Progress in arms negotiations with the Soviet Union requires that financing not be halted for the MX missile and the $26 billion space-defense research plan, Secretary of State George P. Shultz told Congress. Mr. Shultz said he told Senate and House members that “if the Soviets can get what they want out of us without giving up anything in return, they would love it… Our coat is off, our sleeves are rolled up, we are ready to go to work,” Mr. Shultz said. The timing of the negotiations agreed to Tuesday in Geneva still has to be worked out, and Mr. Shultz said, “I think it’s important that these negotiations get started in good time.” Participants in the closed-door sessions said Mr. Shultz told them that the Soviet Foreign Minister, Andrei A. Gromyko, initially pressed for an American commitment to halt research into what the Administration calls the Strategic Defense Initiative and others call “Star Wars.” But at the end of the two-day meeting, Mr. Gromyko agreed on the joint statement calling for negotiations on three areas — limits on medium-range missiles, reductions in strategic arms and preventing an arms race in space.
In briefings for members of Congress and for the press in recent days, Administration officials have said that despite differences within the government over how to approach Moscow on arms control, there was virtually no disagreement in Geneva within the American delegation, which included officials of diverse views. Flying home with Mr. Shultz from Geneva on Wednesday, several officials told reporters that Mr. Shultz showed skill in holding the group together through the talks. They cautioned, however, that fundamental differences remained and would probably emerge when Washington has to consider actual trade-offs with the Russians. Defense Department officials have said they doubt that any agreement that can be adquately verified can ever be achieved. The State Department has been less pessimistic. In a news conference Wednesday, President Reagan said the United States was willing to “discuss trade-offs” in offensive weapons. He also stressed the importance of agreeing on as much verification as possible.
National security adviser Robert C. McFarlane briefed Pope John Paul II on the U.S.-Soviet agreement to resume arms control talks and listened to the pontiff’s “very constructive and useful” advice. McFarlane also met with Italian Prime Minister ‘Bettino Craxi to discuss the two days of U.S.-Soviet negotiations in Geneva this week. McFarlane told a news conference at the U.S. Embassy in Rome that the Pope was “very receptive to this new beginning.”
Declassified CIA documents disclose several major accidents involving Soviet submarines, including a 1981 Baltic Sea incident in which some crewmen on a crippled sub died of radiation poisoning, CBS News reported. Citing censored CIA reports it has obtained, CBS said, “Since the mid-1960s, six Soviet subs have been reported lost at sea, taking some 500 crewmen to their deaths.” It also noted that “as many as 30 crewmen died on the icebreaker Lenin in the mid-1960s after what a CIA source described as a meltdown of her nuclear reactor.”
In Torun, Poland, a security policeman on trial with three former subordinates in the killing of a pro-Solidarity priest denied that he or high-ranking Interior Ministry officials had approved any physical violence against the clergyman. He said that to have approved such violence would have been inconsistent with “socialist humanism.” Instead, the witness, Adam Pietruszka, who was stripped of his colonel’s rank after his arrest for aiding and abetting the crime, indicated that it was his chief accuser and co-defendant, Grzegorz Piotrowski, a former captain, who led the abduction and killing of the dissident priest on his own initiative.
The trial of three Bulgarians and four Turks charged with complicity in a plot to kill Pope John Paul II is expected to start in early April, a lawyer for one of the defendants said today. Mehmet Ali Ağca, the Turkish gunman already convicted of shooting the Pope in May 1981, will also be tried on a new charge of illegally bringing into Italy the gun used in the attack. “The trial is supposed to start in the first days of April,” said Giuseppe Consolo, lawyer for a Bulgarian defendant, Sergei Ivanov Antonov. Mr. Consolo said a date for the trial in Rome’s Court of Assizes had not been set. Mr. Antonov is the former head of the Rome office of the Bulgarian state airline. Besides Mr. Ağca and Mr. Antonov, two other Bulgarians and four Turks were indicted last October.
Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders have agreed on the outline of an agreement to establish a federal republic, senior diplomats reported today, but important issues remain to be resolved. President Spyros Kyprianou and Rauf Denktaş, leader of the Turkish community, are to meet at the United Nations on January 17 in hope of confirming the tentative points of accord and setting up machinery for negotiating the remaining issues. The meeting will be held under the auspices of Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar. The United Nations chief brought about the preliminary agreement in extended negotiations late last year, during which he held separate talks with Mr. Kyprianou and Mr. Denktaş. Next week’s face-to- face negotiations, which are expected to last three days, were agreed to then.
Challenger Gary Kasparov abandoned efforts to score his second victory in the world chess championship against titlist Anatoly Karpov and agreed to the match’s 34th draw. Kasparov, playing white, had been described as having a good chance of winning against Karpov, who leads 5-1 in the match, when the 40th game was adjourned Wednesday night. The two Soviet grandmasters played another 30 moves, but Kasparov was unable to capitalize on his one-pawn advantage, and the players finally agreed to a draw after the 70th move.
An explosion, apparently caused by leaking gas, blew apart a luxury apartment building in the southwestern London suburb of Putney, burying the residents in tons of rubble. Eight people were reported killed and seven were found alive in the wreckage. The blast occurred about 20 minutes after a resident called the Gas Board to report a leak. A spokesman said a safety inspector had just reached the building when it exploded. The resulting fire burned for two hours before being extinguished.
Sites for six new Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank were approved today by the government, an Israel official involved in the decision said. They would be the first such settlements to be established in the West Bank since the government of national unity took office in September. Officials said two of the approved sites are in the northern part of the West Bank, two in the Hebron area and one each in the Jordan Valley and the Jerusalem area.
Iraq said its warplanes attacked a “large naval target” near the Iranian oil terminal of Kharg Island, scoring “accurate and effective” strikes. “A large naval target” is usually Iraqi terminology for a tanker carrying Iranian oil. The Persian Gulf attack, the sixth claimed by Iraq this month, was not confirmed by gulf shipping sources. Elsewhere in the gulf war, Iraqi warplanes bombed and rocketed six Iranian border towns, killing five people and wounding 28, Iran said.
A top Tamil guerrilla leader and 13 other rebels were killed in an attack by security forces on Sri Lanka’s strongest rebel group, the National Security Minister said today. The Security Minister, Lalith Athulathmudali, said 44 guerrillas were captured Wednesday when the security forces attacked an arsenal of a guerrilla group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. Mr. Athulathmudali said the highest- ranking member and leader of the group “presently on Sri Lankan soil has been killed.” He identified the rebel leader as a man named Pandithan, adding that the group’s top leader, Velupillai Prabakaran, was in southern India.
President Reagan has selected John Gunther Dean, the United States Ambassador to Thailand, as the new American envoy to India, overruling State Department officials who had urged the appointment of another career diplomat, according to Administration officials.
Thailand and Vietnam agreed today to establish a demilitarized zone along a stretch of the Cambodian border, a Thai general said. The officer, Major General Salya Sriphen, commander of Thailand’s eastern task force, said the zone was formed after the presence of Vietnamese troops on Thai territory nearly provoked a conflict. He said a 22-yard-wide strip on each side of the border near Ampil “will be our DMZ.” Vietnamese officers agreed to the zone today when they decided to pull their troops back from the border, ending a 24-hour confrontation with Thai forces. Vietnamese forces have been fighting Cambodian rebels operating in the Thai-Cambodian border area. According to the general, the Vietnamese said they were misinformed as to the exact position of the border.
Nicaragua’s new president, Daniel Ortega Saavedra, was inaugurated in a ceremony marked by the unexpected arrival of the Cuban leader, Fidel Castro. Mr. Castro was expected to remain in Nicaragua overnight. Government officials suggested he might take part Friday in the dedication of a large sugar refinery outside Managua that was built with Cuban help. Mr. Castro appeared buoyant as he stepped off a Cubana airliner at midmorning. He smiled broadly as he embraced Mr. Ortega and other Nicaraguan leaders, and waved in the direction of reporters.
An American nun was seized in northern Nicaragua by anti-government insurgents Tuesday but was released several hours later, Government officials said. In separate attacks the same day, the same rebel group killed 14 civilians, according to the officials. The nun was identified as Sister Nancy Donovan, 52 years old, of Waterbury, Conn., a member of the Maryknoll order. A press attache at the Nicaraguan Embassy in Washington, Myriam Hooker, said by telephone that Sister Nancy had been quickly freed, “apparently because she was an American.”
Two leading Salvadoran clergymen have been given police protection after right-wing death threats against them for their work in trying to organize peace talks between the government and leftist rebels, Deputy Public Security Minister Carlos Lopez Nuila said. Archbishop Arturo Rivera y Damas and Auxiliary Bishop Gregorio Rosa Chavez have been provided with police and special intelligence agents since mid-December, he said.
The Salvadoran Air Force is said to have used a second American-supplied aircraft as a gunship this week, apparently undercutting an understanding between the Reagan Administration and Congress. The report came from witnesses to a recent battle and a source in El Salvador with knowledge of the plane’s use. American Embassy officials told reporters on Tuesday that one C-47 aircraft had been converted into a gunship and sent to El Salvador, equipped with special sights, night vision equipment and three specially mounted .50-caliber machine guns capable of firing over 1,500 rounds per minute. The officials did not tell reporters that an additional C-47 was delivered. Today, the United States Embassy spokesman, Donald Hamilton, said the second plane was fully equipped to serve as a gunship, but under an agreement with Congress was not yet mounted with machine guns.
General Paul F. Gorman, the Army’s top officer in Central America and an architect of U.S. policy there, will retire within a few months, a Pentagon spokesman said. As head of the U.S. Southern Command in Panama since May, 1983, Gorman, 57, has been responsible for carrying out the Reagan Administration policy of countering leftist revolution.
Millions of dollars in Ethiopian aid raised by a California group through poignant television appeals may never have reached Ethiopia, Government and private fundraising specialists said. The group, International Christian Aid, said it had channeled help through a French volunteer organization called Doctors Without Borders, but the French group’s director in Addis Ababa said it had not received “one centime.”
Senator Edward M. Kennedy struck out today at South Africa’s Foreign Minister for suggesting that he should be more concerned with the plight of blacks in the United States than those in this country. Midway through his eight-day trip, Mr. Kennedy accused Foreign Minister Roelof F. Botha of making an “untrue attack on the United States” when Mr. Botha said that the death rate for American black children was twice that of whites and that the black poverty rate was three times higher. Mr. Botha, appearing on South African television, said Mr. Kennedy should be more concerned with blacks in the United States. He contended that in Mr. Kennedy’s home state of Massachusetts, 17,500 black youngsters suffered from malnutrition. In a statement, Mr. Kennedy responded: “The infant mortality rate for blacks in South Africa is not twice as high, but six times as high as for whites. Black people in South Africa are not three times as likely to be poor, but 30 times.”
Three new Cabinet officers were appointed by President Reagan, who said in a statement that he would nominate Energy Secretary Donald P. Hodel to head the Interior Department and name as a replacement John S. Herrington, the White House personnel director. William J. Bennett, the chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, was nominated to become the new Secretary of Education Secretary, replacing T.H. Bell.
President Reagan participates in a Cabinet Council meeting.
President Reagan attends a farewell reception in honor of departing Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency William Ruckelshaus.
Less than two weeks before his second-term inauguration, Vice President George Bush said that he has taken preliminary steps to organize a 1988 presidential campaign, but has not committed himself to running. Bush said he is “talking to a handful of very close friends (to determine) what I should do now to protect a decision way down into the future.” He emphasized in an interview, however: “I haven’t made any decisions at all.”
An entertainment union has filed race and age discrimination charges against President Reagan’s inaugural committee for seeking in an advertisement 200 “clean-cut, all-American types” to perform for free, a union official said in New York. In another complaint, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists asked the Labor Department to force the committee to pay inaugural performers the federal minimum wage of $3.35 an hour. White House spokesman Larry Speakes has explained that Reagan, who served six terms as president of the Screen Actors Guild, had not known of the advertisement.
Congressional Democrats today opposed the idea, gaining support among some senior Republican senators, that Social Security recipients should forgo any cost- of-living increase in 1986. President Reagan said at a news conference Wednesday, in an apparent reversal, that he might consider deferring the 1986 inflation adjustment if there was “an overwhelming bipartisan majority” in both houses of Congress supporting such a step. Comments today by Representative Jim Wright of Texas, the House majority leader, and other Democrats made clear that there was no such majority now. Mr. Wright, appearing on the NBC News program “Today,” said that Mr. Reagan had made a promise to protect the cost-of-living adjustment and that Democrats would “help him keep his promise.”
The chairman of a Senate subcommittee on military spending today denounced the increasingly popular idea of a freeze on the Pentagon budget and said Congress itself was largely to blame for the growing cost of the military. In an interview, Senator Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska and chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, said he might support cutting the $313.7 billion military budget proposed by President Reagan, but he warned that it would require Congress to give up some weapons systems cherished by lawmakers for the money they bring to constituents. The Senate majority leader, Bob Dole, said Wednesday that Republican committee chairmen would probably agree to a freeze as the centerpiece of their package to reduce the budget deficit. But Mr. Stevens, along with Senator Barry Goldwater, Republican of Arizona, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, has emerged as a champion of resistance to an across- the-board freeze of Federal spending that would include the military budget.
Government scientists suggested that when a long-awaited blood test for AIDS virus becomes available, blood centers should test donors and should reject and warn those who may be at risk for AIDS. A blood test for the virus that causes Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome will be available “in a few weeks” and persons donating blood “should be informed” that they will be tested for AIDS virus, the Centers for Disease Control said in Atlanta.
A federal judge in New Orleans ruled unconstitutional a Louisiana law requiring that the theory of creationism be given equal time in public schools where the theory of evolution is taught. U.S. District Judge Adrian Duplantier said the law, which has not been enforced, violated the separation of church and state. Creationism holds that the biblical story of the Creation, in which God created man in his present form, is substantially true. The theory of evolution contends man and other life developed from simpler forms of life.
The federal government has issued a warning that is going to abortion clinics and medical offices around the country of a potential for violence January 20-22. January 20 is the date of the start of President Reagan’s second term; January 22 is the 12th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion. The Government would not say if it had knowledge of specific threats linked to those dates. The warning was delivered on Dec. 28 by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to the Washington office of the National Abortion Federation.
A statement of concern was issued by the heads of the orders of 24 nuns whom the Vatican has threatened to expel because of their views on abortion. The statement stopped short of taking any side and called for an “inherently just” process to resolve the conflict that would “honor the conscience of all involved.” The unsigned statement was issued by the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, an umbrella organization made up of the heads of Roman Catholic orders for women. A conference representative said no list of participants would be supplied.
The wife of the only agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation ever to be charged with espionage denies the bureau’s contention that her husband was motivated by “financial problems.” “I didn’t know we were broke until I read it in the paper,” said the wife, Paula Miller, a substitute teacher. Her husband, Richard W. Miller, has been accused by the Federal authorities of passing counterespionage secrets to a Russian spy who, the Government says, was his lover. “All that talk about the tremendous debt we were in just isn’t true,” Mrs. Miller said, adding that with eight children, they, like others, lived from paycheck to paycheck. She also said that since her husband’s dismissal and jailing the family was being forced toward public assistance.
Joseph Carl Shaw, condemned to death for killing two teenagers, asked for a last meal of pizza today and told his attorneys to file no more appeals aimed at halting his execution, scheduled for 5 AM Friday. Mr. Shaw, 29 years old, spent today with his mother, stepfather and half brother from Crestwood, Kentucky. He pleaded guilty to killing Carlotta Hartness, 14, and Tommy Taylor, 17, in October 1977 and was sentenced to death. He also admitted raping and killing Betty Swank 12 days earlier. He received a life sentence for that crime. Mr. Shaw’s death will be the first execution in South Carolina since 1962. It is the last Southern state to reinstate capital punishment since it was ruled constitutional by the Supreme Court in 1976. Nationwide, 34 prisoners have been executed since then
Madeleine M. Kunin, the first woman to be Governor of Vermont, took the oath of office today, pledging to balance fiscal prudence with a humane concern for creating more jobs for the poor, improving education and protecting the environment. In an eloquent and highly personal inaugural address in the old gray granite Statehouse, Mrs. Kunin evoked the dreams of her childhood as a Jewish immigrant and declared that Vermont did not accept “the harsh theory of the survival of the fittest.” But the 51-year-old Democrat stressed that Vermont faced a deficit of $35 million; it is one of only two states with such an imbalance. She said her first priority would be to eliminate it.
The Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway opened to commercial traffic today as four barges carrying petroleum products passed the dock where President Nixon announced the $2 billion project nearly 14 years ago. The 234-mile waterway, connecting some 16,000 miles of inland waterways on a shortcut from the middle-eastern region of the country to the Gulf of Mexico, had drawn legal challenges from environmental groups and railroad interests. Congress scrutinized the project repeatedly at budget hearings as critics called it a financial boondoggle with man-made channels ruining scenic waters. Advocates said it would be an economic bonanza, providing a cheaper barge route and helping rural Alabama and Mississippi river towns.
The number of deaths on commuter airlines rose sharply in 1984, although the nation’s large scheduled airlines had a record safety year, the National Transportation Safety Board said in its annual report. A total of 41 persons died in 20 commuter airline accidents last year, the board said, compared to a record low of 11 deaths in 17 accidents in 1983. For large scheduled airlines, there were 12 accidents in 1984. Only one, a cargo plane, involved fatalities, in which four persons died.
One major aspirin manufacturer — Plough Inc., makers of St. Joseph — said it would cooperate with a request by the government that aspirin bottles warn consumers of a possible link between the pain reliever and Reye’s Syndrome, the rare children’s disease. But the aspirin industry generally said it was waiting to review scientific studies. The federal Centers for Disease Control suggests that children who take aspirin for influenza or chicken pox may run a Reye’s, which last year was fatal to 25 times greater risk of getting one of every four children who contracted it.
A Chicago grand jury investigating home-repair schemes indicted 18 persons, including a contractor whose company charged an 84-year-old widow $50,000 to fix a leaky toilet. “We are seeking jail sentences in these cases,” Illinois Attorney General Neil Hartigan said. “If a person uses a gun to rob an individual of $10, he goes to jail. So should a person who robs a couple out of their life savings.”
Lenny Wilkens becomes first to coach in 1,000 NBA games when his Seattle SuperSonics defeat the Golden State Warriors, 89–86.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1223.50.
Born:
Robert Nilsson, Canadian NHL centre and left wing (New York Islanders, Edmonton Oilers), in Calgary, Albert, Canada.
Sammy Gervacio, Dominican MLB pitcher (Houston Astros), in Sabana de la Mar, Dominican Republic.
Died:
Anton Karas, 78, Austrian zither player and composer (The Third Man).
History Diaries 