American flexibility on arms control was stressed by a senior Reagan Administration official. He said Washington would be willing to negotiate its long-term missile defense plan along with seeking cuts in offensive weapons systems when talks resume with Moscow early next month. A senior Reagan Administration official said today that the United States would be willing to negotiate its long-range missile defense plan along with seeking cuts in offensive weapons systems when arms talks with the Soviet Union resume next month. He also said that Secretary of State George P. Shultz would be authorized to affirm to Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko that the United States would be ready to consider “measures of restraint” in testing the antisatellite weapons now under development. The official, as well as Mr. Shultz in a separate briefing for members of Congress today, stressed that the Americans were approaching the negotiations as a comprehensive package with the goal of seeking stability in Soviet and American military strength through tradeoffs in the various weapons.
Until today, American officials have said they hoped the Geneva talks would lead to negotiations on strategic offensive arms and medium-range offensive missiles, along with “discussions” on the Administration’s long-term research plans for a defensive shield against missiles. This had led to uncertainty about whether the Administration would be willing to include any curbs on defensive weapons when the talks resume. The senior official said today that the Administration would, in fact, make its so-called Star Wars defensive program subject to negotiation.
The Soviet Union apparently plans to deploy about 100 new medium-range SS-20 nuclear missiles, Assistant Secretary of State Richard R. Burt said in Brussels. Reiterating that at least 387 SS-20s are now deployed, Burt said that “the ultimate number of SS-20 deployments, based on what we know of new base construction, is likely to range from between 450 to 500” missiles. Burt spoke after consulting North Atlantic Treaty Organization officials about U.S.Soviet talks scheduled January 7-8 in Geneva.
Soviet scientists have devised a scheme to send television and radio signals around the world by bouncing the signals off a man-made cloud of charged particles, the Soviet news agency Tass reported. Tass said scientists would use a powerful wave to concentrate a high-temperature ionized gas in the earth’s upper atmosphere to create a reflective surface for the signals. It did not say how or when this would be done. If successful, the project would eliminate the need for many communications satellites, Tass said.
Union leaders in Nottinghamshire, the center of opposition to the nine-month-old strike by British coal miners, voted today to put themselves beyond the national union’s authority to make rules. Regional delegates to the National Union of Minerworkers voted to protect themselves from the national union’s disciplinary action against nonstrikers, according to Ray Chadburn, the area president. The regional delegates represent 30,000 miners. Ninety percent of Nottinghamshire’s miners are working in defiance of the strike. This fall, the national union formed a disciplinary committee to hear charges against members for taking “any action detrimental to the union.” The vote today was taken to prevent disciplinary action. On March 12, the miners walked out to protest the state-owned National Coal Board’s plans to shut 20 unprofitable mines and cut the workforce by 20,000 jobs.
The head of the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization said that the U.S. decision to withdraw from the agency would not harm its operation. On a visit to Yemen’s capital of Sana, UNESCO’s director general, Amadou Mahtar M’Bow, added that he would not step down from the post he has held for the last 10 years. UNESCO officials contend that the United States, which contributed about 25% of the organization’s annual budget, still owes $316,000 for 1984. Washington has denied this claim.
Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi, the Libyan leader, said today that his meeting with Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez on Wednesday night had been amicable and had dealt mostly with developments in northwest Africa. At a separate news conference, Mr. Gonzalez acknowledged that the United States would probably be critical of the secretly planned meeting, which took place on the Spanish resort island of Majorca. But he said that while he would inform Spain’s allies of the meeting, Madrid would follow its own policies.
The U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv is being turned into a fortress, and Israel radio said that at Washington’s direction, officials are searching for new premises less vulnerable to terrorist attack. A U.S. diplomat declined to confirm the report, but said, “As anyone can see, there is considerable construction going on around the embassy of a security nature.” The reports of a security buildup follow news reports that Israeli security forces captured six Palestinians from the occupied Gaza Strip who had planned to attack the embassy.
A dispute that threatened to break up Israel’s three- month-old national unity Government was resolved early today. The Cabinet crisis ended when two religious parties belonging to the governing coalition agreed on how state funds should be channeled to local authorities for religious functions.
The United States has asked permission to erect powerful transmitters in Israel to overcome jamming of Voice of America broadcasts to the Soviet Union, Israel radio reported. The report said negotiations on the American request had been going on “for some time” and added that a Voice of America delegation recently visited Israel. The Israeli Foreign Ministry declined to comment on the report. Israel radio broadcasts programs in Russian for Soviet Jews.
Israel told Lebanon to agree to an expanded deployment of United Nations troops in southern Lebanon or run the risk of Israel’s quitting negotiations and acting independently. The Israeli position was delivered today at the 11th round of United Nations- sponsored withdrawal negotiations held at United Nations headquarters in the southern Lebanese village of Naqura. The talks, which began on November 7, were recessed today for the Christmas holidays. The head of the Israeli delegation, Brigadier General Amos Gilboa, told his Lebanese counterpart that unless Israel received a positive reply to its demands by January 7, when the talks are due to resume, “the Government of Israel will find itself obliged to consider whether there will be any further purpose in the continuation of the talks.”
The Lebanese Army, in an effort to end months of factional fighting, took over control of the northern port of Tripoli today from private militias. A communiqué issued by the army command here said 750 soldiers from the Second Brigade fanned out throughout the mainly Muslim city of about 600,000 people and set up checkpoints. The Government-controlled Beirut radio said the deployment, which began at dawn, was carried out smoothly. All barricades were brought down and gunmen disappeared from the streets, the radio said.
A high-level State Department official said today that he saw no end to the stalemate between guerrillas and Soviet forces in Afghanistan unless the Soviet Union agreed to negotiate a withdrawal. The official, Michael H. Armacost, the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, said that five years after Soviet troops joined the fighting the guerrilla resistance was causing “a protracted, bloody, savage and ultimately inconclusive struggle.” In keeping with American policy, Mr. Armacost repeatedly refused to answer questions about United States aid to the guerrilla forces. He added that the United States goal is a negotiated withdrawal. “Our national interests,” he said, “are not served by simply keeping the Soviets tied down in Afghanistan.” The Russians, he said, became more aggressive in 1984, pouring in an additional 10,000 troops to make up an occupying army of 115,000. In spite of this, he said, they “have very little to show militarily” and “in fact, may have lost some ground.”
Scientists neutralizing what they thought was the last of a poisonous chemical at the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, discovered seven more tons of the lethal substance, methyl isocyanate, that had not been noted in company records, officials said. A leak of the chemical killed more than 2,000 people two weeks ago. An official monitoring the neutralization process said that 22 tons of the pesticide had been found at the facility while records showed only 15 tons stored at the facility.
Pakistan’s President, Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, won 98 percent of the vote Wednesday in a nationwide referendum endorsing a five-year extension of his presidency and his plan to apply Islamic law strictly, election officials said today. The opposition Movement for the Restoration of Democracydenounced the official result as “an unprecedented fraud.” The opposition had called for a boycott of the referendum but was not allowed to publicize the boycott. The opposition asserted that only 5 percent to 10 percent of eligible voters cast ballots and that ballot boxes were stuffed with pro-Zia votes long before Wednesday. The National Election Commission said nearly complete returns showed 19.6 million people supported General Zia and his Islamic law policies. Voter turnout Wednesday was 62 percent of the 35 million registered voters.
A million and a half Singaporeans are expected to vote Saturday in a national election in which the major question is whether Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew and his Peoples Action Party will again win every seat in Parliament. Mr. Lee, who has been this nation’s Prime Minister for 25 years – through colonial self-rule, a short-lived merger with Malaysia and complete independence since 1965 – has portrayed the election as both a referendum on his record and a vote of confidence in his vision of the future: a dynamic, cultured, Swiss-style nation by 1999.
China has adopted a new visa policy that will allow at least some businessmen and tourists to fly to China and apply for visas on arrival at the Peking airport, but it remains unclear how freely the new policy will be applied. Until a major effort to attract tourists was begun a few years ago, China had one of the strictest visa policies of any nation, permitting very few foreigners to enter. Although two million tourists each year, and many more businessmen, come here now, the practice has been to require them to obtain visas in advance from Chinese embassies and consulates abroad, a process that can take weeks.
Conservative aides of the President have warned Mr. Reagan that the Administration’s policies in Central America might be softened if plans by Secretary of State George P. Shultz for sweeping changes in diplomatic appointments in the region take effect. At least a dozen ambassadors, mostly political appointees, are scheduled to be replaced by Foreign Service officers, Administration officials said today. The move, coupled with the planned departure of key State Department personnel who are also political appointees, has stirred an angry response from conservatives in the White House and elsewhere in the Administration as well as Congress. “George Shultz has decided to step out to see how much control he has,” a ranking Administration official said. “It’s really brutal. The President has no idea of the extent or depth of the changes.”
Somalia reported that Ethiopian troops, supported by tanks, artillery and jet warplanes, attacked several Somalian villages and towns but were beaten back after suffering heavy losses. There was no immediate comment from Ethiopia on the fighting, the first reported in several months. Somali officials said recently there had been an influx of refugees from the Ogaden Desert region in southeastern Ethiopia. Somalia invaded Ethiopia in 1977 and claimed the Ogaden, but was beaten back. Tension has run high on the border ever since.
The International Press Institute said today that press freedom continued to wither in 1984 as dozens of countries intimidated journalists with threats of expulsion, imprisonment and murder. In its annual report, the institute said governments around the world further restricted free speech this year and many introduced laws to control or silence the press. “Free speech is a dying right,” wrote the institute’s director, Peter Galliner, in an introduction to the 18-page annual report, the World Press Freedom Review, compiled by the institute, which is based in London and Zurich. The report, which covered 68 countries, said that even nations with long- established traditions of press freedom such as Britain and the United States tried to restrict freedom of information and increase official secrecy.
Consumer prices rose two-tenths of 1 percent last month, the smallest increase since June, the Labor Department reported. With only the December report to come, 1984 is almost certain to be the third consecutive year in which inflation has been held to about 4 percent. By contrast, from 1979 to 1981 the Consumer Price Index averaged an annual increase of 11.5 percent.
President Reagan meets with representatives from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Agriculture and Small Business Administration to discuss the O.M.B’s budget proposal.
President Reagan meets with Senator John G. Tower (R-Texas) to discuss the upcoming defense issues. President Reagan asks Tower to be the U.S. Ambassador to Germany.
Rising drug trafficking in the South has prompted a group of Southern Governors to plan a meeting in New Orleans next month to urge the Federal Government to deal with the problem. Governor Mark White of Texas said he had called the meeting because of sharply increased narcotics smuggling in every state in the region. A Georgia official said the authorities there had seized 6,000 pounds of cocaine in the last two years compared to a previous annual average of 25 pounds.
A surge in private school enrollment in the 1980’s was reported by the Federal Education Department. It said that one in eight American children was now attending a school outside the public system.
TIME magazine rested its case without calling any witnesses, surprising lawyers for Ariel Sharon in their libel trial in Manhattan. A Time lawyer, Paul C. Saunders, told reporters later that the magazine had presented its case through witnesses called by lawyers for Mr. Sharon, a former Israeli Defense Minister.
The Veterans Administration is drafting new regulations that would establish a financial needs test for VA-financed health care for veterans under 65, an agency spokesman said. John Scholzen, a VA spokesman, said: “The levels of income that would be set are still under discussion.” Under current regulations, veterans under 65 are required to sign a statement saying they are unable to pay for medical care for which they are applying. The government generally accepts this statement without investigating.
The Legal Services Corporation, the beleaguered, federally financed organization that provides legal help to the poor, proposed that its budget remain at its current level of $305 million next year. The agency’s board of directors recommended that funds for paying lawyers who aid the poor be increased by 4.6%, or about $10.4 million, but that overall spending should remain the same as the current fiscal year.
Folding baby gates are proven killers that should be outlawed, and people who already own them should be warned of their potential for strangling children, the chairwoman of the Consumer Products Safety Commission said. Nancy Harvey Steorts urged manufacturers of the gates to voluntarily withhold them from the market until the panel takes a vote on the issue January 9. Commission records show reports of eight deaths and 23 injuries to children ranging in age from 9 months to 2½ years when their heads were trapped in the accordion-style gates.
Duke University President Terry Sanford ruled out seeking the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee, saying wrangling for the post makes rebuilding the party “all but impossible.” Sanford, a two-time unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, said in Durham, North Carolina, that he had hoped Democratic leaders would reach a consensus on a successor to Democratic National Committee Chairman Charles T. Manatt at a meeting last week in Kansas City, but they left without an agreement.
Several hundred farmers lined up to apply for food stamps in three Iowa cities — Lenox, Bedford and Creston — in a protest to show the farm crisis is so severe some farmers can no longer afford to put food on their own tables. “There seems to be something wrong when the people who produce the food in this country can’t afford to buy it,” said the Rev. Don Fisher, a Presbyterian minister who helped organize the symbolic farm protest. “For the most part, farmers by nature are even more hesitant than most people to seek assistance.”But the Rev. Don Fisher, a Presbyterian minister who helped organize the protest, said many of the farmers will be ruled ineligible for the food stamps and other aid because of the guidelines to qualify for the help.
Nebraska Attorney General Paul L. Douglas, convicted of felony perjury in connection with the failed Commonwealth Savings Co., was suspended from practicing law by the Nebraska Supreme Court “until the further order of the court,” said a three-paragraph statement signed by Judge Leslie Boslaugh. The suspension comes in the wake of Douglas’ conviction last week, when jurors found him guilty of lying about payments he received from Marvin Copple, former vice president of the failed bank.
Convicted killer and jewel thief Jack (Murph the Surf) Murphy walked out of prison in Zephyrhills, Florida, to cheers from fellow inmates, claiming to be a changed man and expressing remorse for his past. “I feel great,” said Murphy, 47, known for the daring theft of the Star of India sapphire from a New York museum in 1964 and later sentenced to life for killing two California secretaries in South Florida. “I’m not the same person that came in here a long time ago,” Murphy said. He will live at Christian Prison Ministries — a halfway house in Orlando — where he will participate in a work-release program.
A 13-year-old boy hiked three miles in the dark with a broken arm to get help for his mother and a pilot when their small airplane crashed. But when he led rescuers to the wreckage he discovered his mother had died. Stacy Andrews, 13 years old, of New Albany, Mississippi, suffering a broken arm and a six-inch cut on his head, was hospitalized at the Northeast Mississippi Medical Center in Tupelo. The plane, a single-engine Cessna, crashed Wednesday night. The boy’s mother, Sharon Andrews, 37, died about 15 minutes before they arrived at the plane, the rescue workers said. The pilot, David McMillen, 32, also of New Albany, suffered a broken ankle and facial cuts.
One of the nation’s largest hazardous waste storage companies has agreed to pay $600,000 in fines and remove 2.8 million gallons of toxic chemicals from a giant Alabama storage site, according to officials of the Environmental Protection Agency. Under an agreement reached Wednesday between the agency and Chemical Waste Management Inc., based in Oak Brook, Illinois, the company will also set up auditing and monitoring systems at the Emelle, Ala., storage site, David Cohen, a spokesman for the agency, said. The company will remove 2.8 million gallons of PCB’s, or polychlorinated biphenols, and burn them in incinerators approved by the agency.
Conflicting decisions over creches on public property have marked this Christmas season. Around the country, Nativity scenes may be found in many municipalities despite efforts to bar them but they cannot be found in other communities despite efforts to erect them.
The rape of a spouse may be prosecuted, under a ruling by New York State’s highest court. In a unanimous decision, the Court of Appeals ruled that laws exempting most husbands from the state’s rape and sodomy laws violated constitutional guarantees of equal protection.
Twenty-seven miners were trapped by a fire a mile deep in a coal mine near Huntington, Utah, the mine’s operator reported. Rescue attempts were thwarted by heat and carbon monoxide. By early evening, the fate of the workers, 26 men and a woman, remained unknown, and there had been no communication with them. One miner escaped just after the fire broke out late Wednesday night. [Ed: Sadly, there will be no happy ending here.]
A human gene believed vital to the body’s internal defenses against disease has been detected and purified by scientists who have also reproduced it in a laboratory.
The U.S. performs a nuclear test at the Nevada Test Site.
A rare U.S.-Soviet cooperative effort arranged quietly between American and Soviet scientists was reported by a physicist at the University of Chicago. He said that an American comet-dust detector was aboard the Soviet Vega spacecraft and had been tested successfully as the craft headed toward a rendezvous with Halley’s comet in 1986.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1203.29 (-4.75)
Born:
LenDale White, NFL running back (Tennessee Titans), in Denver, Colorado.
William Robinson, NFL tackle (Washington Redskins, New Orleans Saints), in Monterey Park, California.
Bob Morley, Australian actor (Bellamy Blake – “The 100”; Drew Curtis – “Home and Away”), in Kyneton, Victoria, Australia.
History Diaries 