A White House official said today that President Reagan, in the first substantive meeting of his new term, would review arms-control positions Tuesday morning with his new team of negotiators. The head of the negotiating team, Max M. Kampelman, is a co-author of an article that will appear in The New York Times Magazine next Sunday that expresses strong doubts that a breakthrough in arms-control talks is possible in the near future. Mr. Kampelman is a strong supporter of the President’s research program into missile defense, known by the Administration as the Strategic Defense Initiative. The article expresses views that are opposed by the Soviet Union, which has argued that the Reagan space defense initiative will cause further instability. The Russians have said that unless it is stopped, meaningful arms-control agreements are impossible.
Former Senator John G. Tower, the Texas conservative who will head the negotiating team in the talks on strategic arms, comes to the job with a long history of concern over the Soviet military buildup. He has an outspoken determination to increase American military might and a reputation as a forceful debater. His chief qualifications for the job, he said at a news conference at the State Department on Friday, are his academic background in foreign policy issues – he was an assistant professor of political science at Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, Tex., before winning his Senate seat in 1961 – and his familiarity with modern weapons systems gained as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. That, he said, “gives me a pretty good foundation,” although he acknowledged he had “a good deal of homework to do.”
General Bernard W. Rogers, the American commander of North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces in Europe, was quoted as saying he would like to meet the Soviet commander of Warsaw Pact forces, Marshal Viktor G. Kulikov. “There is always room for dialogue in our profession,” Rogers reportedly told the West German daily Neue Osnabruecker Zeitung. “I would like to sit down with him… hear his opinion and tell him mine. I believe it would have a soothing effect on the people on both sides.”
Leaders of Cyprus’ long-hostile Greek and Turkish communities, reported last week to be near a breakthrough on the issue of reunification, failed again in extended talks to agree on details of a new federal state. Rauf Denktaş, the Turkish Cypriot leader, said he and Greek Cypriot President Spyros Kyprianou will meet again at the United Nations today. U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar, who is supervising the consultations, delayed plans to leave New York for London. Mr. Denktaş called it “a last attempt” to reach agreement.
Sharp reversals in union power among Western Europe’s labor unions were apparent in a survey of half a dozen nations. Union membership has declined almost everywhere on the Continent. A survey of the situation in half a dozen nations shows sharp reversals in union power, not only in their ability to win wage increases and other benefits for their members but also in their capacity to influence governmental policies. Their decline has reached a point where “they’re desperate for a role,” in the words of Lord Lever, a former minister in Labor Governments in Britain. Austerity programs imposed by many governments, including some that are at least nominally socialist, have forced European labor officials to accept cutbacks in jobs and benefits, however grudgingly.
Prime Minister Rashid Karami said today that Lebanese and Israeli negotiators would resume their suspended talks next week on “the program and timetable for an Israeli withdrawal” from southern Lebanon. Mr. Karami made the announcement of the new session, scheduled for Tuesday, after he and President Amin Gemayel met with a United Nations Under Secretary General, Brian Urquhart of Britain, in Beirut. Mr. Urquhart has traveled to Israel, Syria and Lebanon in the last week to get the United Nations-sponsored negotiations started again.
Prime Minister Rashid Karami said today that his Government would try to obtain the release of five Americans kidnapped in Moslem West Beirut in the last year. He made the announcement after meeting with the United States Ambassador, Reginald Bartholomew. “We shall undertake the necessary contacts because it is not proper that the freedom of these Americans be restricted in this fashion,” he told reporters after the meeting.
Iraqi jet fighters “scored a direct hit on a large naval target” near Iran’s Kharg Island oil terminal today and returned safely to base, an Iraqi military spokesman announced in a communique read over the state television. In Iraqi military parlance, a “large naval target” usually indicates an oil tanker.
Three Portuguese nationals were arrested today at Los Angeles International Airport on suspicion of conspiring to sell $619,000 in munitions to Iran, including components from the Hawk missile system, United States Customs Service officials said. Arrested as they prepared to board a plane to Portugal were Eduardo Ojeda, 54 years old, Moises Broder, 47, both residents of Portugal, and Carlos Ribeiro, 45, a native of Portugal who lives in Los Angeles and works as a travel agent, according to Alan Walls, a Customs agent. Shortly after the arrests, which came after a 10-month investigation, Customs agents seized electronic components in 23 boxes at a storage company in Irvine, a suburb of Los Angeles. The items included components classified by the federal government as part of the Hawk missile system and components of mobile tactical radar systems, officials said. None of the equipment was believed to have been stolen from the government. Mr. Walls said none of the items was believed to have been delivered to Iran.
An Indian magistrate said today that intelligence officials had found many incriminating documents, including photocopies of military deals and secret military information, in the homes of several Government officials and others arrested in a major espionage scandal here. One of the suspects had worked in the Prime Minister’s office for 15 years. The magistrate, Bharat Bhushan, said, “The police told me that the suspects were passing on vital information connected with defense and our national security to certain foreign powers, although they have not disclosed the names of these powers.” On Friday, Mr. Bhushan ordered eight men suspected of spying for foreign agencies into police custody until January 28.
A Chinese domestic airliner carrying 41 people crashed on landing at Jinan, about 250 miles south of Peking, killing 38 people, including two Americans. They were identified as Donald Fox, 45, an engineer for Hollis Automation, and Peter Barkanic, 27, market development manager for the U.S. BeijingWashington Co. Their hometowns were not immediately known.
President Francois Mitterrand left the French territory of New Caledonia in the South Pacific after a 12-hour visit today. There was little sign that his talks with groups for and against independence had narrowed the differences between them. “As a result of these meetings,” Mr. Mitterrand said in a statement at the airport before his departure, “the string that we feared might have broken has been mended and the dialogue continues.”
The Parti Quebecois, which came to power in 1976 with a vision of independence for Quebec, today set aside separatism as a goal for the foreseeable future. At a special congress in Montreal, 61 percent of the 1,536 delegates voted to change a party platform adopted last year that would have made a vote for the Parti Quebecois in the next election a vote for Quebec’s independence. They substituted a less binding formulation that described independence for the French-speaking province as a “fundamental objective.”
A Cuban jetliner bound for Nicaragua crashed shortly after takeoff from Havana airport, killing all 40 people aboard, the official Cuban news agency reported. The agency said the dead on the Soviet-made Ilyushin 80 included an unidentified American, 25 Cubans and 10 Nicaraguans — among them Sandinista government officials and the wife and daughter of the Nicaraguan ambassador to Cuba. The plane took off about 8 AM on a scheduled flight to Managua, and minutes later crashed onto a road in San Jose de las Lajas, on the outskirts of Havana, Prensa Latina reported. It said the cause of the crash had not been determined.
Four Roman Catholic priests holding high posts in the Nicaraguan government were ordered by the nation’s bishops not “to exercise their priestly ministries or to participate in sacred functions, including officiating at Mass, hearing confessions or offering Communion. However, the four — Foreign Minister Miguel d’Escoto; Culture Minister Ernesto Cardenal; his brother, Education Minister Fernando Cardenal, and Edgard Parrales, ambassador to the Organization of American States — said that despite the bishops’ action, they will continue to defy Vatican instructions to give up their posts.
Nicaraguan rebels are suspected of having killed several Hondurans and Salvadorans in Honduras from 1981 to 1984, apparently in an effort to end gunrunning operations from Nicaragua to El Salvador, according to a Honduran official and Hondurans with close contacts in the Government. Many of the killings are believed to have been connected with the activities of a secret, army-backed, Honduran paramilitary group known as the “Special Investigations” unit. The unit reportedly used Nicaraguan rebels in its operations, according to two of the sources. Honduran soldiers are also reported to have carried out several killings, they said.
Unidentified Salvadoran gunmen assassinated the young rightist mayor of the eastern town of San Jorge in the latest in a series of apparently political killings. Mayor Graciela Monico Palma, 25, was killed instantly when four intruders opened fire in her office. A member of the ultrarightist Arena party, she died a week after another rightist mayor, Domingo Aviles, 55, of Santa Elena, was assassinated just six miles away. That killing followed by three days the murder of the government’s chief corruption investigator, Pedro Rene Yanez, a member of President Jose Napoleon Duarte’s centrist Christian Democratic Party.
Workers at 34 factories freed about 200 executives and technicians today who had been held hostage for three days, but kept to their demand for pay raises and went ahead with a nationwide general strike. The hostages were released at the urging of President Hernan Siles Zuazo, who had negotiated for hours with management and the protesters. No injuries were reported among the hostages. In initial declarations, they said they had been well treated by the workers, who were not armed. The factory workers have been demanding 200 percent pay raises, which they say are necessary to keep up with an inflation rate. Felipe Tapia, spokesman for the workers’ labor union, said the effects of the general strike, by 50,000 factory workers, would not be felt until Monday. Company owners said they would try to negotiate a settlement.
2,000 Ethiopian Jews have died in the Sudan since their exodus from Ethiopia began last spring. In addition, 2,000 others have been stranded in the Sudan by the suspension of Israel’s once-secret airlift of Ethiopian Jews from Khartoum to Tel Aviv. Some of the Ethiopian Jews were found at a refugee camp in the eastern Sudan this week. One of them described his arduous journey, the deaths of many friends and his fears about the future.
The leader of the main exile group fighting white minority rule in South Africa acknowledges that his war effort has slowed in the last three months as a result of actions against his guerrillas by neighboring, black-governed countries. The slowdown in such activities as sabotage and bomb attacks has coincided with mounting unrest and labor activism inside South Africa. “We have had to be very careful over the past three months,” said Oliver Tambo, the leader of the African National Congress, an organization that is outlawed in South Africa.
South Africa rejected a request by black leader Jesse Jackson to visit the country next month. South Africa’s ambassador to the United States, Bernardus G. Fourie, wrote Jackson that a February visit is “not opportune for the South African government” but said a future request would be considered “in the light of prevailing circumstances.” South Africa had granted Jackson a visa for the first half of January, but Jackson asked for a new visa so that he could attend the installation of Desmond Tutu as bishop of Johannesburg on February 3.
President Reagan approaches the start of his second term Sunday with the most dramatic successes of his first four years framing the most important and difficult tests of his second. After four years in office and a landslide re-election, many Presidential scholars say Mr. Reagan has already proved himself above average among the nation’s 40 Presidents. But whether history ultimately ranks him among the near great or below average, they say, is likely to turn on how he handles the challenges of the next four years. In foreign policy, his aggressive buildup of the nation’s arsenal of strategic weapons has set the stage to test the Reagan thesis that successful arms control can be achieved only when the United States bargains from a position of strength. Already Mr. Reagan has turned to that as his first priority, and most politicians say that achieving a major arms agreement with the Soviet Union would secure him an important place in history, but that failure to strike any accord in his eight years in office could be damaging.
The President and the First Lady host a Reception for the members of the Inaugural Trust.
President Reagan builds a snowman in the Rose Garden with his granddaughter Ashley.
Senate Republicans will not call for a freeze in military spending in 1986, the majority leader said today. This means they will have to cut deeper into domestic programs to reach their goal of reducing next year’s projected budget deficit by $50 billion. A freeze in 1986 on all spending, including the military budget, was the centerpiece of the Senate Republicans’ plans when they began to discuss ways to cut the deficit earlier this year. Their leader, Bob Dole of Kansas, said today that the senators still planned to slow the growth rate in the President’s military budget.
The first secret military mission by an American space shuttle, set for launching Wednesday under a cloak of elaborate new security measures, will conduct a crucial test of a troubled Air Force propulsion system needed to keep the shuttle program on schedule for the rest of the year. Plans for at least 4 of the 12 shuttle missions scheduled for this year depend on the successful operation of the satellite-boosting rocket, according to the Air Force and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. A fifth mission, another secret military flight carrying an undisclosed payload in September, may also require the propulsion unit. The presence of the rocket system, called an inertial upper stage, or I.U.S., as an integral part of the secret Defense Department payload is one of the few unclassified aspects of this week’s mission. The rocket’s solid-fuel motors are to boost the secret satellite, widely reported to be an advanced electronic intelligence-gathering unit, from the space shuttle Discovery’s low orbit to a higher operational orbit.
Edwin Meese III, the nominee for attorney general, said he spent $700,000 defending himself during an investigation by an independent counsel last year and has again asked the government to reimburse him, the Washington Post reported. Counsel Jacob A. Stein investigated several allegations against Meese, including accusations that he gave federal jobs to persons with whom he had financial dealings. Stein found that there was no basis for prosecution.
The Republican National Committee elected its leadership for another two years and heard Chairman Frank Fahrenkopf outline a long-range plan for the party to capture the House of Representatives. The national committee unanimously reelected Fahrenkopf; Paul Laxalt, general chairman; Betty Heitman, co-chairman; and William McManus, treasurer, at the group’s first session since the 1984 election.
Jurors in Ariel Sharon’s libel suit against Time Inc. adjourned after spending the day considering whether TIME magazine knew that a report it published about Sharon was false, or published the report. with reckless disregard of whether it was false. The question is the third issue the federal jury in New York must decide before it can determine whether Sharon, a former Israeli defense minister, was libeled, as he has contended in his $50-million suit.
Widespread farm protests have erupted across the Middle West in recent days with several others being planned, involving some school and business closings. The protests, including a tractor drive across the country, silent vigils and noisy attempts to disrupt auctions of bankrupt farms, focus on the continuing financial problems of the nation’s more than two million farmers. High interest rates and stagnant farm commodity prices have combined to produce record numbers of farm foreclosures, repossessions and voluntary liquidations in recent years. One university study found one-third of Iowa’s farmers approaching insolvency.
Ernest Keiser, the businessman who lured renegade CIA agent Edwin Wilson back to the United States, was convicted in White Plains, New York, of second-degree grand larceny and issuing a false financial statement. Keiser, 65, is to be sentenced February 19. He was convicted of swindling $415,000 from New York investor John Farris in 1980 by falsely claiming to own 2,000 acres of land near Orlando, Florida, that he was going to develop. In 1982, Keiser helped the Justice Department lure Wilson from Libya with a guarantee of safety. Wilson was convicted of conspiracy and firearms violations in connection with weapons sales to Libya and for smuggling explosives to Libya.
Fear of anti-abortion terrorists has led a large health facility in suburban Boston to withdraw its abortion services. In an unsigned statement, the 40 physicians of Goddard Medical Associates in Brockton said acts of terrorism around the country and “the constant harassment of our patients have forced us to make this decision.” In interviews across the country, other doctors, nurses and clinic administrators gave graphic descriptions of the physical and psychological stress they have been under in the last few years.
Seven of 35 people pictured in photographs recovered from a drifter charged with kidnapping and molesting a California boy have been identified and none of them are missing, the police said Friday. The suspect, David R. Collins, 55 years old, a transient former convict from Buffalo, is charged with kidnapping and molesting Bobby Smith, 13 years old, of Long Beach, California. The police said the boy was lured from home on April 10, 1983, and taken on a 21-month odyssey that ended last week in Providence, where the police said they found him at Mr. Collins’s apartment while they were investigating a fatal crash involving an automobile registered under one of Mr. Collins’s two dozen known aliases. They also confiscated 25 photographs of boys and girls. Mr. Collins was held without bail at the state prison in Cranston.
A union representing 2,600 white-collar workers reached a tentative contract agreement with Yale University, but it warned of another strike if the school did not settle its dispute with blue-collar employees. The Federation of University Employees Local 34, representing clerical and technical workers, staged a 10-week strike over wages and benefits last fall. Its members returned to work as efforts continued to settle its yearlong dispute with the New Haven, Connecticut, university. Neither side revealed details of the pact.
An appeals court panel in Oklahoma City stayed the execution of convicted murderer Charles Troy Coleman, who had been scheduled to die by lethal injection Tuesday. The three judges of the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals scheduled further arguments for April 15. Coleman, 37, was condemned for the February, 1979, shotgun slaying of John Seward, 68. Defense attorneys argued that Coleman was denied his rights to a fair trial and a jury of a cross section of the community because potential jurors who said they did not believe in the death penalty were excused.
Two days after the Kansas girl was found half frozen and declared clinically dead, 3-year-old Megan Birmingham was watching television and hugging a doll today. She had no heartbeat and had stopped breathing when she was found Thursday morning after spending four hours lying in the snow where her mother, according to the police, apparently put her out of a car. The doctors who labored to save her at Olathe Community Hospital said she had an excellent chance of recovering completely. Megan’s body temperature was less than 68 degrees when she was found at 6 AM Thursday by a sheriff’s deputy. The air temperature was in the 20’s. Her mother, Jane Birmingham, 31, of nearby Lenexa, has since been admitted to Shawnee Mission Medical Center, but officials would not say what she was being treated for.
The reputed leader of the “French Connection” ring that smuggled huge amounts of heroin into the United States from 1968 to 1971 was released from Federal prison Friday. The man, Christian Jacques David, 53 years old, a French citizen, was sentenced in 1972 to 20 years in prison. He was released early for good behavior. Federal marshals refused to say whether the former prisoner was being returned to France. The Brazilian police arrested Mr. David on the drug charge in 1972 at the request of the United States. He was secretly flown to New York and pleaded guilty to the drug charge to avoid extradition to France, where he had been convicted in absentia for the 1966 slaying of a police official. A book and two movies were based on the “French Connection” ring.
The coroner’s office said today that a stunt man killed in a helicopter crash in the filming of the television series “Airwolf” died of burns. The victim, Reid Rondell, 22 years old, was pronounced dead at the crash site Friday 35 miles north of Los Angeles. The helicopter burst into flames before Mr. Rondell could be pulled from the wreck, and an autopsy was performed to determine whether he died of injuries from the crash or from the fire. Scott Meher, 46, the helicopter pilot survived the crash. Mr. Rondell was the double for Jan-Michael Vincent in the action-adventure series that also stars Ernest Borgnine. The Bell 205 helicopter was performing what stunt men described as a routine manuever, chasing another helicopter, when it smashed into the side of a hill. The helicopter was not one of the three futuristic-looking helicopters that are a centerpiece of the show. Mr. Vincent and Mr. Borgnine were filming at another location at the time.
Less than 27 hours before the Super Bowl, traditionally the heaviest betting day of the year, federal agents conducted massive raids against illegal bookmakers in 23 cities in 16 states including California, FBI spokesman Bill Jansen said in Las Vegas. Federal agents served approximately 45 search warrants simultaneously across the country on businesses, sporting books and individual residences, Jansen said. Of the 45 warrants, 17 were served in Las Vegas.
A landmark in astrophysics may have been reached by astronomers who believe they have discovered several sources of cosmic rays. One of these sources, known as Cygnus X-3, has been found to produce so much high-energy cosmic radiation that it could account for the entire production of such rays in the Milky Way Galaxy.
“Born in the USA”, single by Bruce Springsteen, peaks at #9.
Born:
Chris Harrington, NFL defensive end (Cincinnati Bengals, Jacksonville Jaguars), in Houston, Texas.
Jake Allen, NFL wide receiver (Green Bay Packers, Cleveland Browns), in Laurel, Mississippi.
Jerome Johnson, NFL fullback (Arizona Cardinals), in Los Angeles, California.
Damien Chazelle, French-American film director (“La La Land”), in Providence, Rhode Island.
Esteban Guerrieri, Argentine racing driver, in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Rika Ishikawa, Japanese singer (“Morning Musume”), in Yokosuka, Japan.
History Diaries 