A top Soviet leader said he hoped for a slowdown in the arms race and an improvement in East-West relations. Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who is widely regarded as second-in-command in Moscow, expressed his hopes in a statement issued on his arrival in London for a week’s visit with a delegation of Soviet legislators. “There are no types of armaments that the U.S.S.R. would not agree to see limited and eventually banned in agreement with other countries on a reciprocal basis,” Mr. Gorbachev said in a prepared statement on his arrival. Moscow will not “be the one to start a new round in the arms race,” he added. In Washington, the State Department had no comment on Mr. Gorbachev’s statement. Privately officials said there did not appear to be anything new in his remarks.
Mr. Gorbachev, who at 53 is the youngest member of the Soviet leadership, came to Britain with a delegation of legislators and will meet with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. He said he hoped “to have a frank exchange of opinion on ways to overcome the present dangerous development of the international situation and make things in the world healthier again.” “I would like to assure the British public,” he said, speaking through an interpreter, “that we have come with good will and good intentions.” Mr. Gorbachev is the highest Soviet official to visit since Prime Minister Aleksei N. Kosygin’s trip in 1967. The British are eager to have a closer look at Mr. Gorbachev and hope to show him, as one official said, “how a Western democracy with a free or mixed- market economy operates.”
Mr. Gorbachev, who has been a member of the Soviet leadership since 1978, is the second-ranking secretary of the Communist Party and has emerged as the man apparently next in line to succeed Konstantin U. Chernenko as the General Secretary. His visit is viewed by British officials as an opportunity to gauge the thinking and the attitude of the Soviet leadership before the Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko meets with Secretary of State George P. Shultz in new arms control talks on Jan. 7 and 8 in Geneva. President Reagan is said to be facing key decisions on how forthcoming the United States should be in the talks with the Soviet Union on a ban on space weapons development that the Russians have been demanding.
Polish television said tonight that the withdrawal of United States objections to Polish membership in the International Monetary Fund was “another proof of the fiasco of the American policy of sanctions.” The report on state-run television reflected the disdain with which the Government of General Wojciech Jaruzelski has sought to dismiss the consequences of the economic sanctions adopted by the United States after the proclamation of martial law on December 13, 1981. The Polish Government spokesman, Jerzy Urban, said he would have no official response to the action until after an expected formal announcement in Washington on Monday. A senior Administration official said Friday that the United States had decided to withdraw its bar to I.M.F. entry for Warsaw, one of the last major sanctions and probably the most painful of the measures the Reagan Administration took to punish Poland after the imposition of martial law. The United States lifted the ban after the freeing of political prisoners.
The United Nations Security Council extended the mandate of the U.N. Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus for six months today, acting against a backdrop of apparently successful negotiations between Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot leaders. But a brief and pointed skirmish between representatives of the two groups after the 15-to-0 vote by the Council indicated that a tentative agreement their leaders reached after three months of talks may be fragile. The new mandate for the 2,300-member force, which has sought for 20 years to keep the island’s Greek and Turkish communities from fighting, will now expire next June 15. The troops are along a 113-mile-long border that cuts Cyprus in half.
Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez, after a tough fight, won approval from his governing Socialist Party tonight to keep Spain in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Delegates to the party’s national convention voted several times, each time roughly by a 2-to-1 margin, against proposals for withdrawal from NATO. The votes cleared a crucial hurdle in attempts by the Government and NATO nations to keep Spain in the alliance and confirmed Mr. Gonzalez’s party leadership. The convention, approving a platform to guide the Government for the next two years, also backed the Government’s policy of maintaining a continued but reduced American military presence in Spain. The party’s left wing had proposed closing American bases.
The United States wants to impose itself militarily, economically and politically all over the world, Greek Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou said. The Socialist leader, a frequent critic of American policies, told officials of his party in Athens that the Reagan Administration seems to be preparing to test the limits of the “economic and national endurance” of some countries, which Papandreou did not name. “For every disobedient state, for every independent and sovereign policy, a confrontation is being prepared,” he said.
A man traveling with a false Moroccan passport, who was killed with a silencer-equipped pistol in a street ambush in Rome, has been identified as a Palestine Liberation Organization member, police sources and PLO officials said. The PLO’S Rome office promptly accused Israel’s secret services of the slaying of Ismail Darwish, 32, in an ambush near the Via Veneto. Darwish is the fifth PLO member to be assassinated in Rome.
Iraqi jet fighters raided a Greek-owned supertanker today in the Persian Gulf, setting the engine room afire and killing two crew members, marine salvage executives said. The tanker Ninemia was hit by a missile about 100 miles southeast of its destination, the Iranian oil terminal at Kharg Island, the executives said. Two of the 27 crew members were killed, a spokesman for the tanker managers, the Buenamar Shipping Company, said in a telephone interview. He said the survivors had been taken by Iranian Air Force helicopters to the port of Bushire. A military spokesman in Baghdad said Iraqi Air Force jet fighters had attacked “two naval targets” south of Kharg Island. But shipping and salvage sources said they knew only of the attack on the Ninemia.
The accident in Bhopal obscured the fact that pesticides have also brought better health to millions of people in India and other third world countries, international food and health officials in India point out. The gas leak at the Union Carbide plant was a rare occurrence, but the risk of such disasters and the more usual concern that pesticides often harm farmers or contaminate food and water supplies must be balanced against their value, the experts say. In the last two decades, they say, India has increased its grain output thanks partly to the application of pesticides. The green revolution, which has made India largely self-sufficient in food, was based on the development of high-yield strains of wheat and rice that required irrigation and fertilizers.
Broad questions have been raised for multinational corporations by the leak of lethal gas at the Union Carbide Corporation plant in Bhopal, India. The questions deal with ethical, legal, social and technical issues. Some of these issues, which had often been confined to unpublicized disputes, are suddenly being debated widely throughout the world. These issues, often confined to disputes among ecologists, politicians and corporate officials, are suddenly being debated throughout the world. Demands are being made for basic changes in the way hazardous substances are produced, stored, shipped, regulated and explained to the public. There is growing sentiment that some materials should not be produced in certain countries and that all multinational corporations should give greater emphasis to cultural differences that might increase the risks associated with products assumed to be safe.
Bangladesh’s President Hussain Mohammed Ershad, who has twice scheduled and then, under opposition pressure, postponed parliamentary elections over the last year, offered to hold the voting in April. In what was described as a peace overture to his foes, Ershad said in a broadcast that the voting will be held under a non-political government and that fundamental rights will be restored by Jan. 15. However, he opposed an opposition demand for an immediate end to martial law, saying this would create an administrative vacuum.
Vietnam announced the arrests of 119 “traitors and spies.” alleged conspirators in a plot to overthrow the Communist government. The announcement came during the trials of 21 others, some ex-officers of the former South Vietnamese military, on espionage and sabotage charges, the Vietnam radio said. That trial in Hồ Chí Minh City is the largest of its kind to be staged in public since the Communist victory in 1975.
The first U.S. congressional delegation to visit Cambodia since the Vietnamese invasion of late 1978 warned of a stronger Soviet presence in the war-devastated nation. Rep. G.V. Montgomery (D-Mississippi), who headed the visit to Southeast Asia, said the six members found Soviet personnel in “all different areas” of Cambodia. He described their trip as “very constructive” and, without giving details, said they carried a message on future U.S.-Cambodian relations.
North and South Korea have agreed to resume trade talks in Panmunjom and hold Red Cross talks in Seoul next month, a South Korean Government spokesman said today. The spokesman said that in a telephone message Friday, North Korea agreed to Seoul’s proposals for trade talks January 17 and Red Cross talks January 22 to 25. The economic talks were to have taken place December 5, but were postponed by the North over a firefight at Panmunjom last month in which three border guards from North Korea and one from the South were killed.
China’s modernization experiments that have followed the mandate to overhaul the country given to Deng Xiaoping six years ago by the Communist leadership have been boldly conceived, yet often cautiously carried out. China’s leader has succeeded so far because his policies respond to the aspirations of ordinary Chinese.
Surrounded by mementos of her husband’s career and assassination, Corazon Aquino, widow of the opposition leader Benigno S. Aquino Jr., has taken an active role in reconciling differences among opposition groups here. Her goal is to unite the opposition and prepare its leaders for a possible presidential election if Ferdinand E. Marcos leaves the presidency before the end of his term in 1987. “With all these rumors about President Marcos’s ill health, it is urgent that the opposition not be fragmented,” Mrs. Aquino said in an interview recently at her office in the Makati business district, a suburb of Manila.
A commission investigating government corruption in the Bahamas split on the issue of the culpability of Prime Minister Lynden O. Pindling, an opposition member of Parliament reported. Orville Turnquest said two commission members found no evidence of wrongdoing by Pindling but that the third questioned the truthfulness of his testimony. The 607-page report, to be publicly released this week, will be debated in the Atlantic islands’ Parliament. Pindling and others have been accused of accepting payoffs from drug traffickers.
Nicaragua said its forces killed 278 U.S.-backed rebels and wounded 96 in the first two weeks of December, while 72 civilians were killed by the guerrillas, known as contras. The Defense Ministry reported that most of the civilians it said were killed were volunteer coffee pickers. No figures were provided on Sandinista casualties in the clashes, most of which reportedly took place in coffee-growing Jinotega province, in Nueva Segovia near the Honduran border and in Rio San Juan near the border with Costa Rica.
A meeting between the Nicaraguan Government and representatives of Miskito Indians foundered over demands for political autonomy in the Indians’ Atlantic Coast homelands, a Sandinista official says. The official, Luis Carrion, who is the Deputy Interior Minister, said Friday that the talks in Bogota, Colombia, last week had been “almost friendly,” but that the Indians’ intransigence had blocked substantive progress. Brooklyn Rivera, leader of the Misurasata Indian organization, said in a telephone interview from San Jose, Costa Rica: “How can we be intransigent when they keep killing us, persecuting us and destroying our traditional villages? We want the dialogue because it is the right way to a peaceful solution, but we want a dignified solution.”
A United States Congressman who met with President Augusto Pinochet of Chile this week said today that the military ruler showed no interest in negotiating with the opposition, lifting the state of seige or relaxing press censorship. Representative William B. Richardson, Democrat of New Mexico, said he believed that General Pinochet would respond only to a direct appeal from President Reagan and that critical statements from the State Department had little impact on the 69-year-old Chilean leader’s actions.
Negotiations for the release of six hostages being held by Sudanese rebels are to resume here next week, Western diplomats say. The diplomats say the Ethiopian Government has not done enough to help free the hostages, who are believed to be in Ethiopia. Four of the hostages – two Frenchmen, a Briton and a Kenyan of British background – were kidnapped on Feb. 10 while working on the Jonglei Canal in southern Sudan as employees of the French corporation C.C.I. The other two hostages – a Swiss freelance journalist and a woman described as his friend – were taken prisoner while searching for the C.C.I. employees. All are being held by the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, a guerrilla movement seeking the separation of the largely Christian and animist south of the country from the Islamic north.
Arranged deaths for the incurably ill have developed in response to rapidly advancing medical technology that enables doctors to prolong body functions even when recovery is not possible. Such deaths are not rare, interviews with families and doctors have found. “They happen every single day,” a doctor said. One of these was the death of a New York area psychologist.
The President and First Lady host an Open House Christmas Reception for White House Military and U.S. Secret Service personnel.
William J. Schroeder’s stroke was very likely caused by a blood clot that formed in his artificial heart and then broke off to lodge in his brain, bringing on the stroke, his surgeon said. Dr. DeVries, who performed the artificial heart implant Nov. 25, described Mr. Schroeder as “frustrated” in adapting to the effects of the stroke, which temporarily paralyzed the right side of his body and hampered his ability to speak. But today Mr. Schroeder, a 52-year-old retired Federal worker, moved his right arm and leg well and spoke slowly but with slurred speech. His reflexes tested normally.
The federal government could be losing millions of dollars in mineral royalty payments because the program to collect and account for the money is inefficient and poorly managed, a House committee said. The report, ordered by Chairman Morris K. Udall of the House Interior Committee, outlines 19 problem areas in the program, which collected $11.5 billion in 1983. Udall (D-Arizona) said the study was compiled by a bipartisan task force of the committee’s staff, with help from the General Accounting Office and an Interior Department consultant. Udall praised Secretary of the Interior William P. Clark for his efforts to correct the longstanding problems.
Like clockwork, American protesters opposed to South Africa’s policy of racial separation gather at 3:30 PM each weekday to march in a circle near Pretoria’s embassy in Washington, D.C., and court arrest. The demonstrators, watched by police officers, television camera crews and drivers on fashionable Massachusetts Avenue, carry homemade placards and chant slogans such as: “No business in South Africa. We mean it.” About half an hour into the protest, Randall Robinson, founder of the Free South Africa Movement, holds an outdoor press conference to introduce the day’s “messengers.”
The Garrison Diverson water project, once one of the largest and most expensive single projects ever authorized by Congress, was sharply cut back in scope and cost here late last night by a special advisory panel appointed by the Reagan Administration. The Garrison Diversion is the last major unfinished unit of the huge Pick- Sloan Missouri Valley Project authorized by Congress as a flood control, river navigation, irrigation and electricity-generating complex along the upper Missouri River. The project’s roots lie in the drought and despair of the Great Depression, which devastated many Great Plains farms, driving families off their land. The panel’s proposed reduction of the project from the $1 billion, 250,000-acre plan authorized by Congress in 1944 to a $480 million, 113,000-acre project brought cheers from environmentalists, who lead the attack on the plan, and charges of a sellout and broken promises by backers.
Hasbro Bradley Inc., one of the nation’s largest toy companies, is accustomed to bringing happiness to people this time of year. But this December it has brought shock and anger to the West Side of Chicago by announcing that it would close a factory with 700 employees around Christmas Day. In response to the planned shutdown of the 50-year-old plant, community groups have organized a boycott of the toymaker’s products and the city has filed a lawsuit in an effort to stop the company from closing the plant. And Friday lawyers for the plant’s employees filed a motion seeking to join the lawsuit and asking for monetary damages for the workers, four- fifths of whom are black or Hispanic.
Workers at the Packard Electric Division of the General Motors Corporation in Warren, Ohio voted Friday to approve a contract that guarantees each worker a job for life. More than 5,700 of the division’s 8,900 employees voted on the local pact, and 77 percent approved, said Harold E. Nichols, shop chairman and chief negotiator for Local 717 of the International Union of Electrical Workers. Under the contract, G.M. is forbidden to lay off any employee permanently, but can lay workers off temporarily for up to six months. Then the company must call such workers back, although not necessarily in their original jobs. The contract covers workers who were employed for at least 90 days before January 1, 1982. Mr. Nichols said that included most workers now employed.
The bodies of seven people were found Friday in the wreckage of three small planes that crashed in mountains in California’s Riverside and Kern counties, apparently because of high winds and poor visibility. Major Jerry Avery of the Civil Air Patrol said the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board would investigate the crashes. Three bodies were found in the wreckage of a Cessna 172 in the desert outside Thermal, about 150 miles east of Los Angeles. The pilot had radioed Thursday night that his plane was going down. The bodies of two people were found in the wreckage of a single-engine Grumman Cheetah in the Tehachapi Mountains near Gorman, about 60 miles north of Los Angeles. The plane apparently crashed Thursday night in an area where surface winds were gusting up to 70 miles an hour. Two bodies were found in the wreckage of a single-engine Cessna 152 near Rosamond, also in the Tehachapis.
Wyeth Laboratories in Radnor, Pennsylvania, will supply 8.4 million doses of a whooping cough vaccine next year to the nation’s only marketer of the drug, a Wyeth spokesman said after federal health officials reported that spot shortages of the drug could worsen. Wyeth suspended distribution of the vaccine last June because of the threat of liability claims over injuries suffered by recipients. But it has continued manufacturing the drug and selling it to Lederle Laboratories of Wayne, New Jersey, which assumed liability. Whooping cough, or pertussis, is a “very devastating” disease that can cause pneumonia, seizures and even death.
Nebraska Attorney General Paul Douglas was found guilty of lying about his personal business dealings, a conviction that could lead to his ouster from office. He had been indicted by a grand jury investigating the conduct of public officials after the Commonwealth Savings Co. of Lincoln failed in 1983. He was charged with lying to a legislative committee when he said that he received no money from an officer of the company, that he paid taxes on the money, and that his official actions were not influenced by his relationship with the officer.
Indiana’s secretary of state declared Republican Rick McIntyre the winner over incumbent Democrat Frank McCloskey in the nation’s only undecided House race, but a McCloskey aide, Bill Finch, said: “It’s not over until it’s over, and that means an appeal to the House.” McIntyre was certified Friday as the winner by 34 votes in the 8th District race, based on corrected totals from one county in the 15-county district. McCloskey, however, said he believes recounts pending throughout the district will show him the victor.
An attempt to steal an airplane and smuggle automatic weapons to Central America to barter for drugs was thwarted by federal and state agents and the local Sheriff’s Department at a small airport in Climax, North Carolina. But the would-be thieves escaped on foot after hurling tear gas at their pursuers. The authorities were waiting when the suspects arrived at the airport, about 15 miles south of Greensboro. Agents found on the ground a loaded Mac-11 machine gun and several containers believed to hold automatic weapons.
A suburban Denver neighborhood has a cancer rate in children that is 2½ times the national average, but it is not contaminated, according to a preliminary report by the Environmental Protection Agency. The findings, released at a public meeting, are the result of more than 6,500 air, water and soil tests done in the Lakewood area during the last three months. The investigation will not be officially completed until January.
Chicago teachers apparently were near a settlement in their two-week-old strike, but talks with other striking school employees remained stalled, negotiators said. Only two issues — pay increases and make-up days for the strike — remain to be worked out with the teachers, a Chicago Teachers Union spokesman said.
J. Roderick MacArthur died in a Chicago hospital. The Chicago businessman and philanthropist was a director of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, named for his parents, and was instrumental in the foundation’s establishment of generous grants to “exceptionally gifted individuals.”
American Academy Award-winning actress Sally Field (38) weds second husband Alan Greisman; they divorce in 1994.
British-Australia singer and actress Olivia Newton-John (36) weds first husband, American actor Matt Lattanzi (25); they divorce in 1996.
The Soviet Union launched a spacecraft, Vega 1, on a voyage to meet the returning Halley’s comet in March 1986. Vega 1 is the first of four craft that are to visit the comet in the same month and conduct a camera scrutiny of the comet’s solid nucleus and surrounding gases. A second Soviet craft is expected to be launched soon, probably Friday. The European Space Agency plans to launch its spacecraft next July, and Japan expects to launch its craft in August.
NFL Football:
Denver Broncos 31, Seattle Seahawks 14
New Orleans Saints 10, New York Giants 3
The Denver Broncos did it the way they had all season, wrestling away a 31–14 victory over the Seattle Seahawks for the American Conference’s Western Division championship at the Kingdome today. “The nature of our defense has gotten us where we are right now,” said Dan Reeves, the coach of the Broncos. “We made some big plays in the second half that won the game for us.” The Broncos came to the Kingdome looking to make amends for the 20–17 loss to the Seahawks in Denver three weeks ago, and miffed for being overlooked in the conference’s Pro Bowl selections. “To win 12 games coming into this game and only have one guy in the Pro Bowl . . . well, I’m sure some of the guys had that as a motive,” Reeves said. The only Denver player selected was Sammy Winder, a running back. The Broncos led by 10–7 at halftime, even though four passes from John Elway had been intercepted. “I had trouble getting rid of those nerves in the first half,” Elway said. “I talked to Coach Reeves at halftime, and we decided to relax and have some fun in the second half.” Two big third-quarter plays made the difference for the Broncos. On the second-half kickoff, Tony Lilly, a Bronco safety, ripped the ball out of the arms of Randall Morris, a running back, setting up a quick touchdown that helped put the Broncos ahead by 17–7. Later in the period, Dave Krieg, the quarterback for the Seahawks, delivered the ball to the free safety Steve Foley, who intercepted and ran 40 yards untouched into the end zone. That made the score 24–7.
The Giants were fortunate their game against the New Orleans Saints today could not affect their chances to make the playoffs. They played ineffectively on offense and erratically on defense, committed too many penalties and allowed too many sacks, and they lost, 10–3. The Giants finished their regular season with a 9–7 record. They will make the National Football League playoffs only if the Washington Redskins defeat the St. Louis Cardinals Sunday and the Miami Dolphins beat the Dallas Cowboys Monday night. If that happens, the Giants will play the Los Angeles Rams in a wild-card game next weekend in Anaheim, Califonia. The Saints scored a touchdown in the first quarter, and Morten Andersen kicked a 37-yard field goal in the fourth quarter. The Giants scored only on Ali Haji-Sheikh’s 37-yard field goal in the second quarter. “We were all real disappointed,” said the Giants’ coach, Bill Parcells. “We had our chances. We just didn’t take advantage of them. We didn’t play well enough to win. I hope we get a chance to go to the playoffs. I don’t think anything has happened to our spirit.” In the first quarter, Joe Morris’s 3-yard touchdown run was wiped out by a holding penalty on Byron Williams, and the Giants settled for a field goal. In the second quarter, a holding penalty against, of all people, Lawrence Taylor, wiped out a 48-yard field goal by Haji-Sheikh. Later that quarter, an offside penalty against Casey Merrill wiped out a 15-yard sack. Phil Simms was sacked seven times, matching his high for the year. On many other occasions, he was hit hard after he had passed or he had passes tipped or he had to run because he could not find a receiver open. The Giants got inside the Saints’ 20- yard line four times — to the 3, 15, 2 and 7. They came away with 3 points.
Born:
Kolby Smith, NFL running back (Kansas City Chiefs), in Tallahassee, Florida.
Kyle Wilson, Canadian NHL centre (Washington Capitals, Columbus Blue Jackets, Nashville Predators), in Oakville, Ontario, Canada.
Cole Garner, MLB outfielder and pinch hitter (Colorado Rockies), in Long Beach, California.
James Houser, MLB pitcher (Florida Marlins), in Sarasota, Florida.
Joshua Hayward, British rock guitarist (The Horrors), in Southend-on-Sea, Essex, England, United Kingdom.
Died:
J. Roderick MacArthur, 63, American businessman and philanthropist, of pancreatic cancer.
Frank Spedding, 82, Canadian chemist whose uranium extraction process helped make possible the first atomic bomb.
Jan Peerce [Jacob Pincus Perelmuth], 80, American tenor (NBC Symphony, 1938-55; NY Metropolitan Opera, 1941-67; “Bluebird of Happiness”).
Lennard Pearce, 69, British actor (“Only Fools and Horses…”), of a heart attack.
Day is done,
Gone the sun,
From the hills,
From the lake,
From the skies.
All is well,
Safely rest,
God is nigh
Go to sleep,
Peaceful sleep,
May the soldier
Or sailor,
God keep.
History Diaries 