out of a tie in the third period tonight, extending their unbeaten home record to 11 games this season, with a 117–106 victory over the Utah Jazz.
The National Football League, reacting to reports that the Philadelphia Eagles planned a move to Phoenix, filed a Federal suit today seeking to block it. Tonight, Mayor W. Wilson Goode said the odds of the team staying had swung in Philadelphia’s favor after a day of intense negotiations.
Sportscaster Howard Cosell retires from Monday Night Football.
NFL Friday Night Football:
Los Angeles Rams 16, San Francisco 49ers 19
Joe Montana completed eight straight passes, two of them for touchdowns, in an early hot streak which carried San Francisco to a 19–16 victory over the Los Angeles Rams tonight and made the 49ers the first team in National Football League history to win 15 regular season games. The Rams, who finished with a 10–6 record, could have clinched a National Conference wild-card playoff berth by winning. Now the Rams, along with the Giants, who play Saturday, will have to await the outcome of other weekend games to see if they will qualify. Those games are Washington-St. Louis on Sunday and Dallas-Miami on Monday. The Rams will make the playoffs, regardless of what the Giants do, if either the Cardinals or the Cowboys lose. The Giants, win or lose, can make the playoffs only if both the Cardinals and Cowboys lose. The 49ers, who ended a 15–1 season with a nine-game winning streak, had little offensive success after the first period, in which they built a 14–3 lead. But the San Francisco defense held Eric Dickerson, the Rams’ record-breaking running back, to 98 yards. Dickerson, who finished the season with an NFL-record 2,105 yards, sat out most of the last quarter. With the 49ers leading, 17–13, Barry Redden, playing in Dickerson’s place, powered for big running yardage in a late Rams’ drive which fizzled at the 49ers’ 24-yard line. Mike Lansford of the Rams kicked his third field goal of the night with 3:43 left in the game. The Rams got the ball back with 1:49 remaining but Jeff Kemp, their quarterback, was sacked by the 49ers’ Gary Johnson in the end zone for a safety with 1:06 left to end the scoring. Montana’s touchdown passes, making his season total a career-high 28, went 47 yards to Freddie Solomon, a wide receiver, and 1 yard to Earl Cooper, the tight end.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1175.91 (+7.07)
Born:
Jackson Rathbone, American actor (“Twilight” movies), in Singapore.
Chris Heisey, MLB outfielder and pinch hitter (Cincinnati Reds, Los Angeles Dodgers, Washington Nationals), in Mount Joy, Pennsylvania.
Jamie Silva, NFL defensive back (Indianapolis Colts), in East Providence, Rhode Island.
Died:
Vicente Aleixandre, 86, Spanish writer (“Ambito”, “Bird of Paper”, Nobel Prize, 1977).
History Diaries 