In a strong note issued by the State Department, the United States charged North Vietnam with “flagrant violation” of the Vietnam cease-fire agreements and urged the Soviet Union, China and other countries, all guarantors of the Vietnam accords of 1973, to persuade Hanoi to resume the political talks with Saigon that were broken off last year. In a toughly worded note released by the State Department, the United States said North Vietnam “must accept the full consequences of its actions” in “turning from the path of negotiation to that of war.” With the release of the document, sent on Saturday to eight countries and Secretary General Waldheim of the United Nations, all guarantors of the Vietnam accords of 1973, the United States seemed to be seeking to bolster its contention that Congress should increase military and economic aid to South Vietnam.
The Administration reportedly has under consideration the request of at least $300‐Million in military aid over the next six months and a doubling of this year’s $700‐million for the fiscal year beginning July 1. The State Department spokesman, Robert Anderson, was asked to explain the reference to Hanoi’s accepting the “full consequences of its actions.” He said the United States would not violate a legislative ban on combat activity in Indochina without Congressional approval. The Administration appeared determined to demonstrate that it would not let the Saigon Government down and to keep Hanoi worried about possible American responses. The Defense Department said the aircraft carrier USS Midway left Japan today along with two destroyers and a guided missile frigate but would not say where the ships were headed.
Some Pentagon officials suggested that the Midway had no specific orders to head for Vietnamese waters, but that the Administration wanted to keep this option open in case a huge offensive was launched by North Vietnam. The American note was sent to the Soviet Union, China, Britain, France, Hungary, Poland, Indonesia, Iran and Mr. Waldheim. All thse parties, except Iran, signed the March, 1973, document guaranteeing the fulfillment of the January 27, 1973, agreement ending the Vietnam war. Virtually since the January accord, both sides in the Vietnam conflict have accused each other of violating the terms of the agreement. Hanoi and the Việt Cộng almost weekly issue statements accusing Saigon or the United States of not fulfilling the terms of the agreement.
Heavy air strikes yesterday knocked out half of a convoy of 400 North Vietnamese trucks in the Central Highlands, the Saigon command reported today. The command’s report, which could not be confirmed from independent sources, asserted that 203 Soviet-made trucks were destroyed, 170 Communist troops killed and 8 antiaircraft emplacements knocked out in the strikes about 40 miles northwest of Kon Tum City. Twenty‐five trucks that Saigon reported destroyed were said to have been carrying fuel and ammunition. Secondary explosions were reported seen from the air. “That one does sound a bit extraordinary to me,” said foreign military observer here, who had not yet confirmed the strikes. He noted that North Vietnamese convoys rarely move in numbers like 400, particularly not near a sensitive military target such as Kon Tum. The city is 260 miles north of Saigon.
Since the fall last week of Phước Bình, the capital of Phước Long Province, the Saigon command has been reporting that the North Vietnamese and Việt Cộng have suffered heavy casualties. The command has issued such reports in the past after sharp military reverses. But one well‐placed staff officer insisted this morning that the report of the strikes on the Trường Sơn Highway was “absolutely true.” “Biggest convoy ever sighted,” he said; “biggest convoy ever hit.”
The convoy was reportedly moving south on the Trường Sơn Highway, which the communists have developed in the last two years, running south from the North Vietnamese border. The area of the reported strikes is near the three‐border area of Laos, Cambodia, and South Vietnam. Fighter‐bombers from three corps were said to have flown more than 100 strikes during the six‐hour attack on the convoy. This morning the command said there were further clashes in Kiến Tường province, on the Cambodian border southwest of Saigon. It reported that North Vietnamese troops, backed by armored personnel carriers, were attacking Government units four miles northeast at Tuyên Bình, a district town. Eighty Communist troops were killed by air strikes and artillery, the command said, and three armored personnel carriers were destroyed. Government casualties were put at 2 killed and 12 wounded.
Indonesia will withdraw her troops from the International Commission for Control and Supervision in South Vietnam if the situation there puts them in danger, according to Foreign Minister Adam Malik. Speaking to reporters on his return from Manila last night, Mr. Malik said he regretted the current increase in fighting in South Vietnam. “This has made the situation worse and if our men are in danger we will pull them out of the I.C.C.S.,” he said. Indonesia serves with Iran, Poland and Hungary.
Ragged refugees from the besieged town of Neak Luong, which commands Cambodia’s crucial Mekong River supply line, arrived, in Phnom Penh by boat today and described the town as under steady enemy shellfire and very short of food, with thousands going hungry. The refugees ran gantlets or insurgent fire from the river banks on the 38‐mile trip, and seven were wounded. The refugees said the shelling of Neak Luong was causing many casualties, and that the wounded were too numerous for all to be brought here to hospitals on the four helicopter evacuation flights that the government has been sending in daily.
The refugees described a military situation that sounded serious, but not yet desperate, with government troops still holding a small position on the west bank of the Mekong just opposite the town and reinforcements holding off the enemy for the moment. “If you stay there, you die,” said a woman who came out today with her four children. Neak Luong is virtually the last position still held by the government on the lower Mekong. Its fall would probably enable the insurgents to blockade the river, which is the Phnom Penh Government’s last surface supply route left to the outside world. The government depends on it for 80 percent or more of its supplies, which come almost entirely from the Americans. Since New Year’s Day, when the insurgents began their dryseason offensive and increased their pressure on the river, the Cambodian Government forces and their American backers have temporarily postponed all convoys, rather than risk the sinking of vital food and ammunition. Neak Luong is now isolated in the middle of the insurgent-held lower Mekong.
The refugees arrived at Phnom Penh’s river landing this morning on two military transport boats escorted by a gunboat. All said the food situation in Neak Luong was critical. They said that American and Cambodian transport planes were air‐dropping food for soldiers, but none for the 30,000 people who poured in from nearby villages as the insurgents pushed closer. “There’s no rice for civilians,” said one of the 25-odd refugees. “Even if you have money, you can’t buy any.” A woman added: “Little chiliren go around the town cryng for food. There’s nothing to be given them and nowhere to get food.”
“Shells are coming in everywhere,” said a mother nursing her 3‐month‐old boy. “You cannot even find a place to lie down to sleep. Many places are burned down.”
Two terrorists armed with bazookas attempted to shoot down an El Al airliner that was preparing to take off from Orly airport in Paris on a flight to New York with 136 passengers. The rockets missed the El Al plane and hit instead a Yugoslav jet and an airport storage building. Three persons were injured. An anonymous telephone caller telephoned a news agency in Paris and said the attack was the work of an Arab guerrilla group. The El Al plane had 136 persons aboard. A second attempt was made six days later, and the two tries were traced to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, to Muammar Qaddafi, and to the international terrorist Ilich Ramirez Sanchez (Carlos).
Portugal and the three Angolan liberation movements have reached agreement on the principal points of an independence agreement for the African territory, a spokesman for one of the movements said in Penina, Portugal. Hendrik Vaal Neto of the National Front for the Liberation of Angola said the points agreed on so far include the form of Angola’s future government and the distribution of ministerial portfolios.
British Labor politician John Stonehouse, who vanished from a Florida beach seven weeks ago and later entered Australia on a fake passport, has offered to resign his seat in the House of Commons, the deputy leader of the Labor Party. Edward Short, told Parliament. “I very much welcome this development,” Short added. Stonehouse’s affairs are being investigated by Scotland Yard.
The Provisional Irish Republican Army made plans to kidnap the heir to the British throne, Prince Charles, last year, three London newspapers reported today.
[Ed: Am I terrible for thinking in 48 hours tops they’d be begging the British to take him back?]
Hundreds of volunteers with buckets and straw manned a scenic 2-mile stretch of Irish coastline to protect it from thick, black sludge that seeped from a tanker into the waters of Bantry Bay.
When Valery Giscard d’Estaing, the head of the Independent Republican party, was elected President last spring, many French politicians thought the long-dominant Gaullist party was falling apart. Today, however, the Gaullist leader, Premier Jacques Chirac, is being viewed as almost as influential as the President.
More than 100 persons were detained in Pristina, capital of Yugoslavia’s Kosovo province, after a recent Albanian nationalist demonstration against Yugoslavia’s Marshal Tito, reliable Yugoslav sources said. The demonstration was reported to have called for a “greater Albania” incorporating Kosovo and other southern Yugoslav regions having majorities of Moslem Albanians.
Mihajlo Mihajlov, a dissident Yugoslav author, will go on trial January 27 on charges of spreading hostile propaganda against Yugoslavia, his lawyer reported Monday. If convicted, the 39-year-old Mihajlov would face a sentence of from 1 to 15 years in jail. The trial will be held in Novi Sad, about 45 miles north of Belgrade, the lawyer said.
A draft constitution proposed by the Greek Government has evoked furious criticism from opposition leaders, who say it represents a bid for authoritarian control by Premier Konstantine Karamanlis.
About 600 Greek students, demanding the dismissal of professors appointed under the former military regime, occupied Salonica’s medical school and apparently planned an extended stay. Many carried blankets, food and medical supplies.”
Egypt and Syria will receive only 58% of the $2 billion war chest they requested at the October Arab summit in Rabat, Morocco, according to authoritative Arab sources in Amman, Jordan. They sought the money to rebuild their armies for the war against Israel. The Arab oil producers have agreed to pay $580 million each to Egypt and Syria, $175 million to Jordan and $30 million to the Palestine guerrillas, the sources said.
Kurdish rebels, advancing under the cover of snowstorms in northern Iraq, have killed about 200 Iraqi troops in a major offensive and forced a government retreat into the Mosul Valley, a rebel radio broadcast claimed. The Kurds took the town of Amadiyah and drove the Iraqis from central Dohuk province in the twoday offensive, the broadcast said. Kurdish losses were not reported.
In a crime that shocked all of India, terrorists from the Mizo National Front (MNF) charged into the police headquarters at Aizawl, capital of the Mizoram state, and murdered the three top officials — Inspector General G.S. Arya, Deputy Inspector Sewa and Police Superintendent Panchapakesan.
A former South Korean chief of naval operations urged the Korean military services today to overthrow President Park Chung Hee. Former Adm. Lee Yong Un, once his nation’s top naval commander, told newsmen, here that the officers and men of the South Korean armed forces should “stop helping tyranny and stand with the people, instead of just sitting still watching, and stand up to break the bastion of tyranny.”
“As a former senior member of the nation’s military service, I demand that President Park resign immediately from his post,” Mr. Lee said. He voiced his support for politicians, clergymen, scholars and students in South Korea who he said were “bravely fighting to restore democratic politics.”
About 100 reporters of the newspaper Hankook Ilbo in Seoul held a rally for freedom of the press in South Korea and began a protest sit-in in their newsroom. They also announced support for another Korean paper, Dong-a Ilbo, which is in financial trouble because of canceled advertising. The government has been accused of putting pressure on businesses that advertise in the outspoken paper.
The Philippine Government announced today that it had no grounds for deporting the Rev. Edward M. Gerlock, a Roman Catholic priest from Binghamton, New York. But it put him on probation for three years and ordered him to work only in the Manila area.
Union workers at a Fort Nelson, British Columbia, natural gas processing plant returned to work after a two-day strike, apparently ending the danger of more cutbacks in natural gas exports to the Pacific Northwest. British Columbia’s natural gas exports to the United States were cut 50% last month because of technical difficulties in the Peace River gas fields.
The Rhodesian Government will not hold constitutional talks with the black nationalist leaders until the guerrillas stop fighting or the conflict shows unmistakable signs of ending, a source close to the Rhodesian government said today.
President Ford, in an unexpected television address, announced a drastic turn in his economic policies last night. He proposed a $16 billion income tax cut that would provide a rebate to individuals of up to $1,000 from payments on income in 1974. He also called for higher taxes on oil and natural gas that would raise the price of gasoline an unspecified amount, but less than 20 cents a gallon. “We are in trouble,” the President said, “but we are not on the brink of another great depression.”
On the eve of the formal convening of the 94th Congress, which their party will dominate, congressional Democratic leaders pledged to-take decisive action on the economy. They gave President Ford’s new economic proposals a mixed review.
Democratic Congressmen voted almost unanimously to abolish the House Internal Security Committee, which for 45 years under one name or another had led anti-Communist investigations in Congress. Members of the House Democratic Caucus voted to transfer to the House Judiciary Committee some of the functions and staff of the dissolved committee, along with files by its predecessor, the House Un-American Activities Committee.
The presidential commission investigating alleged domestic spying by the Central Intelligence Agency, was told by Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger at its first hearing that the number of “misdemeanors” by the agency was “quite small.” His statement was at variance with what was reliably reported to be his extreme concern and distress on learning of the charges against the agency. Richard Helms, a former head of the CIA and now Ambassador to Iran, and William Colby, the agency’s present director, also attended the first-day hearings.
The U.S. Supreme Court indicated strongly today that it would not permit states to punish physicians for performing abortions before the Justices legalized most abortions in January of 1973. The Justices unanimously affirmed a decision prohibiting Louisiana from suspending doctor’s license on charges that he performed an abortion in 1969 and invalidating a state law permitting such regulation of the medical profession. Since the high court decided the Louisiana case without a hearing or an opinion, it was difficult to determine any limits of the ruling. It seemed to say, however, that the Justices would apply retroactively their authorization for all but end-of-term abortions.
The Senate Rules Committee split 4 to 4 over the hotly disputed outcome of last November’s election to a New Hampshire Senate seat and left the final decision to the full Senate. The motion to seat Republican Louis C. Wyman without prejudice to the challenge brought by Democrat John A. Durkin lost on a tie vote. A motion to study the dispute further also lost on a tie vote. New Hampshire authorities declared Wyman the winner over Durkin by two votes, the closest Senate race in history. But under the Constitution, the Senate is the final judge of who is seated.
Margaret Bush Wilson was elected in New York as the first black woman board chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. “I assume they elected me because I’m competent and professional,” the St. Louis lawyer said. “My sex and my race are accidents of my birth.” A 55-year-old divorcee with a 24-year-old son in Harvard law school, Mrs. Wilson said she hoped to attract more young people. “We need a million members,” she said. A report noted that membership grew by 26,000 to 440,000 last year.
Lynn Townsend, chairman of the Chrysler Corporation, said that his company had begun a long-range reorganization that would leave it considerably smaller but able to operate profitably in a declining market. He said in Detroit, “We are making no assumptions here, in controlling and operating our company, that the market is going to ever get better than 6 million cars.” This was one of most pessimistic assessments of the auto industry’s future ever to come from one of its officials.
The Chrysler Corporation began offering rebates of up to $400 on specific models of new cars and light trucks in what was described as “an unprecedented five week campaign.” The move was driven by an inventory of 340,000 unsold 1975 models, with the incentive of paying customers rather than reducing the sticker price.
The Morgan Guaranty Trust Company of New York, the nation’s fifth largest commercial bank, became the first major bank since last April to lower its prime lending rate below the double-digit level that has been blamed in part for hobbling business expansion. It cut its prime rate — the rate charged to its most credit worthy customers — to 9¾ percent from 10¼ percent. A number of other banks, including the Chase Manhattan Bank, have reduced their prime rates to 10 percent.
An unarmed man waving a brown bag tried to force an Eastern Air Lines Boeing 727 to take him to Puerto Rico but was thwarted by another passenger and a crewman. The Atlanta-Philadelphia flight was diverted to Washington’s Dulles International Airport where police captured the man-identified as Laughlin Wright, 47, of Atlanta — after the passengers and crew were safely evacuated. John Warburton, a Philadelphia policeman, said Wright started pounding on the cockpit door. “He said he wanted to go to San Juan.” Warburton said he and an unidentified crew member “hustled him into the men’s room.” Warburton added, “He didn’t appear to be armed. He had a brown hag he was waving around, but he wasn’t making any threats.”
A man firing a rifle at “everything and everybody” killed two persons and wounded two others in the west Texas town of Ballinger. The gunman first fired into an unoccupied house, then went to the home of Fernando Martinez, where he killed Martinez, 50, and Jimmy Cuiro, 16, in the front yard. He entered the home and wounded Martinez’ wife and daughter-in-law. The gunman then fired wildly at police officers and fled to a nearby house. After the building was surrounded, a suspect, who was not identified, surrendered to officers.
Racial violence erupted for the second time in five days at Boston’s Hyde Park High School, resulting in arrests of eight black and five white male students. A policeman and a social worker were injured slightly. Schools were quiet elsewhere in the city, which has had a variety of racial incidents at schools since a court-ordered busing plan went into effect last fall. The latest violence began as a shoving match during the first break of the morning as students were changing classes. Although groups of white students walked out early, classes were not cancelled.
Hiroo Onoda, the Japanese army officer who kept fighting World War II in a Philippine jungle for 30 years because he got no orders to stop, has begun a tour of the United States to promote a book about his experiences. It already has sold 400,000 copies in Japan and earned him $200,000 in royalties. And, he told reporters candidly in a New York interview, “If all of you will read it, I will make more.
A federal judge in Washington refused to halt construction on a huge base at Bangor, Washington, for the Navy’s Trident submarine. A coalition of environmental groups had sought an injunction, but US. District Judge George Hart said it would not be in the interest of national defense to stop work on the $600 million base.
Delays in removing radioactive wastes from a dump in Salt Lake County, Utah, are inexcusable,” Senator Frank E Moss (D-Utah) said in a letter to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Washington. Moss noted that both federal and state agencies have found that the wastes constitute a health hazard. The situation ‘cannot be allowed to continue,” the senator said.
Commercial vessels maneuvered carefully around the hulk of a 300-foot dredge that capsized and sank Saturday in the main channel of the Port of Miami. The port was closed temporarily after the giant dredge Caribbean sank following a pump explosion. A giant oil slick had been feared from the 300,000 gallons of thick “Bunker C oil aboard the Caribbean, but authorities said the oil was not leaking from the sunken dredge. “We were very, very lucky, said a port spokesman.
The coldest wind chill ever recorded in North America was measured at Kugaaruk, in the Nunavut territory of Canada (formerly Pelly Bay, Northwest Territories). An air temperature of −60 °F (−51 °C) and a wind speed of 35 miles per hour (56 km/h) combined for a wind chill factor of -135 °F (-78 °C).
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 654.18 (-4.61, -0.70%)
Born:
Andrew Yang, American entrepreneur, attorney and political candidate, in Schenectady, New York.
Marquis Smith, NFL safety (Cleveland Browns), in San Diego, California.
David Thompson, NFL running back (St. Louis Rams), in Okmulgee, Oklahoma.
Matt George, NFL kicker (Pittsburgh Steelers), in Santa Clarita, California.
Jason Childers, MLB pitcher (Tampa Bay Devil Rays), in Statesboro, Georgia.
Vedrana Grgin-Fonseca, Croatian WNBA forward (WNBA Champions-Sparks, 2001, 2002; Los Angeles Sparks), in Split, Croatia, Yugoslavia.
The decade of the Steelers has begun.
History Diaries 