Mikhail S. Gorbachev told the British that the Soviet Union was ready to negotiate radical reductions in nuclear armaments, but he repeated Moscow’s position that Washington had to act first. Addressing a committee of Parliament, the Kremlin’s second in command put particular stress on the Soviet desire for an end to American efforts to develop weapons in space. Mr. Gorbachev, widely considered the second in command in the Kremlin, said negotiations could move toward prohibiting and eventually eliminating nuclear weapons. “It is now up to the United States to make a move, to take this time a realistic stand which would make for effective negotiations,” he told members of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs.
“Of key importance in all this is prevention of a space arms race,” he said. “Such a race would not only be dangerous in itself, it would give a boost to the arms race in other areas.” Mr. Gorbachev was apparently speaking of two American space programs that Moscow has said it wants Washington to halt. The first and more immediate is a testing program for an antisatellite weapon. New tests are to be held starting in March, but President Reagan said in September that the United States would be willing to consider restraint if the Soviet Union resumed arms control talks. The State Department is said to favor negotiating a moratorium on such tests to produce an atmosphere for agreement in other arms control fields, but the Pentagon is said to be opposed, arguing that it is impossible to verify such a moratorium.
The Reagan Administration is also committed to a long-term program to develop a strategic defense against offensive nuclear missiles. This program, known officially as the Strategic Defense Initiative and unofficially as the “Star Wars” program, is in a preliminary phase, and American officials have said they do not know how they could negotiate a ban on research. But the Administration is committed to at least discussing space arms with the Russians, and some State Department officials foresee an eventual trade-off of limits on space weapons in return for sharp cuts in offensive missiles. Mr. Gorbachev and the Soviet experts who accompanied him told the committee that difficulties would arise if the United States went ahead with its antisatellite tests.
A major Soviet military reaction was touched off several days ago by two American aircraft carriers operating near Soviet naval and air bases around Vladivostok, Reagan Administration officials confirmed. They said the unusual Soviet reaction involved at least 100 Soviet jet fighters, bombers and reconnaissance planes as well as surface vessels. A civilian official quoted experienced military officials as describing it as “the most vigorous Soviet reaction” to any American military movement of its kind since World War II. “When we operate in certain waters or in close proximity to foreign territorial waters, we anticipate a reaction,” the Defense Department spokesman, Comdr. Fred G. Leeder, said. “I would deny that those operations were intended to provoke a response, but a response was expected.”
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher arrived in Peking today to sign the agreement to return sovereignty over Hong Kong to China on July 1, 1997. China has billed the signing ceremony, scheduled for Wednesday, as a historic occasion and has prepared for it with glowing press profiles of Mrs. Thatcher and enthusiastic accounts of the reception the agreement has receieved around the world, especially in Hong Kong. More than 100 Chinese representatives from Hong Kong have been flown here as China’s guests to witness the signing. After a 19-hour flight from London aboard a Royal Air Force VC-10, Mrs. Thatcher received a quiet welcome at Peking’s capital airport from Foreign Minister Wu Xueqian and a handful of other Chinese officials. With the Foreign Secretary, Sir Geoffrey Howe, she was presented with a bouquet of flowers by Chinese children, then whisked out of the frigid north China night for the drive into the city.
The Polish Government said today that it was interested in improving relations with the United States and that the Reagan Administration’s decision to end its opposition to Poland’s membership in the International Monetary Fund was “a step in the right direction.” But at the same time, Jerzy Urban, the official government spokesman, rejected efforts to link “a normalization of relations with the U.S. to modification of Poland’s internal policies.” In a statement read at his weekly news conference, Mr. Urban steered a somewhat more conciliatory course than Polish television, which described Washington’s move as “further proof of the failure of the U.S. punitive sanctions.” He said that the United States decision reflected “a more realistic approach towards our country,” and added that the Polish Government was “interested in the real improvement of its relations with the U.S.”
Attorney General William French Smith authorized a further six-month stay in the United States for 6,000 Polish nationals who were permitted to remain in this country after martial law was declared in Poland in December, 1981. The latest extension, the fifth, was recommended by the State Department because of foreign policy considerations and similar actions by European allies. It means no qualifying Pole can be deported before June 30, 1985.
Northern Ireland’s lord chief justice acquitted 35 people accused by a police informer of terrorism, ending the largest trial in Britain’s legal history. The evidence of the informer, Raymond Gilmore, 26, was “entirely unworthy of belief,” Justice Robert Lowry said in concluding the 22-year-old case. The acquittals could be a serious setback in the fight against Irish Republican Army terrorism, observers said, because informers had been used, with increasing success, to gain convictions against bombers and killers.
Irish officials arrested three Americans after the first extradition treaty between the United States and Ireland took effect. Dublin district court will be asked to order their extradition under the treaty, which took a decade to negotiate. The arrested men were identified as James H. Gilliland, a former General Dynamics Corp. executive charged with receiving $2.7 million in kickbacks; Norman D. McCaud, wanted in a 1970 New York murder, and Charles J. Walsh, sought for questioning in a $2-million fraud.
The West German Supreme Court, on a 7-1 vote, dismissed a suit by the Greens party that claimed that deployment of Pershing 2 and cruise missiles on German soil violates the constitution. The anti-Establishment Greens argued that Parliament must pass a law authorizing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization nuclear missiles. However, the court ruled that the deployment was covered by 1955 laws ratifying West Germany’s membership in NATO and sanctioning alliance forces in West Germany.
Greece lifted its objections today to European Economic Community terms of entry for Spain and Portugal, clearing the way for final negotiations. But it still threatens to veto Spanish and Portuguese entry unless the 10 nations agree to a multi-billion dollar Mediterranean aid program. The Spanish Foreign Minister, Fernando Moran, accused the 10-nation group of planning the enlargement without regard for the interests of Spanish citizens. He was talking to journalists after the group’s foreign ministers put to him tough conditions on wine and fish, the last major outstanding enlargement issues. “Membership by January 1, 1986, is still possible,” Mr. Moran said. “But the limit to our ability to make concessions is in sight,” he added. Willem van Eekelen, the Dutch Secretary of State for European Affairs, said he hoped Mr. Moran’s comments would convince the 10 nations that entry talks were a give-and-take process, made of compromises.
Mehmet Ali Ağca, the Turk sentenced to life imprisonment for shooting Pope John Paul II in 1981, was quoted today as asking Italy to grant him a pardon. The Italian Catholic daily newspaper Avvenire published excerpts of an interview that it said Mr. Ağca had given to the Catholic weekly newspaper Il Sabato, to be published Friday. “I ask the Italian Government for a provision of pardon for humanitarian reasons,” Avvenire quoted Mr. Ağca as telling Il Sabato. “I have collaborated with Italian justice without preconditions, without asking for anything.”
The first defection from Israel’s national unity Cabinet went into effect this morning as a Minister Without Portfolio, Rabbi Yitzhak Peretz, took his four-man Shas Party into opposition.
After a five-year absence, Egypt took its place again today at the opening of the 15th annual meeting of the Foreign Ministers of the Islamic Conference Organization. The group suspended Egypt’s membership after President Anwar el-Sadat signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979. The heads of state of the countries voted to reinstate Egypt in January at their meeting in Casablanca despite protests from Syria, Libya and Iran, whose delegates walked out after the vote. Delegates from all three were present today when the conference opened and Esmat Abdel Meguid, Egypt’s Foreign Minister, took his chair, grinning broadly at other delegates and photographers.
Iran pledged to try four hijackers who killed two Americans aboard a Kuwaiti airliner in Tehran this month. The Iranian press agency said it had not been decided whether the trial would be public or closed.
Afghan guerrilla fighters, using rudimentary weapons against advanced aerial technology, have kept Soviet forces busily engaged for five years. One rebel, a 24-year-old illiterate father of four children, said, “This is a holy war and we are in it to the last man.”
South Korean opposition leader Kim Dae Jung said he will return to his country around the end of January despite a renewed warning from the Seoul government that he will be imprisoned on arrival. Kim was allowed to go into exile in the United States two years ago for medical treatment after serving 2½ years of a long jail sentence on a sedition charge. Kim had planned to visit Europe before going home, but Seoul refused to extend his passport, which is valid only for the United States. Two high-ranking aides of President Chun Doo Hwan visited Mr. Kim’s former secretary in Seoul Friday to repeat an earlier statement that Mr. Kim would be imprisoned on his return. The former secretary, Ye Choon Ho, was told that if Mr. Kim returned he would have to serve out the remaining 17½ years of the sentence that was imposed after he was convicted of sedition.
More than 200 people were hospitalized after they breathed ammonia fumes leaking from a tanker truck in the border city of Matamoros, Mexico, the government newspaper reported. More than 3,000 people were evacuated from the area near the Ucansa ammonia plant in Matamoros, across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas, El Nacional reported. The accident occurred when a truck was unloading the ammonia onto a railroad tank car, the paper reported.
A moderate opposition coalition has backed away from its demand that Chilean President Augusto Pinochet resign and appealed to the ruling junta for talks on “a reasonable timetable” for restoring democracy. It was the first major political initiative aimed at ending violent confrontations that have convulsed Chile since Pinochet decreed a state of siege November 6 to clamp down on protests. Leaders of the six-party Democratic Alliance said they sent letters to the junta Friday, but that there has been no response.
A directory of risky products that are banned, restricted or have failed to win approval in any one of 60 countries will be expanded under a measure approved by the United Nations General Assembly, over the sole objection of the United States. The directory lists 500 potentially dangerous products.
An $8.7 billion cut in military spending in the next fiscal year has been approved by President Reagan, the White House announced. Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger said most of the savings would come from an already announced Government-wide reduction in civilian pay, a smaller than planned military pay increase and lower estimates of inflation and fuel costs. Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger, claiming victory after weeks of uneasy debate in the Administration, said he and Mr. Reagan had agreed that military spending ultimately depended on “factors external to the United States,” not the Government’s budget deficit. He said the “extremely satisfactory” result “will enable us to continue the path that we have to stay on.” Members of Congress said the cuts were insufficient and would jeopardize chances of the budget bill.
George P. Shultz is at the center of a bitter dispute between White House and State Department officials, according to Administration officials. They said that conservatives in the Administration were angered over plans by the Secretary of State to replace ranking officials and diplomats who are political appointees with Foreign Service officers. White House officials said the move by Mr. Shultz to replace several key officials and ambassadors had angered conservatives in the Administration, especially when such conservatives as Edwin Meese 3d, the White House counselor, and Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, the representative at the United Nations, were scheduled to leave their posts.
White House and State Department officials both say the dispute involves not only the ascendency of Mr. Shultz in personnel matters in which the White House plays a key role, but also accusations that career Foreign Service officers close to Mr. Shultz and some White House aides were ignoring what they considered to be President Reagan’s conservative mandate. State Department officials said the changes being planned included the departure of these political appointees: Richard T. McCormack, Assistant Secretary for Economic and Business Affairs, who is a former aide to Senator Jesse Helms, Republican of North Carolina; Gregory J. Newell, Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of International Organization Affairs; and James L. Malone, Assistant Secretary for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs.
Archibald Cox, the chairman of Common Cause, today attacked Edwin Meese 3d, saying the Presidential counselor had displayed a “lack of ethical sensitivity” and “blindness to abuse of position,” and he urged Senators to vote against confirming Mr. Meese to the post of Attorney General. Mr. Cox, the first Watergate Special Prosecutor and now head of the public affairs lobby, said in a letter sent to all Senators today that a court-appointed independent counsel’s investigation into charges of wrongdoing by Mr. Meese had not, in fact, vindicated him, as the Administration has insisted. Rather, Mr. Cox said the report issued three months ago by the independent counsel, Jacob A. Stein, showed that Mr. Meese lacked the judgment and ethical standards required of an Attorney General.
Defense Department officials acknowledged today that little information about space shuttles with military cargo could be kept from the Russians, even if secrecy is imposed. But the officials, explaining a policy announced Monday, said such secrecy was worth the effort. “Space is a big place,” one official said. “The less they know, the harder it will be for them to find us out there.” Another official said, “It will keep them off balance – we want to mess with their minds.”
President Reagan participates in a meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
President Reagan attends a farewell reception in honor of departing Secretary of Education Terrel H. Bell.
Education Secretary Terrel H. Bell issued a report on American schools that showed a “heartening” sign of academic recovery — a widespread rise in college admission test scores by high school seniors. The state-by-state statistical survey found that the standardized test scores, following a decade of nationwide decline, rose during the last two years in 31 states and the District of Columbia. Bell officially steps down as education secretary on December 31, but is leaving town today for his home in Salt Lake City to become a professor at the University of Utah.
William J. Schroeder regained his appetite, “eating everything in sight,” and one doctor predicted that the artificial heart patient would shake off the memory problems caused by his stroke. Dr. Allan M. Lansing, chairman and medical director of the Humana Heart Institute International in Louisville, Kentucky, said Schroeder’s lungs, heart and kidneys were functioning well and he was more alert than the day before. “He is looking around the room and is aware of everything going on,” Lansing said.
TIME magazine’s chief of correspondents testified in federal court in New York that he does not believe former Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon knew there would be a massacre when Lebanese militiamen were sent into Palestinian camps in Beirut in 1982. But the TIME chief, Richard Duncan, also said he thought Sharon’s testimony before Israel’s Kahan commission was “less than complete” when the minister testified there had been no discussion of revenge before the raids. Sharon, charging libel, is suing TIME for $50 million.
Two congressmen and the mayor of Annapolis, Maryland, were arrested in the latest round of anti-apartheid demonstrations at the South African Embassy in Washington. Reps. Howard L. Berman (D-California), Julian C. Dixon (D-California) and Annapolis Mayor Richard Hillman were taken into custody and charged with the misdemeanor offense of congregating within 500 feet of an embassy.
The stock and bond markets surged amid signs of lowering interest rates and faster economic growth. The Dow-Jones industrial average soared 34.78 points, its biggest gain since August 3, while interest rates continued to plummet. On the New York Stock Exchange, trading swelled to 169.1 million shares, the sixth-heaviest volume ever. In the money market, the closely watched interest rate on Federal funds — overnight loans among banks — traded generally in the 6.65 percent to 7 percent range, down nearly a full percentage point from Monday.
Twenty-four nuns face dismissal along with a priest and a brother from their orders unless they renounce their support of a statement contending that Roman Catholics can rightly differ on abortion, the Vatican said. In a brief statement, the Vatican said the Sacred Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes had ordered “every single member” of an order to retract publicly his or her support of the statement or be subject to prosecution under canon law for “obstinate insubordination.” The 24 nuns who signed the statement ended a session yesterday in Washington without issuing a response. They said other supporters would join them today to consider the situation. Efforts to reach officials of various national associations of nuns were not successful.
The FBI arrested an engineer in suburban Los Angeles on charges that he stole top-secret Stealth bomber technology and tried to sell it to Moscow. Attorney General William French Smith indicated the purported scheme had been aborted before any documents allegedly taken by Thomas P. Cavanagh, a 40-year-old engineer for the Northrop Corporation, reached Soviet hands.
The killing of four people during a bank robbery may have been touched off when a bank employee suggested that the robbers were homosexual, a prosecutor said today. Officials also said today that the two men charged in the robbery had financial troubles and that one of them, Jay Wesley Neill, 19 years old, had been placed on probation for credit card fraud after it was decided he was not a “serious threat” to the community. He and Robert Grady Johnson, 22, were arrested Monday in San Francisco. Three of the four people killed in the robbery of the Geronimo branch of the First Bank of Chattanooga were bank employees. Three other people were wounded.
Former Cook County (Chicago) Associate Judge John J. Devine was sentenced to 15 years in prison for bribery convictions resulting from the Operation Greylord investigation of corruption in the nation’s largest court system. The sentence handed down by U.S. District Judge Susan Getzendanner was the stiffest yet imposed as a result of the convictions arising from the federal government’s Greylord probe. Devine, 53, was convicted by a jury last October 9 of accepting about $6,000 in bribes to fix cases while he was assigned to Traffic and Auto Theft courts from 1978 to 1983.
A former Georgia Labor Commissioner was sentenced today to 30 months in Federal prison for mail and insurance fraud. Sam Caldwell, the defendant, was convicted last month of conspiracy to sink a boat for insurance proceeds, destruction of a vessel for insurance proceeds and six counts of mail fraud. A co-defendant, John Flanigan, a former State Labor Department official, was sentenced to 13 months in prison.
A Federal judge in Atlanta today sentenced four Ku Klux Klansmen in connection with two beating incidents. Two of the defendants, Mailon Wood, 54 years old, and Kenneth Davis, 39, were convicted of conspiracy to violate and violation of the civil rights of Peggy Jo French, a white woman. Both of those defendants received 40-year prison sentences and $40,000 fines. Mailon Wood and his brother, Winford Wood, 56, were convicted, along with Mr. Davis, of the same charges in the beating of Warren Cokley, a black man married to a white woman. Winford Wood was sentenced to 20 years and a $20,000 fine. William L. Deering, 47, who was convicted of perjury, was sentenced to 15 years and $30,000.
Contributors have given an estimated $2.1 billion to the United Way in 1984, a 10 percent increase over last year, but its chairman says the Reagan Administration’s tax proposal could cut contributions by 20 percent. Robert A. Beck, the United Way chairman, said today that the tax proposal would eliminate the charitable deduction for low- and middle-income supporters of the fund. The Treasury Department has proposed that deductions be repealed for charitable contributions made by taxpayers who do not itemize deductions. Mr. Beck said at a news conference at the National Press Club that most contributors “use the short form and don’t itemize their deductions.”
A Texas state appeals court in Dallas overturned the 1983 drug and weapons conviction of rock singer David Crosby, ruling Dallas police illegally entered and searched the dressing room of the nightclub where Crosby was performing. The appeals court also ordered that Crosby, 43, be acquitted of the charges since the evidence was illegally obtained. Assistant District Attorney Don Davis said that he would appeal, asking that the search be ruled legal and that the conviction and five-year prison sentence be reinstated.
Actress Jamie Lee Curtis (26) weds actor Christopher Guest (37) in New York.
“A Christmas Carol” directed by Clive Donner starring George C. Scott premieres in the United States.
73rd Davis Cup: Sweden beats USA in Gothenburg (4–1).
The Minnesota Vikings, who suffered through their worst season ever this year, said tonight that Bud Grant would return to the coaching job he held for 17 years. Grant replaces Les Steckel, who was dismissed Monday after coaching the team to a 3–13 record.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1211.57 (+34.78)
Born:
Pierre Thomas, NFL running abck (NFL Champions, Super Bowl 44-Saints, 2009; New Orleans Saints, San Francisco 49ers, Washington Redskins), in Chicago, Illinois.
Brian Boyle, NHL centre (NHL All-Star, 2018; Los Angeles Kings, New York Rangers, Tampa Bay Lighning, Toronto Mapple Leafs, New Jersey Devils,, Nashville Predators, Florida Panthers, Pittsburgh Penguins), in Hingham, Massachusetts.
Josh Rodríguez, MLB shortstop and second baseman (Pittsburgh Pirates), in Houston, Texas.
History Diaries 