President Reagan meets with the Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Belgium Wilfried Martens to discuss Belgium’s deployment of cruise missiles. The Prime Minister of Belgium told President Reagan today that his Government remained committed to the allied decision to deploy new American missiles in Belgium and other Western European nations. But the Prime Minister, Wilfried Martens, told Mr. Reagan that he could not say when the deployment would take place until he had held more talks with other members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, participants in the White House talks said. Mr. Martens is facing sharp political opposition in Belgium to his Government’s plan to deploy 48 land-based cruise missiles. A Belgian official said he believed the Belgian Cabinet would put the question of deployment to Parliament in March.
Mr. Martens, speaking to reporters in English as Mr. Reagan stood at his side, said: “We reaffirmed our comment to the objectives of the alliance. Security of Western Europe depends essentially on the solidarity and the joint efforts of the American and European allies. “I confirmed our attachment to the dual track decision,” Mr. Martens continued, “which is an expression of firmness in defense and openness for dialogue.” He referred to the 1979 alliance decision to place the medium-range missiles in Europe and at the same time to talk with the Soviet about curbing the weapons.
A high-ranking Reagan Administration official who took part in the two hours of discussions said later, “I am reassured.” “Our sense, flowing out of this meeting, is one of confidence and optimism,” said the official, who talked to reporters only on the condition that his name not be used. In December 1979, NATO decided to place 464 low-flying cruise missiles and 108 Pershing 2 ballistic missiles in five West European countries beginning in December 1983. e alliance has proceeded to do so in the absence of a negotiated agreement with the Russians. The alliance said the missiles were needed to offset what it perceived to be a Soviet advantage in its SS-20, a mobile, three-warhead missile targeted on Europe and parts of Asia.
American crews have been installing the Pershing 2’s and some cruise missiles in West Germany, and have set up cruise missiles in Britain and Italy. Belgium originally agreed to take the American cruise missiles in March and the Netherlands is scheduled to begin accept deployment of cruise missiles next year. Public opinion in Belgium and the Netherlands has been sharply divided over the issue.
The record of the Reagan Administration on human rights was dismal in 1984, but with a few more bright spots than in 1983, three private groups said yesterday in their annual report on human rights around the world. “The Administration avoided denunciations of even the grossest abuses” and “was, time and again, the noisy public apologist for ‘friendly’ governments that engaged in the grossest abuses of human rights,” said the report, issued by the Helsinki Watch, the Americas Watch and the Lawyers Committee for International Human Rights. The Administration was “vigorous in denouncing abuses in countries aligned with the Soviet Union or otherwise considered hostile by the United States,” the 139-page report said. But even when a Communist Government violated human rights, the United States looked away if it was politically convenient, said Robert Bernstein, chairman of the Helsinki Watch in New York. He said Rumania was “among the worst oppressors as far as human rights goes and invariably gets most-favored-nation status” from the United States because its “foreign policy is somewhat apart from the Soviet Union’s.”
A meeting of Soviet bloc leaders planned for this week in Bulgaria has been postponed, possibly because Konstantin U. Chernenko is ailing. A brief announcement published by the official press agency Tass today said that “by mutual agreement, the regular meeting of the Political Consultative Committee of the Warsaw Treaty member nations, scheduled for mid-January 1985, has been postponed till a later date which is to be agreed.” No further details were available officially. Soviet sources, however, said the most probable explanation was that Mr. Chernenko’s health made it impossible for him to make the trip to Sofia, the Bulgarian capital. Some diplomats also thought that the Warsaw Pact members may have failed to agree on a joint position in advance of the meeting.
The Soviet Union, which has characterized next week’s U.S. launch of an intelligence satellite as “preparation for Star Wars,” boosted a similar satellite into space 3½ months ago, Aviation Week & Space Technology reported. American analysts believe the Soviet satellite “is a new electronic intelligence-gathering vehicle positioned in an orbit frequently overflying the U.S. to intercept radio communications and data,” the magazine said. The Air Force’s Space Defense Operations Center at Colorado Springs said the satellite is in a 530-mile-high orbit.
As a former Polish security police colonel charged with aiding and abetting the murder of a pro-Solidarity priest ended his testimony today, his co-defendant and chief accuser rose in court and dennounced the evidence of his former superior as “fundamentally lies.” Earlier, the former senior officer, Adam Pietruszka, who has been stripped of his rank of colonel, had at least by inference underlined that his own chief, Gen. Zenon Platek, a suspended but unindicted official of the Ministry of Interior, had obstructed an inquiry into the murder of the Rev. Jerzy Popiełuszko. Mr. Pietruszka had ended two and a half days of testimony when Grzegorz Piotrowski, a former captain who preceeded him to the witness stand last week, asked to comment, as is his right under Polish law.
Britain’s National Coal Board said more than 1,300 striking miners went back to work, the biggest return on one day since November. The 10-month walkout was called to protest the closing of unproductive mines and the accompanying loss of jobs. The board said that 73,000 of the nation’s 189,000 miners have now abandoned the strike and that coal is being mined at 71 of Britain’s 174 pits.
Custody of what is believed to be the first baby in Britain borne by a surrogate mother for pay was awarded to the couple who contracted for her. British High Court Justice John Brimsmead Latey said the baby girl, born January 4 to a 28-year-old London woman, has been taken from Britain by the couple, whom he declined to identify. However, British news media said the two are Americans. Health Minister Kenneth Clarke said the government will decide in the next week or two whether to take action to outlaw what he called “commercial surrogacy.”
British pound sinks to record low US$1.11. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s Government, abandoning its hands-off approach, acted today to prop up the pound by forcing a sharp rise in interest rates. But it fell nonetheless. After initially rebounding to $1.13 from about $1.10 on the Government’s moves, the pound later sank back to $1.1137, a new closing low in London. In Frankfurt, meanwhile, the dollar reached a new record of 3.19 marks, fueling speculation that West Germany would be forced to follow Britain’s example and raise interest rates later this week. The dollar was also strong against other major currencies, while gold rose in the United States after falling in Europe.
West Germany plans to buy nearly 800 Patriot surface-to-air missiles, radars and launching control stations for more than $1.1 billion, the Pentagon said today. In notifying Congress of the proposed sale, the Pentagon said the missiles would modernize West Germany’s “aging air defense capability” and would be used to defend central European air space as part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s integrated air defense network. West Germany agreed to purchase the missiles from the United States in July. The agreement calls for the purchase of 779 missiles, 14 radars, 100 launching stations and 14 control stations as well as support equipment and spares. The cost is $1.149 billion, the Pentagon said.
United States missile experts continued their investigation today of a Pershing 2 rocket accident that killed three American soldiers and spurred debate in West Germany over the missile’s safety. About 20 American missile experts began their investigation at the accident site Sunday, trying to find out why one of the missile’s motors ignited on the ground Friday at a training area near Heilbronn, north of Stuttgart. The United States Army has released few details of the blast, but has said no nuclear warhead was on the missile when solid fuel in the first stage of the two- stage missile ignited during a “routine training exercise.”
The Israeli Cabinet approved a plan today to withdraw the Israeli Army from Lebanon in three stages, beginning within five weeks. The action came after 11 hours of discussions on Sunday and today. The vote was 16 to 6 in favor of the Defense Ministry’s withdrawal plan. Prime Minister Shimon Peres said he hoped the plan would be completed within “six to nine months.” “After two and half years in Lebanon we have learned the hard way that Israel should not become the policeman of Lebanon,” Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin said. The six ministers to vote against the plan were all from the right-wing Likud bloc and included the Likud leader and Foreign Minister, Yitzhak Shamir, as well as Moshe Arens, a Minister Without Portfolio. As was widely noted, the architect of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Ariel Sharon, the former Defense Minister, could not vote on the withdrawal plan — which he opposed — because he is in New York pursuing a libel case against TIME magazine.
A coalition of 21 major American Jewish groups said yesterday that a proposal before the Israeli Parliament that would alter the definition of who is a Jew was “morally and religiously offensive to us.” “The proposed change in the Law of Return would do violence to the principle of Jewish unity and jeopardize the sense of solidarity that binds the Jewish people everywhere to the state of Israel,” the organizations said in a joint statement. Under the legislation introduced by the religious parties in Israel and expected to be debated in Parliament tomorrow, only Orthodox conversions would be valid for those who want to enter Israel with the privileges of Jews. The American protest was signed by Reform and Conservative groups as well as community service agencies, including the American Jewish Congress, the American Jewish Committee and B’nai B’rith.
An anonymous caller claiming to represent the group Islamic Holy War said tonight that five Americans kidnapped here in separate incidents over the last year would be put on trial as spies. The caller also took responsibility for the deaths of two French peacekeeping observers who were killed with machine-gun fire this morning when their jeep was ambushed in the mostly Shiite Moslem shantytown suburb of Burj al Brajneh near the airport. Last week, the deputy commander of the French troops, Lieut. Col. Claude Cuenot, was found dead with a single bullet in his head in a desolate, bombed-out area of the city. His briefcase, believed to have contained French and Lebanese currency, was missing.
Three Moroccan warplanes were shot down and their pilots were killed in renewed fighting in Western Sahara over the weekend, according to the Polisario Front guerrillas fighting for the territory’s independence. Morocco confirmed there were clashes Saturday between the guerrillas and Moroccan troops building a defensive wall through the territory, but it said nothing about aircraft losses or casualties.
Iran said it downed an Iraqi plane in a battle over the Persian Gulf, and the Baghdad regime said its jet fighters “destroyed a large navy target” near Tehran’s oil terminal at Kharg Island. Iraq has used the term “large naval target” to refer to merchant ships, usually tankers. The Iranian report did not indicate how many planes were involved in the battle or the type of aircraft shot down. There was no independent confirmation of either report.
A policeman was shot dead today by Tamil separatist guerrillas in Sri Lanka’s troubled northern province, a Government spokesman said. He said a police sergeant and a patrolman were traveling in a jeep in Kilinochchi when they were shot by guerrillas on a motorcycle.
Cambodia’s 33-year-old Foreign Minister, Hun Sen, was named Prime Minister today, according to Government press agency reports from Phnom Penh. Mr. Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge commander who broke with Pol Pot in 1977 and supported the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia the next year, was elected by the country’s National Assembly, the reports said, to replace Prime Minister Chan Si, who died late last month in Moscow.
Cambodian guerrillas clashed with Vietnamese troops at two border points today as non-Communist forces braced for a Vietnamese assault on their last surviving camp, Thai military sources said. They said at least nine guerrillas of the Khmer People’s National Liberation Front were wounded when a new battle erupted at their former base at Rithisen, opposite the Thai village of Nong Samet.
The U.S. and China have agreed in principle on the sale of American naval weapons to the Peking government and on a Shanghai port visit in April by three U.S. destroyers, United Press International quoted Pentagon officials as saying. The reported agreement on the sale of the remote-controlled Phalanx deck gun, gas turbine engines, sonar equipment and torpedoes was reached during a recent visit to Washington by a Chinese naval delegation, the officials said. In Peking, the visiting chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, General John W. Vessey Jr., concluded talks with Chinese leaders. Vessey said today that military ties between the United States and China “are designed to promote peace and understanding, and threaten no third party.” General Vessey, on the third day of a weeklong official visit here, offered no elaboration in his remarks, which were made at a banquet for Chinese military leaders.
Fires swept Australia and, driven by high winds and scorching temperatures, killed three people, forced evacuations and blackened hundreds of thousands of acres of forest, grazing land and bush. Hundreds of sheep, cattle and wild animals died after being trapped in flames that swept the states of South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales. A man and two of his grandchildren were killed by fire near Melbourne, and residents of Maryborough were evacuated as 800 firemen fought a blaze there.
A boat sank in the Amazon River in northeast Peru, the authorities said today, and 50 people were missing and feared dead. The 55-ton Rosita sank Saturday about three hours after leaving here, and civil guards were still searching for bodies today, officials said. The ship’s captain, Dinasio Flores, was one of the approximately 80 survivors.
A major train disaster in Ethiopia was reported by the authorities in Addis Ababa. They said a passenger train derailed on a bridge and plunged into a ravine, killing 392 people and injuring 370.
The Justice Department announced 16 indictments and more than 60 arrests today in a crackdown on church groups accused of smuggling illegal aliens from Central America. The indictments were based in part on evidence gathered by four undercover agents who, wearing concealed tape recorders, attended church meetings in Tucson, Arizona, about helping people flee from El Salvador and Guatemala to the United States. Aim of Sanctuary Drive Some of those indicted said today that they had helped refugees enter and hide in the United States as part of a national movement to provide sanctuary to people who face persecution and death squads in El Salvador and Guatemala. They said their actions had been necessary and legal because of what they called the Reagan Administration’s illegal refusal to grant political asylum to the majority of Central American refugees. The Adminstration contends that most asylum applicants from Central America are fleeing poverty, not persecution.
New cuts in Federal aid for the arts are sought by President Reagan, according to Administration officials and budget documents. They confirmed that Mr. Reagan would soon ask Congress to reduce the budget of the National Endowment for the Arts by 11.7 percent. Senator Claiborne Pell said the proposed cuts “would create a financial crisis” for many cultural institutions.
The President and the First Lady travel to the Corcoran Gallery of Art.
House Republican leaders today announced a policy agenda reflecting many of President Reagan’s goals, including tax simplification, broad spending cutbacks, continued research into space-based weapons, production of the MX missile and aid to the rebels in Nicaragua. The policy agenda, which lists more than 250 proposals, differs from the 1984 Republican platform in not including proposals to allow organized prayer in the schools or to ban abortion. The proposals in the agenda, announced by House Republican leaders at a news conference, do not all have universal support among House Republicans, and some goals that have support are not included. Leaders acknowledged that many of the proposals would not be approved by Congress.
Limits on stock trading credit would be set by the various exchanges rather than the Federal Reserve Board under a recommendation by the board, which was assigned such authority by Congress in 1934. Meanwhile, it was disclosed that Treasury Secretary Donald T. Regan wants Congress to consider the total abolition of margin rules.
A plan to use 200 unpaid performers was abandoned by President Reagan’s inaugural committee in the face of picket lines and legal petitions. The committee said it would pay each singer and dancer $375, triple the union rate, plus travel and living expenses. Last week, the committee published a call for “clean- cut, all-American” and “nonunion” performers willing to entertain for expenses only.
Reviews of age bias on the job were expanded by the Supreme Court. The Justices agreed to decide whether a city may force its firefighters and police officers to retire at the age of 55 without first proving that the mandatory retirement is necessary for safety and efficiency.
Bernhard Hugo Goetz hired new lawyers. They said that the 37-year-old nuclear engineer was not a “vigilante” and that if he was indicted for shooting four youths who accosted him in a subway train, he planned to stand trial and perhaps raise the issue of self-defense. A few days ago Mr. Goetz began to hire the new defense lawyers, both of whom are well-versed in trial strategy. Frank Brenner, his former attorney, withdrew from the case yesterday, citing an “irreconcilable disagreement” with Mr. Goetz over “how his defense to the charges should be conducted.”
The jury in Ariel Sharon’s libel trial against TIME magazine began deliberating in Manhattan. The panel will resume consideration today of whether the magazine libeled the former Israeli Defense Minister in an article about a massacre of Palestinian civilians in Lebanon.
Arch A. Moore Jr. became Governor of West Virginia again, succeeding John D. Rockefeller 4th, who succeeded Mr. Moore eight years ago. But the mood is now bleaker. West Virginia has the nation’s highest unemployment rate, reflecting the state’s dependence on smokestack industries.
Governor Richard D. Lamm, protesting that Colorado voters have created one standard of care for those with money and another for the poor, signed an anti-abortion constitutional amendment into law. The amendment, approved last November by a 12,000-vote margin in a 1.2-million turnout, forbids the use of state funds for abortions. Lamm said: “There are now two levels of care in this state — one for women with money and another for the poor. For a poor woman who wants an abortion, the state must say no.”
A federal appeals court refused to grant a stay of execution to Doyle Skillern, leaving Texas Governor Mark White and the U.S. Supreme Court as his only hopes to avoid execution early Wednesday. Skillern, 48, is sentenced to die for the October 23, 1974, murder of Patrick Allen Randel, 40, a Texas Department of Public Safety undercover officer.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children launched a nationwide push at a Washington news conference to promote state legislation aimed at improving methods of finding and helping victimized children. Officials of the nonprofit center said they are distributing to legislators in all 50 states a wide-ranging guide that recommends tighter, more effective state laws “to protect children.”
Senator Lowell P. Weicker Jr. (R-Connecticut), comparing South Africa to Nazi Germany, became the first U.S. senator and the first elected Republican arrested outside the South African Embassy in Washington in a series of protests against the white-ruled nation’s apartheid policies. “The principles that South Africa espouses are no different from the principles that Nazi Germany espoused and against which many Americans died,” Weicker said. The senator was charged with violating a city law that requires protesters to stay 500 feet away from the embassy they are picketing.
Lawyers cited the confessions of two women drug addicts in pleading in Raleigh, North Carolina, for a new trial for Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald, convicted of killing his pregnant wife and two daughters 15 years ago. But prosecutors said at least six persons have confessed to the murders that inspired the television movie “Fatal Vision” and discounted the confessions as “mental aberrations.” MacDonald, now 41, was a Green Beret captain stationed at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, in 1970 when his wife Collette, 26, and their two daughters, Kimberly, 5, and Kristen, 2, were bludgeoned and stabbed to death. A defense attorney, Brian O’Neill, said two women had admitted participating in the slayings, and had implicated a third person. New defense evidence offers a motive for the crime and witnesses to implicate the three, Mr. O’Neill said. But Brian Murtagh, a Federal prosecutor on the case for 13 years, countered that statements from the women “just cannot be reconciled.”
The Italian 9-millimeter Beretta has been chosen to replace the Colt .45 as the standard pistol for the American armed forces, the Army announced today. Beretta, whose American division is in Accokeek, Md., will be awarded a five-year contract to produce 315,930 guns for the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force and Coast Guard for more than $50 million, according to a Pentagon statement. In forsaking the heavier .45, whose bore is about 11½ millimeters, for the 9-millimeter weapon favored by other Western armed forces, the Army changed 74 years of tradition. The Army chose the Beretta from among eight American and foreign competitors after extensive testing. Colt Industries of Hartford, Connecticut, entered a 9-millimeter gun into the copetition but dropped out “because it couldn’t tool up to meet delivery schedules,” the Army spokesman said.
The chief heart surgeon at the Naval Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, which treats Presidents, Congressmen, and other dignitaries, has been suspended because of concerns over his technical performance, the Navy said today. The unnamed surgeon, who had been serving as chief of cardiothoracic surgery at the hospital, was suspended from clinical privileges at the end of November, according to Lieutenant Alan Goldstein, special assistant for public affairs in the Naval Medical Command here. Mr. Goldstein said the action was taken because of “concerns as to this doctor’s technical performance which arose through the ongoing internal process of the quality assurance program at the hospital.” The doctor has been assigned to administrative duties while he undergoes an evaluation, Mr. Goldstein said. The physician will be given a hearing and allowed to rebut any evidence against him in a process that could take 60 to 90 days, he added.
Caroline Kennedy never entered the room where her cousin David was staying before he was found dead of a drug overdose, according to sworn statements from her released today. In the statements, President Kennedy’s daughter told Palm Beach County State Attorney David Bludworth the same thing she has said publicly — that she never set foot in her cousin’s room or saw him during his stay at a Palm Beach hotel. A state judge ordered Mr. Bludworth to release the 39-page report today. David Kennedy, the 28-year-old son of the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of the slain President, was found dead April 25. There had been rumors that Miss Kennedy and a friend took evidence from the room before her cousin’s body was found. She denied the reports publicly and in the sworn statement.
A federal judge ordered the Department of Health and Human Services to act within 60 days on a consumer group’s request to ban all domestic sales of raw or unpasteurized milk and its products. U.S. District Judge Gerhard A. Gesell said the department’s justification. for continued delay “is lame at best and irresponsible at worst.” Gesell said the agency’s own top health officials admit that “the consumption of ‘certified’ raw milk… has been linked to the outbreak of serious disease.”
Nonprescription baldness cures would be barred from the marketplace under a rule that is to be published by the Food and Drug Administration. A spokesman for the agency said the preparations were not harmful but ineffective.
Whether psychoanalysis is scientific is under study again in what some view as an effort to destroy its intellectual status and what others see as a defense of its workability. Adolf Grünbaum, a philosopher of science, has proposed that psychoanalytic theory may be scientifically respectable, but he finds it poorly defended by most of its advocates.
Flashes of X-rays lasting only billionths of a second are giving scientists their first highly detailed looks at individual living human cells. The details obtained with a new technique are far finer in resolving power than can be obtained with the best of light microscopes.
Martina Navratilova is 3rd to win 100 tennis tournaments (Connors & Evert).
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1234.54.
Born:
Jon Beason, NFL linebacker (Pro Bowl, 2008, 2009, 2010; Carolina Panthers, New York Giants), in Miramar, Florida.
Aaron Brooks, NBA point guard (Houston Rockets, Phoenix Suns, Sacramento Kings, Denver Nuggets, Chicago Bulls, Indiana Pacers, Minnesota Timberwolves), in Seattle, Washington.
Joel Rosario, Dominican jockey (Kentucky Derby, Dubai World Cup 2013; Belmont Stakes 2014, 2019), in San Francisco, Dominican Republic.
Died:
Jetta Goudal, 86, French actress (“White Gold”).
History Diaries 