A Soviet defector to the U.S. asserts that for 32 months before his defection in 1978 he passed Soviet secrets to American intelligence agents while serving as an Under Secretary General of the United Nations. Arkady N. Shevchenko, who had been a top Soviet diplomat and who is the highest-ranking Soviet official ever to defect, says in a new book that he gave Washington information on Soviet positions in the strategic arms limitation talks. He also describes how he provided secrets on Soviet planning and intentions in Europe, Africa, Central America and other foreign policy arenas. Before he stopped spying when confronted with a summons to return to Moscow, Mr. Shevchenko also gave Washington extensive Soviet cable traffic to and from the United Nations and Washington, enabling the Americans to decode other Soviet messages around the world. No major coups for the United States are cited in the book, and a former senior United States intelligence official agreed that there had been no major breakthroughs. But he said Mr. Shevchenko supplied insights into many Soviet moves and into the plans and motives of the Soviet leader, Leonid I. Brezhnev, Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko and other members of the Central Committee and the policy-making Politburo.
Complaints about Aeroflot, the Soviet airline have been made by a reporter for Pravda, the Communist Party daily, confirming those often made by Western travelers. A night on a wooden chair in a strange airport, followed by a morning in which the passengers themselves had to push the ramp up to their plane, has drawn a cry of protest from a Pravda reporter. His litany of complaints in a recent issue of the Communist Party daily about bad treatment and bad service echoed criticism often heard from Western travelers. ” ‘Speed and comfort,’ ” the reporter, Yuri Kirinitsiyanov, wrote huffily, repeating the airline’s motto. “I am off to the railroad station.”
Spain is to lift all restrictions on passage to the British-held Rock of Gibraltar at midnight tonight, spurring hopes for more tourism to the 2.2-square-mile limestone rock. Traffic to the site, on a peninsula at the southern tip of Spain, was cut off by the late Spanish dictator Francisco Franco in June, 1969, in an attempt to force Britain to surrender the colony it had captured in 1704. In 1982, the gate was opened only to Spanish and Gibraltarian pedestrian traffic. Last November, Britain and Spain agreed to completely open the frontier as part of negotiations on the sovereignty dispute.
For the first time in 20 years, the British infantryman is being re-equipped from head to toe. Although the Americans disagree with the British about the lightweight helmet, and although that essential article, the boot, still causes blisters, most of the attention has focused on the new SA 80 rifle, which is a cinch to shoot but stubby and too short for the British Army’s traditional ceremonial drill. Not to allow new technology to mar ceremony, the army has rewritten the drill, which will be introduced at the Queen’s Birthday parade in 1987. It was demonstrated recently at the School of Infantry in Warminster by a group of guardsmen in red tunics and black bearskin helmets.
John Hume, the leading Northern Ireland politician from a nationalist party that rejects violence, said today that he planned to meet with leaders of the Provisional Irish Republican Army in spite of opposition from the Irish Prime Minister and British authorities. Mr. Hume, leader of the Social Democratic and Labor Party, said on Irish radio that he wants to talk to the Army Council of the I.R.A. “to say to them clearly I want them to end their campaign of violence.” The I.R.A. said last Friday that it was willing to meet with Mr. Hume. Prime Minister Garret FitzGerald, on the same program, said he recognized Mr. Hume’s “courage and conviction,” but that any such meeting would be broken up if it occurred in Ireland. The British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Douglas Hurd, said such a meeting would give credence to the idea that the I.R.A. was a valid political force.
Jewish settlers blocked main roads in the occupied West Bank for two hours today in protest at Arab attacks on Israeli vehicles in the area and the Government’s policy toward the attackers. One Israeli was killed and two were wounded in attacks last week. Although the number of attacks has declined steadily during the last few months, according to an estimate by security officials, the recent casualties have caused an increase in tension. Almost all of the weekly meeting of the Israeli Cabinet this morning was devoted to the security situation in the occupied areas.
Four Britons detained in Libya since last spring will be released Monday into the custody of Terry Waite, a special envoy of the Archbishop of Canterbury, a spokesman for the Archbishop said today. The four, who will be freed on “humanitarian” grounds after months of negotiations by Mr. Waite, are expected to return to London on Tuesday or Thursday. According to the official Libyan press agency, however, their departure may be delayed. A Reuters report from Beirut said a London dispatch of the Libyan agency, JANA, had reported that their release might be put off because Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had unveiled a memorial to Police Constable Yvonne Fletcher, who was killed in London last year by shots fired from the Libyan Embassy.
Libya agreed to buy $1 billion worth of weapons in negotiations completed last week with the Greek Defense Ministry and arms industry, the pro-government Athens daily Eleftherotypia reported. Weapons to be purchased include anti-aircraft and anti-tank guns, rockets, small arms and ammunition, the newspaper said. Libya’s forces are currently supplied with British and Soviet tanks and French jet fighters.
Iran’s supreme leader, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, defended his Islamic government against accusations of human rights abuses. Khomeini, 84, spoke clearly and forcefully on a variety of issues to a group of about 800 Muslim leaders invited to Tehran for celebrations marking the sixth anniversary of Iran’s Islamic Revolution. “You see the people on the streets. Are they under pressure and threats?” he asked rhetorically. People are trying to stop Iran’s voice from reaching other countries, Khomeini said.
India’s attorney general recommended that the government sue Union Carbide in the United States for damages on behalf of the thousands of victims of the deadly Bhopal gas leak, the English-language Indian Express reported in New Delhi. A government suit would be separate from at least 23 private lawsuits seeking a total of $186.4 billion that have been filed in the United States and India.
Anti-Government strikes by doctors, engineers, students and lawyers paralyzed several government offices in Bangladesh today and prompted the closing of universities and colleges, officials said. The officials said the Bangladesh Supreme Court was closed after senior lawyers, who were demanding an end to the military government of Lieutenant General H. M. Ershad and a return to civilian rule, staged a sit-in. The police said the strikes were peaceful.
Vietnam’s Communist Party leader has acknowledged in a speech marking the party’s 55th anniversary that there are “shortcomings and mistakes” in Vietnam’s economic and ideological affairs, according to reports from the Vietnam News Agency. The official Hanoi agency, monitored in Bangkok, said the party chief, Lê Duẩn, also told party and government officials Saturday that the country should improve its relations with China and with the non-Communist nations of Southeast Asia, while continuing to build ties to Moscow. The speech came at a time when diplomats in Hanoi suggest that a faction of Vietnam’s leadership has become wary of the growing dependence on the Soviet Union and would like to keep a line open to Peking. Relations between the Chinese and Vietnamese — traditional enemies until this century’s wars against the French and Americans — have deteriorated again over the last six years, as Peking has given substantial material support to rebels in Cambodia who are trying to overthrow the Vietnamese-installed Government in Phnom Penh.
Thai troops killed eight Vietnamese soldiers who crossed the border from Cambodia into Thailand, a Thai army commander said. The Vietnamese were apparently on a scouting mission against Cambodian guerrillas. A three-hour-long artillery exchange also took place at three frontier points as Vietnamese shells aimed at Cambodian guerrilla bases fell on Thai soil, said Lieutenant General Pichitr Kullavanijaya, commander of Thailand’s 1st Army Region. Three Cambodian guerrilla factions are seeking to oust a Vietnamese-installed government in their country.
The South Korean Government said today that it would not send the opposition leader Kim Dae Jung back to prison when he returns home Friday from two years of exile in the United States. “It is the policy of the Government not to return him to prison when he returns,” a Government spokesman said in a terse announcement. “In December 1982 Kim petitioned to go to the U.S. for medical treatment, and the Government conditionally released him and granted his petition on humanitarian grounds,” the announcement said.
New Zealand Prime Minister David Lange said he is sticking to his Labor Party’s ban on nuclear-powered or nuclear-armed warships and has again refused a U.S. request for a visit by such a ship. The United States sought to make a port call after naval exercises with Australia next month. In a tough warning, Washington said last week that it would consider pulling out of the exercises if the visit was denied. Lange dismissed that and a warning by Australia that the ANZUS (Australia, New Zealand, United States) defense pact is threatened by his policy.
A political settlement in Nicaragua is being dropped by the Reagan Administration in favor of “a military solution,” Nicaragua’s President said in an interview in Managua. As signs of what he called a toughening line in Washington, President Daniel Ortega Saavedra cited continuing and expanding American-Honduran military maneuvers, the Administration’s suspension of talks with Nicaragua in Mexico and the withdrawal of the United States from case a before the World Court dealing with a Nicaraguan complaint of United States aggression.
Fighting stopped in El Salvador for a day today as health officials began an effort to vaccinate 400,000 children against diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, measles and polio, the authorities said. The three-stage vaccination program began today and is to continue March 3 and April 21, according to officials of the United Nations Children’s Fund. Radio Venceremos, the rebel radio station, told guerrillas not to interfere with the program, and Health Minister Benjamin Valdez said the army would not initiate “belligerent actions.”
The Pope urged Peruvian guerrillas to lay down their arms and “seek the roads of dialogue and not those of violence.” John Paul II addressed 15,000 people in the Andean mountain city of Ayacucho, in the region where guerrillas of the Shining Path movement have waged a war that has taken 4,000 lives. He also urged wealthy nations to apply just measures in their economic relations with developing countries.
Bolivia’s embattled government ordered all military trucks out on the streets to serve as transportation and to prevent a work stoppage by taxi, bus and truck owners. from compounding a 24-hour general strike planned for today. A government statement said President Hernan Siles Zuazo gave the deployment order in a meeting with military chiefs. The strike has been called to support industrial workers who are demanding a 200% wage increase.
Scene from the African famine in Chad: Many pairs of eyes watched anxiously as gruel was ladled from two large caldrons into the enamel or tin bowls that children thrust up at women serving two waiting lines. Straining at the ropes behind which a volunteer worker had confined them, the hungry watched fearfully to see whether there would be some gruel left for them. They were kept behind the ropes by teen-age boys armed with whips and appointed to maintain order by officials of the camp, in Abeche. As the lines of children reached their end, so did the gruel. When the women who were left hungry behind the ropes wailed and protested, the youths with the whips went into action. The famine is not only producing starvation; it is destroying the social structure.
Desmond M. Tutu, winner of the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize, was enthroned today as Johannesburg’s first black Anglican bishop and offered theological justification for a political ministry against South Africa’s racial policies. “All life belongs to God, including politics,” he said after his enthronement in the Cathedral of St. Mary the Virgin in central Johannesburg. “If we want not to be involved then for goodness sake we must not worship the God and Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Our everyday life is meant to be a working out of our life of worship.”
The South African Atlas XH-1 Alpha prototype attack helicopter first flew on 3 February 1985, and soon embarked on a rigorous flight test program to examine the feasibility of a dedicated attack helicopter in southern African conditions. The results were ultimately good enough to convince Atlas and the South African Air Force to go ahead with the development of a dedicated attack helicopter, the Denel Rooivalk.
The 1986 budget proposes to sustain a buildup of the military by reducing domestic programs that help the middle class. In its effort to reduce nonmilitary spending, the $973.7 billion budget President Reagan will submit to Congress today is the most ambitious he has proposed. At least 25 programs, many of which the Administration calls subsidies for businesses, and middle- and upper-income families, would be eliminated.
The President’s military budget seeks to continue his expansion of American forces and modernization of equipment for the duration of his second term in office. Mr. Reagan is asking Congress to appropriate $313.7 billion for the Defense Department in the fiscal year 1986, and another $8.5 billion for other military-related activities, primarily in the Department of Energy, which develops and builds nuclear weapons.
President Reagan returns to the White House from the weekend at Camp David.
White House officials said President Reagan’s new chief of staff, Donald T. Regan, and secretary of the Treasury, James A. Baker III, will be on their new jobs today after private swearing-in ceremonies in their homes Sunday. A second swearing-in ceremony is scheduled to take place Friday in the Oval Office, White House spokesman Larry Speakes said, with members of the two men’s families in attendance. Regan is replacing Baker in the White House job, and Baker is replacing Regan at Treasury.
A national political realignment that would clearly make Republicans the nation’s majority party is again the goal of the party’s leaders as it was in the Eisenhower and Nixon Administrations. Party leaders see the next two years as an opportunity to cement long-term support among younger voters.
A Mark Twain classic is racist, two panelists asserted as a stage adaptation of “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” was to be presented tonight at the Goodman Theater in Chicago. The panelists, who are black, are Robert B. Evans, an alderman of Waukegan, Illinois, who led efforts to have the novel removed from public schools’ required reading lists, and Dr. John H. Wallace, an educator, who says the book is “the most grotesque example of racist trash ever written.” They continued a debate begun in the late 1960’s.
When it comes to safety, maintenance and fuel economy, Ford Escort, Buick Skyhawk, and Volvo 760 are among the “best” 1985 model cars, an annual rating of cars concluded. “The Car Book,” written by Jack Gillis, a former federal highway official turned consumer activist, also ranked the Volkswagen Quantum, the Nissan 200 SX and the Cadillac Fleetwood as among the “worst.” Six of the nine “best” subcompacts and compacts are American-made while five of the six “worst” in these categories are built overseas — in Japan and Germany.
Firefighters contained a new wildfire that burned 400 acres of grass and woods just five miles west of the busy Miami International Airport, authorities said. Flights were not affected because winds were blowing the black smoke away from the airport about 10 miles west of downtown Miami, the Federal Aviation Administration said. The new blaze broke out after firefighters thought they had extinguished or at least contained most of the fires that have burned more than 122,000 acres in the state since January 1.
Mary Evans, the young lawyer who fell in love with a convicted killer in Tennessee and helped him escape, will be paroled from prison after serving less than one year of a three-year sentence. Evans, 28, will walk out of the Chattanooga Community Service Center 10 months and 7 days after a judge ordered her to prison because she refused to apologize for her crime. Evans surrendered her law license last March when she pleaded guilty to helping William Timothy Kirk, 38, escape from the Brushy Mountain State Prison.
Two inmates have been put in solitary confinement for their roles in a revolt at the Indiana Reformatory in Pendleton in which seven employees and two prisoners were injured, authorities said. Five guards remained hospitalized in satisfactory condition and one inmate was in stable condition with stab wounds in the back, officials said. The employees and prisoners were injured in Friday’s uprising and three reformatory employees were held hostage-two for the entire 15-hour incident.
A 36-year-old North Carolina man was arrested today and charged with first-degree murder, kidnapping and rape in the death of an 8-year-old girl found hanging from a tree limb, the authorities said. The suspect, George Richard Fisher of Hillsborough, was arrested early today and charged in the death of Jean Har-Kar Fewel, the state Bureau of Investigation reported. The bureau would not say where Mr. Fisher was arrested and would not discuss evidence that led to his arrest or any connection between Mr. Fisher and the girl’s foster family. The girl, an orphan from Hong Kong, had been in the United States for a year and was being adopted by Tom Fewel and his wife, Joy Wood. The body was found Wednesday near the University of North Carolina.
Federal and congressional investigators are examining whether the Federal Emergency Management Agency violated personnel rules by hiring a number of retired military policemen with ties to the agency’s top officials, the Washington Post reported. At least a dozen current and former employees served in military or civilian life with top agency officials, particularly FEMA Director Louis O. Giuffrida, a brigadier general in the Army reserve, and former No. 3 official Fred J. Villella, a retired lieutenant colonel.
More than 150 black and white people gathered as a black congregation in Lancaster, South Carolina, broke ground for a church to replace their building, one of three black churches burned by two whites last July 13. A quick turn of a rain-soaked shovel of dirt marked the start of the construction of New Zion Baptist Church. Lieutenant Governor Mike Daniel said the outpouring of donations that made the reconstruction possible “is a story of the New South.”
Firefighters contained a new wildfire late today that burned 400 acres of grass and woods just five miles west of the busy Miami International Airport, the authorities said. Flights were not affected because winds were blowing the black smoke away from the airport, the Federal Aviation Administration said. The new blaze broke out this afternoon after firefighters thought they had extinguished or at least contained most of the fires that have burned over 122,000 acres since January 1. Firefighters had contained the fire near the Miami airport by nightfall, but were still “mopping up,” said Larry Amison, a spokesman for the Florida Forestry Division.
A stabbing victim without health insurance died after being shunted 20 miles to San Francisco when four hospitals refused to accept him for surgery. Eugene Barnes, 32 years old, married and the unemployed father of two children, suffered a deep stab wound in his left temple in a neighborhood quarrel Monday and died Thursday at San Francisco General Hospital. A physician at the hospital said Mr. Barnes might have survived if he had undergone surgery soon after he arrived by ambulance at Brookside Hospital in San Pablo at 5:11 PM from the suburb of Richmond. Mr. Barnes did not undergo surgery until he arrived five hours later in San Francisco where the physician at General said, “This guy might have been alive and walking and talking if he had received attention immediately.” Fraser Felter, Brookside’s spokesman, said Mr. Barnes was treated in the emergency room but the neurosurgeon on call was busy with another case and unable to help.
The three other hospitals that declined to take Mr. Barnes were identified as Contra Costa County Hospital in Martinez, which said its neurosurgeon “didn’t feel good;” Herrick Hospital in Berkeley, which reportedly did not consider the case life-threatening, and Highland Hospital in Oakland, which told Brookside it could not take Mr. Barnes because he was too unstable to transport.
Psychological problems of women are likely to worsen in direct relation to their severity if they have sexual contact with their therapists, according to a study by The Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. The study confirms past findings that a therapeutic relationship could be badly damaged by sexual contact. Men were not included in the study because most declined to participate. Those who did, however, said that a sexual relationship with a therapist was a positive experience and left no adverse effects.
Max Showalter and Peter Walker’s musical “Harrigan ‘n Hart”, starring Harry Groening and Mark Hamill, closes at Longacre Theater, NYC, after 4 performances.
Born:
Andrei Kostitsyn, Belarusian NHL left wing and right wing (Montreal Canadiens, Nashville Predators), in Novopolotsk, Byelorussian SSR, Soviet Union.
Died:
Frank Oppenheimer, 72, American particle physicist, brother of J. Robert Oppenheimer.
History Diaries 