President Reagan sounded a cautious note today about arms talks scheduled for next month with the Soviet Union, saying there was a need to “temper our expectations with realism.” The remarks came in what the White House described as written questions and answers and “an interview” with the Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun. A printed copy of the exchange was made public by the White House press office. “I was encouraged that the Soviets agreed to resume a dialogue on arms control issues and that we will have the meeting in Geneva to try to get the process moving again,” Mr. Reagan said of the meeting planned for Jan. 7 and 8 between Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko. “But we must temper our expectations with realism. A two-day meeting cannot solve the complicated issues before us. We hope it will be a constructive beginning for further detailed negotiations. But it isn’t an easy job. Only time will tell how rapidly the process moves or in which specific framework.”
A pro-Solidarity priest pleaded with his police abductors to spare his life, according to the testimony given today by one of the confessed kidnappers of the clergyman. The witness, testifying on the second day of a trial here, recalled how the Rev. Jerzy Popiełuszko had at one point on the night of his death managed to break free from the car trunk in which he was being transported and shouted, “Save me! Save me! Spare my life, you people!” His body was later found in a reservoir. The witness, Leszek Pekala, a cashiered lieutenant in a security unit that monitored the activities of Roman Catholic priests, said he had helped take Father Popiełuszko’s unconscious body from the car trunk and truss it in such a way that if the priest regained consciousness and straightened his legs, he would tighten the noose around his neck and be strangled. Mr. Pekala said he also wrapped tape over a gag in the priest’s mouth. Finally, he said, a sack of rocks was tied to his body. The testimony also brought out the possibility that similar attacks on two other pro-Solidarity priests had been planned.
Spaniards call it the Flick case, and it can be viewed as a corruption scandal, cynical politics, overzealousness by the press or just a big national joke. However it is viewed, the unsubstantiated allegations that Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez received a suitcase full of money from Flick, the West German industrial conglomerate, has angered, divided and entertained the country for more than a month. And that the furor has been over a lot of smoke but little fire says much about the best and the worst of Spain’s seven- year-old democracy.
The Jordanian Government has approved death sentences for 15 people convicted of selling their property on the Israeli-occupied West Bank to Israelis, the official Jordanian press agency reported today. It said the 15 had been sentenced in absentia by a special court. It did not specify their present whereabouts. Jordanian law forbids the sale of property in the occupied territories to the Israeli “enemies,” with such action considered high treason and punishable by death. The court voided the sales and ordered the confiscation of the defendants’ property, the press agency said. It said the Cabinet approved the sentences on Thursday. The defendants, including two women, were from the occupied West Bank areas of Tulkarm, Ramallah and Bethlehem, the agency said, although it did not give their nationalities. The West Bank was ruled by Jordan until the Israelis captured it in 1967.
A sweeping victory for Rajiv Gandhi and his Congress Party was indicated in returns from parliamentary elections in India. It appeared that Mr. Gandhi, who succeeded his slain mother Indira as Prime Minister two months ago, had achieved a popular victory unparalleled since the Nehru era of the 1950’s and 1960’s. With results officially declared in 388 of the 508 parliamentary constituencies where voting took place this week, the Congress Party had won 310 seats in the lower house of Parliament. Mr. Gandhi’s party was winning seats at a rate that would give him four-fifths of the seats in the house that is to convene next month.
State authorities in India suspended several officials and accepted the resignation of its labor minister in connection with failures to act on safety problems at the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal, where a poison gas leak killed at least 2,000 people on December 3. The actions appeared to be formal acknowledgement by officials of Madhya Preadesh that they shared some blame in the episode.
Vietnam’s attack on rebels in Cambodia continued for the fourth day with the shelling of the perimeter of the main headquarters of the guerrilla opposition in Ampil, the military authorities in Thailand reported. Ampil withstood a Vietnamese campaign in April. Twelve miles to the south, guerrillas fighting to regain a fallen refugee camp said they had destroyed one Vietnamese tank and crippled another. Thai military officials said about 20 artillery rounds had fallen near the outer defense line of the rebel headquarters at Ampil, which is strongly fortified and believed manned by 5,000 guerrillas of the anti-Communist Khmer People’s National Liberation Front. The rebel group is one of three fighting the Vietnamese and the Government they installed after invading Cambodia at the end of 1978.
Japanese Government leaders have agreed on a 1985 budget that would increase Japan’s military spending by 6.9 percent above this year’s level. As in the past, the Japanese decision Friday night was made with an eye on the United States reaction, a familiar practice that acquired a certain urgency this time because Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone will meet with President Reagan in Los Angeles in four days. While technically the two matters are unrelated, this country’s military program is linked to its economic policies by many Americans who believe Japan has failed to carry its weight militarily while accumulating large trade surpluses against the United States. For several years, as a result, the Japanese Government has shaped military spending in the hope of placating American critics and yet not straining its hard-pressed treasury.
Modernization of Chinese factories and other projects that were built with Soviet help in the 1950’s will be aided by the Soviet Union under an agreement it has signed with Peking. The two countries also announced a 22 percent increase in the figure for their 1985 trade that was signed only four weeks ago. The new total of 4.6 billion Swiss francs, the equivalent of $1.8 billion, is $400 million more than the two sides set after completing annual trade talks in Moscow in November. The developments came at the end of a nine-day visit here by Ivan V. Arkhipov, a First Deputy Prime Minister, who is an alternate member of the Kremlin’s ruling Politburo. The visit was the most important by any Soviet official in 15 years, and the two sides appeared intent on ending it in a manner that emphasized the heightened goodwill between them.
Secretary of State George P. Shultz has dropped efforts to have a senior State Department aide named as the next Ambassador to Honduras, department officials said today. Some White House conservatives, as well as some members of Congress, had expressed concern at Mr. Shultz’s plans to replace a dozen ambassadors in Latin America as well as some senior State Department officials. Much of the criticism had centered on Mr. Shultz’s recommendation that President Reagan nominate L. Craig Johnstone, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, to replace John D. Negroponte as the next Ambassador to Honduras. State Department officials said today that after weeks of debate in the Administration on the various Shultz personnel proposals, Mr. Shultz had agreed to withdraw his recommendation that Mr. Johnstone be named to the Honduran post. The officials said Mr. Johnstone would be named ambassador to a country not in Latin America.
Suspension of antidrug measures in Peru’s coca-growing Upper Huallaga Valley has restored prosperity to the area, where dollars are now in such abundance that they fetch less the official exchange rate. The change was brought about by end of a United States-financed antinarcotics program. Among the thousands of coca leaf farmers in the lush Upper Huallaga Valley that stretches north from this shabby trafficking center, there is also a new feeling of prosperity and security. “Everyone is happy again,” a priest who works in the area said. “Business has never been better.”
The International Monetary Fund today approved a $20 billion aid and austerity program to help Argentina pay its bills. The move ended more than a year of uncertainty over the financial status of the developing world’s third-largest debtor. Today’s decision by the fund’s board of governors follows similar action last year for Brazil and the year before for Mexico, the two most indebted third-world countries. Brazil and Mexico each owe foreign creditors more than $90 billion; Argentina’s debt is about $45 billion.
The House of Deputies voted 127 to 74 today to ratify a Vatican-mediated treaty with Chile designed to end a century-old dispute over territory in the Beagle Channel. The treaty still needs ratification by the Senate and by Chile’s Government. The treaty gives Chile three disputed islands inhabited by Chilean shepherds in the Beagle Channel, at the southern tip of the South American continent. But it sharply restricts Chile’s maritime privileges in the Cape Horn area. Argentines voted overwhelmingly in favor of the treaty in a nonbinding referendum on November 25.
A senior African United Nations official accused Western nations today of not reacting promptly enough to appeals for emergency aid for Ethiopia and other famine-stricken countries of Africa. “It required the exposure of the extent of the drought and its effect on the lives of people on television screens in Europe and North America to whip up sympathy and support,” said the official, Prof. Adebayo Adedji of Nigeria, executive secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa and special representative of the United Nations Secretary General on the African economy.
The police have begun rounding up the last 23 African National Congress guerrillas still in Swaziland, a police spokesman said today. The crackdown follows a warning by the Swazi police a week ago that the men, who fled to Swaziland from neighboring Mozambique this year, had to surrender or be deported to South Africa, where the African National Congress is fighting white minority rule. The announcement came a day after South Africa and Swaziland announced an agreement to exchange trade representatives, the first such exchange of permanent envoys by the two nations.
The USSR performs a nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh, Semipalitinsk.
A key U.S. economic index rose a strong 1.3 percent in November, the sharpest rise since February, the Commerce Department reported. Analysts said the index of leading economic indicators, which the Government uses to try to foresee turns in the economy, confirmed last month that the economy had rebounded from a spell of anemic growth during the summer and early fall and was poised for continued expansion throughout 1985. They attributed the improvement partly to recent efforts by the Federal Reserve Board to avert a downturn by letting interest rates decline.
President Reagan today held a fence-mending meeting with his son Michael, who said as he went in that he planned to tell the President he loved him. Shortly after the three-hour reunion, the White House issued a statement saying, “Everybody loves each other.” The last time Mr. Reagan and Michael, his older son, were together was at the Republican National Convention in August in Dallas. It was the first time Mr. Reagan and his wife, Nancy, had seen Michael’s daughter, 20-month-old Ashley, who was carried into the meeting by her father. Ashley is Mr. Reagan’s youngest grandchild. Michael was also accompanied by his wife, Colleen, and their son Cameron, 5 years old. Michael Reagan made no comment as he left the meeting about 7 PM, California time. He and his wife and their two children left, as they had arrived, in a three-car Secret Service motorcade.
President Reagan visits his doctor. He has had no hearing loss in the past year.
The 50 states will end the fiscal year 1984 with surpluses totaling $5.8 billion, nearly three times the total for the previous fiscal period, the National Governors’ Association reported today. Next year’s surplus, however, will decline to about $4.3 billion, the group said, citing a survey from the affiliated National Association of State Budget Officers. The report also noted that some states had much greater surpluses than others but gave no specifics. Information on individual states will be reported at the end of January, it said.
With a wink to the nun who helped him through his last hours, Robert Lee Willie went to his death in the electric chair today for raping and murdering an 18-year-old woman on the night before she was to enter the Army. Elizabeth and Vernon Harvey, the mother and stepfather of the victim, watched intently but showed no emotion as Mr. Willie was strapped into the chair and given four alternating surges of 2,000 and 500 volts. The 26-year-old Mr. Willie had winked at Sister Helen Prejean, an opponent of the death penalty who was his spiritual adviser, but avoided eye contact with the seven other witnesses in the death chamber at Louisiana State Prison, including the Harveys. He was pronounced dead at 12:15 A.M. by Dr. Alfred Gould, the coroner for West Feliciana Parish, according to a spokesman for the prison system.
Mr. Harvey, after leaving the prison, said: “I’m sorry every victim doesn’t have the opportunity I had to see the perpetrator’s sentence carried out. I wish everyone could have the same satisfaction.” The victim, Faith Hathaway, 18 years old, was kidnapped, tortured, raped and then stabbed 17 times in 1980. Mr. Willie and Joseph J. Vaccaro testified at the trial that they were drunk when, from their car, they saw Miss Hathaway walking on the side of a road and picked her up. She was walking home from a discoth eque where she had been given a farewell party before entering the Army. The two men said they blindfolded her, raped her in the car and drove to a remote area. Each man blamed the other for inflicting the wounds that killed Miss Hathaway. “I think that justice is finally going to be served,” said Lizabeth Harvey, Miss Hathaway’s 14-year-old sister, who was at the prison but barred from watching the execution because of her youth. She joined a group of demonstrators for the death penalty at the prison gates, where seven nuns had gathered to protest the execution.
Made in the U.S. labels must appear on all clothing and other textile products manufactured in the United States under a new Federal law that went to effect Monday. The law is meant to promote the sale of American-made garments and textiles produced for home use and to protect the industry from extremely strong foreign competition.
Miami is the new Casablanca, some people say. The resort city has become a center of intrigue where ideological and criminal elements coexist in a way not seen elsewhere on this continent. Miami is the base for smugglers who oversee a multibillion drug trade, and for political exiles who spend their days plotting against foreign governments. Often the two groups overlap.
A Ramada Inn was accused of bias against blacks in a suit filed by the Justice Department in Federal District Court in Baltimore. The suit charged the Baltimore hotel of discriminating against blacks seeking to patronize the hotel’s bar. The defendants are the two operating companies of the hotel and bar and an official of the companies.
New York Mayor Koch said yesterday that he would not create a city holiday in 1985 to mark the birthday of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The Mayor said city employees who wanted to observe the birthday of the slain civil rights leader on Jan. 15 could do so without losing pay by drawing on accumulated leave time or by taking some time off in advance. But he refused to establish an additional paid holiday next year for all municipal workers – as the City Council had asked him to do in a unanimous resolution 10 days ago.
An anonymous letter-writer has asserted that she was responsible for bombing three abortion clinics and has threatened additional violence if the facilities reopen. The letter, sent to the editors of The Pensacola News-Journal, indicated that the writer felt guilty about having had an abortion while she was in the Navy. The newspaper turned the letter over to the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which is leading an investigation.
A 17-year-old Massachusetts boy accused of killing his father with a hatchet was released today in the custody of relatives after a judge said he was impressed by community support for the teen-ager. District Judge Alvin C. Tamkin refused to require bail from Robert Ludwig Jr., who turned himself into police about five hours after his father’s death November 18. He told authorities his father, a Boston taxi driver and a widower, was an alcoholic who had beaten him for years. Judge Tamkin ordered the teen-ager to return to school while he awaits trial for murder.
Defiant supporters of a jailed Pennsylvania minister were ordered today to explain in court why they have refused to relinquish control of their church. But supporters of the Rev. D. Douglas Roth, and his activities in behalf of the unemployed in the area, pledged to remain locked in the church, despite the possibility the sheriff would forcibly take control of the building. On December 21, Allegheny County Judge Emil Narick directed members of the council of the Trinity Lutheran Church in Clairton to turn over the keys and records to the church on Thursday but, armed with baseball bats, they locked themselves in the building and refused to comply. Mr. Roth was suspended by Bishop Kenneth May after members of his congregation complained of his support of labor activist groups which advocate confrontational tactics to draw attention to the unemployed.
An 11- year-old girl, left mute and paralyzed by carbon monoxide poisoning almost a year ago, regained her speech just in time to wish her startled family and therapists a Merry Christmas. The girl, Shandra Baldwin, described as having been “a little chatterbox,” suffered brain damage in an accident Feb. 28 when snow apparently clogged the exhaust pipe of a car in which she was riding, forcing carbon monoxide fumes into the passenger compartment. Doctors predicted she would not walk or talk again.
“When she had her accident, they told us if she would live she’d be nothing more than a vegetable for the rest of her life,” the girl’s mother, Linda Baldwin, 31, of Mayville, New York, said by telephone Thursday from the furniture factory where she works. “They told us they didn’t think she’d ever speak again, and if she did, it would be only family who would be able to understand her.” But then on December 17, for the first time since beginning daily therapy sessions last July at the Lake Erie Institute for Rehabilitation, Shanda said “Mama” to a therapist, Nannette Crawford. Later that day, “Mama”became “Mommy,” considered a slightly more difficult word to pronounce. The next day, Shanda began uttering complete sentences. She turned to another therapist, Linda Starkey, and said, “Good morning,” wished her a Merry Christmas and asked if she could call her mother.
The movie director Sam Peckinpah died in a hospital in Inglewood, California, after “a cardiac arrest,” his brother said. He was 59 years old.
Ted Hughes is appointed British Poet Laureate by Queen Elizabeth II.
The television soap opera “Edge of Night” ends a 28-year run
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1204.17 (+1.65)
Born:
Martin Kaymer, German golfer (PGA Championship 2010, US Open 2014), in Düsseldorf, Germany.
Barret Browning, MLB pitcher (St. Louis Cardinals), in Brunswick, Georgia.
Alex Lloyd, British racing driver, in Manchester, England, United Kingdom.
Beverly Mullins, American wrestler and model, in Clearwater, Florida.
Died:
Sam Peckinpah, 59, American film director (“The Wild Bunch”, “Straw Dogs”), of cardiac arrest.
History Diaries 