General Vernon A. Walters was nominated by President Reagan to succeed Jeane J. Kirkpatrick as chief United States delegate to the United Nations. He has been an Ambassador at Large in the Reagan Administration and is a former Central Intelligence Agency official. After the announcement, the 68-year- old retired Army general told reporters at the State Department, “I will do my best to continue the superb work that Ambassador Kirkpatrick has done in the United Nations to restore and enhance the position of the United States.” In accepting the post, General Walters made it clear that he would hold Cabinet rank, as had Dr. Kirkpatrick. In recent weeks, Administration officials have said Secretary of State George P. Shultz was seeking to remove the post from Cabinet status.
Several arms-control analysts said today that President Reagan’s determination to build a defense against ballistic missiles and to design weapons that can destroy satellites would kill the 1972 United States- Soviet treaty that limits the size and effectiveness of antiballistic missile defenses. Some advocates of arms control consider the antiballistic missile, or ABM, treaty the bedrock of arms-control measures because, as long as it is complied with, it prevents the creation by either nation of a territorywide missile defense or an effective defense of missile silo fields. This has promoted deterrence of nuclear war, they argue, because neither party can start a nuclear war without suffering retaliatory devastation. John B. Rhinelander, a Washington lawyer who was legal adviser to the American delegation that negotiated the ABM treaty and the 1972 interim agreement to limit strategic weapons, said adoption of a policy of “defense dominance” by the United States would make the ABM treaty pointless. “It would be better not to have a treaty” in such circumstances, he added.
The Communist Party newspaper Pravda said today that American charges of arms-treaty violations by the Soviet Union were a tactic intended to undermine the negotiations that are to open next month in Geneva. Accusing Washington of “propagandistic tricks” calculated to poison the atmosphere, the paper said Washington had itself regularly violated arms treaties. It raised questions about the seriousness of the Reagan Administration in the new talks on nuclear and space weapons. “They want from the very outset to cast aspersions on the forthcoming talks in Geneva, and to sow doubt as to the possibility and usefulness of accords with the Soviet Union,” Pravda said. The text of its article was carried in advance of publication today by the official press agency Tass.
Konstantin U. Chernenko’s personal physician said today that the Soviet leader was “well” despite worldwide speculation that the Soviet leader is seriously ill. The physician, Dr. Yevgeny Chazov, who is responsible for the health of Soviet leaders as director of the Ministry of Health’s Fourth Department, said his presence in the United States indicated that Mr. Chernenko was well. “If I am Chernenko’s doctor and if I am here, then Chernenko is well, because a doctor should be with his patient, no?” Mr. Chazov said upon his arrival in Los Angeles to take part in a two-day international conference of Physicians for Social Responsibility.
The trial of four security policemen for the murder of a pro-Solidarity priest has ended with all sentenced to long prison terms and with the Government asserting that justice was served and full public disclosure made. But on the streets and in the coffeehouses, many Poles have been openly critical of the prison sentence handed down to the key figure. They say they feel that Grzegorz Piotrowski, the leader of the mission that stalked the Rev. Jerzy Popiełuszko, should have been given a death sentence, which could then have been commuted. Instead, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Other Poles say the trial raised almost as many questions as it answered about whether the killing of the priest was a political provocation aimed at the Government of General Wojciech Jaruzelski. Still others have expressed indignation that the trial at times served as a forum for Government attacks on the Roman Catholic Church in Poland.
The end of the Polish trial in the slaying of a Roman Catholic priest was briefly reported by the Soviet press agency Tass. But the agency did not mention that the convicted killers of the priest, the Rev. Jerzy Popiełuszko, were security policemen. It depicted the trial as a reaffirmation of subversive activities of the Roman Catholic Church.
The trial of a Greek publisher charged with tapping the telephones of Athens bureau of The New York Times was postponed today after his doctors said he had had a stroke.
Khmer Rouge guerrillas repulsed a Vietnamese attack on their mountain strongholds in western Cambodia today, Thai officers said. The guerrillas also said they raided a Cambodian provincial capital and destroyed its air base. Guerrillas pouring out mortar fire and rocket-propelled grenades pushed a Vietnamese force back two miles from the Phnom Malai strongholds 12 miles south of Aranyaprathet, Thai military officers said. The guerrillas said they launched a series of 20-minute attacks Monday on the downtown area and the air base of the provincial capital of Battambang.
House confinement was imposed on South Korea’s chief political dissident, Kim Dae Jung, on his return home from exile in the United States. Mr. Kim was confined to his house amid a controversy over a roughing- up that he and supporters received from the police as they left the airplane that brought them to Seoul from Japan. Two United States Representatives and two other prominent Americans who had accompanied Mr. Kim said they had been beaten. Kim Dae Jung, South Korea’s most prominent opposition figure, was beaten by policemen when he arrived home from two years of exile in the United States, an American member of Congress who was accompanying him said. The Congressman, Representative Thomas A. Foglietta, Democrat of Pennsylvania, said he, Representative Edward Feighan, Democrat of Ohio, and Robert E. White, a former Ambassador to El Salvador, were also thrown to the ground by the policemen and “shoved, pushed and kicked and pulled away from Kim Dae Jung.” They were among a party of prominent Americans who accompanied Mr. Kim to Seoul to insure his safety.
The United States protested to South Korea today over what it said had been the authorities’ failure to insure that the return of opposition politician Kim Dae Jung would be trouble free. The State Department cited reports of rough treatment of Mr. Kim and some of the Americans who accampanied him to Seoul early today. There were also reports that he had been beaten, but the department said Mr. Kim told the American Embassy he had not been handled roughly. The department also said it regretted that Mr. Kim had been put under what amounted to house arrest.
President Ferdinand E. Marcos has said that the next presidential election will be held 1987, but recent actions by opposition and ruling party politicians alike suggest that some of them think this could be an election year in the Philippines. The political oposition, which has been fragmented for years, is trying to unify, betting that an election may be imminent. Leading figures in the President’s ruling party, the New Society Movement, meanwhile, are appearing more and more in public, making candidate-like speeches and even discussing their prospects — though typically after saying they will run only if Mr. Marcos does not. The other day Arturo M. Tolentino, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, spoke of the “frenzy, almost a fever” among Filipino politicians who are making unauthorized forays onto the campaign trail.
New Zealand’s Prime Minister David Lange said today that President Reagan’s statement that he still considered New Zealand a friend after an American ship was refused a port call indicated that the military cooperation between the two countries was not dead. Mr. Lange’s Government has stressed that it wants to maintain military ties with the United States and Australia despite its refusal to accept visits by nuclear-powered or nuclear- armed ships. The three countries form an alliance known as Anzus.
After a lull of almost a year, political assassinations by extremist groups are on the rise again in El Salvador, according to the human rights office of the Roman Catholic Church and United States officials. According to a monthly report by Tutela Legal, the human rights monitoring body of the Roman Catholic Church, killings by right-wing death squads and Government security forces jumped from 12 in December to 29 in January. A preliminary tally compiled by the United States Embassy from newspapers indicated that 36 civilians were killed in political violence in the first two weeks of January, compared with 16 in the last two weeks of December.
The verdict in the case involving Marie McBroom, a New Jersey woman facing death by firing squad if convicted of illegally trafficking in oil, will be handed down February 27, a special military tribunal announced. Mrs. McBroom, 57 years old, who runs a commodity trading company, was arrested in February 1984 on suspicion of illegal petroleum deals. She is charged under a special decree of Nigeria’s military government, issued after her arrest, to crack down on corruption. Death by firing squad is the maximun sentence. Mr. McBroom, of Jersey City, is accused of conspiring to deal illegally in 1.3 million barrels of oil and 20,000 tons of gasoline between December 1983 and January 1984.
In marked contrast to a euphoric mood in this region less than a year ago, South Africa’s relations with neighboring black-governed nations appears to have soured. Its pacts with these ideological foes, hailed at the time as a breakthrough in regional diplomacy, seem to have brought few and ambiguous benefits to those nations with which South Africa concluded the accords. In the last week, Angola, Botswana and Zambia have complained in varying degrees of what they say is South African aggressiveness, and South Africa has responded caustically to some of the complaints. Reports from Mozambique, meanwhile, indicate there has been a widening of an insurgency that the Marxist authorities in Maputo hoped to end by signing a nonaggression pact with South Africa last March. On Tuesday, for the first time, a ranking Mozambican official directly accused South Africa of flouting the accord.
Telling an anecdote about a military officer’s hardships, President Reagan has disagreed with an assertion by the budget director, David A. Stockman, that military pensions are a “scandal.” Mr. Stockman, director of the Office of Management and Budget, told the Senate Budget Committee Tuesday that “institutional forces” in the military were “more concerned about protecting their retirement benefits than they are about protecting the security of the American people.” The assertion generated a storm of protest, particularly from veterans’ groups, but Mr. Reagan had hitherto declined public comment. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, published today, Mr. Reagan said he did not agree with Mr. Stockman. He said the retirement benefits were warranted because of the demands of serving in the military.
The President and the First Lady host a luncheon in honor of the 75th Anniversary of the Boy Scouts of America.
President Reagan travels to Camp David for the weekend.
Congress’s approval of Conrail’s sale to the Norfolk Southern Corporation, a holding company, will be sought by Secretary of Transportation Elizabeth Hanford Dole. Norfolk has agreed to pay a “minimum” of $1.2 billion in cash for the Government’s 85 percent interest in the freight carrier. It has also agreed to a number of sale conditions the Government says will keep Conrail healthy.
French researchers reported yesterday that a new drug appeared for the first time to have inhibited reproduction of the virus believed to cause acquired immunity deficiency syndrome, or AIDS. Tests have been completed on only four patients, but a year and a half after initial treatment the blood of one patient, a 15-year-old boy, has shown no evidence of the AIDS virus, and he has returned to school. The researchers said the virus seemed to have disappeared, at least temporarily, in all the cases but that there was no guarantee the virus was completely eradicated. They emphasized that the treatment should not be regarded as a cure.
Most states have at best a marginal surplus and at least 17 are likely to raise taxes this year to make ends meet, according to a survey released today by the National Governors Association. On the other hand, the survey found that 14 states, including New York and New Jersey, were expected to cut taxes. Raymond C. Scheppach, executive director of the association, disclosed the results of the survey at a news conference on behalf of the 50 governors. He said it showed that the Reagan Administration’s estimates of large state surpluses were “rather absurd.”
New York Mayor Koch said yesterday that he agreed with the grand jury that refused to indict Bernhard H. Goetz for attempted murder and disagreed with the grand jury that indicted a police officer for manslaughter in the Eleanor Bumpurs case. He described the decision by a state grand jury in Manhattan to indict Mr. Goetz only on charges of weapons possession as “Solomonic.” Mr. Goetz shot four youths on a subway train Dec. 22 after, he said, one of them asked him for $5. “I believe he was a victim,” Mr. Koch said in a City Hall news conference. “So does the grand jury.”
The United States Supreme Court voted today, 5 to 3, to postpone the execution of a Louisiana man convicted of raping and killing an 81-year-old woman. The High Court said the postponement for the death row inmate, Willie Lawrence Celestine, would remain in effect pending the Court’s decision on whether to hear his appeal on the penalty. He was to have been put to death Saturday. Earlier, the 28-year-old inmate was moved to a cell next to the electric chair in preparation for his execution. Nathan Stansbury, a District Attorney, said the appeal basically contended that Mr. Celestine’s trial lawyer had been ineffective in the penalty phase of the trial. Mr. Celestine’s latest lawyer, Millard Farmer of Atlanta, would not discuss the case. Mr. Celestine was convicted of murdering Marcelliene Richard in her home on September 13, 1981, after a rape in which he broke her neck. In a confession, Mr. Celestine said he was drunk and “full of speed.”
A Virginia restaurant owner who refused to serve blacks pleaded guilty today to violating two federal court rulings that ordered him to serve patrons regardless of race or color. Roy McKoy, owner of the Belvoir Restaurant in Marshall, faces a possible six months in jail or a $1,000 fine when he is sentenced March 8 in Federal District Court. He was ordered to put a 2-by-4-foot sign in the restaurant “clearly visible to all patrons and potential patrons” reading, “We serve anyone regardless of race or color,” said an assistant United States Attorney, Tom Berger.
The trial of two bellmen charged with selling David Kennedy cocaine that was part of an overdose of drugs that killed him has been delayed, partly because of an investigation into possible tampering with evidence. The bellmen, Peter Marchant and David Dorr, had been scheduled to go on trial March 4, but Judge John Born of Palm Beach County Circuit Court delayed the trial Wednesday at the request of Michael Salnick, an attorney for Mr. Marchant.
Toxic air pollution and other environmental threats to public health are inadequately addressed in West Virginia’s Kanawha Valley, a report by the Environmental Protection Agency says. The valley, one of the nation’s major chemical-producing areas, is the site of a Union Carbide plant that produces methyl isocyanate, the chemical that killed more than 2,000 people last December 3 when it escaped from a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India. The report, which was completed last summer, identifies the Union Carbide plant, in Institute, West Virginia, as a “a major source of air pollutants,” including pollutants that cause cancer. While the report includes methyl isocyanate in a table of the products produced or used in the plant, it does not single out the chemical for any special mention. Other air pollutants, including methane, ethylene oxide and benzene, were specifically mentioned as problems.
An ordinance that would recognize domestic partnerships between unmarried people has been tentatively approved by unanimous vote of the City Council in the city of West Hollywood, California, formed last November. Mayor Valerie Terrigno, one of three homosexual members of the council, said the ordinance was not merely for the community’s sizeable homosexual population. The Mayor said it would also apply to elder citizens and anyone else who did not want to be legally married. The proposal would provide domestic partners with many of the same rights given to married couples, such as hospital or jail visitation rights. The council must hold a public hearing on the issue and pass a second reading of the ordinance before it becomes law.
Winds gusting to 100 miles an hour roared from the high Sierras to the northern Rockies yesterday, whipping snow into road-blocking drifts and creating extremely hazardous conditions for travelers. The storm left up to four feet of snow in the Sierra Nevada in California. “We have strong winds blowing in a circular direction, just whipping the snow around where it looks like it’s snowing sideways,” said sheriff’s Sgt. Kent Hawthorne in Tahoe City, California.
Sinclair Lewis’s 100th birthday was celebrated by many of the 3,370 residents of Sauk Centre, Minnesota, the novelist’s hometown, which was the setting of his novel, “Main Street,” published in 1920. Lewis died in 1951. He was the first American to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Michael Gross swims a world record 800m freestyle (7:38.75).
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1289.97 (-0.11)
Born:
Félix Pié, Dominican MLB outfielder (Chicago Cubs, Baltimore Orioles, Pittsburgh Pirates), in La Romana, Dominican Republic.
Trevor Smith, Canadian NHL centre (New York Islanders, Tampa Bay Lightning, Pittsburgh Penguins, Toronto Maple Leafs, Nashville Predators), in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Thomas Gardner, NBA shooting guard (Chicago Bulls, Atlanta Hawks), in Portland, Oregon.
Jeremy Davis, American rock bassist and songwriter (Paramore, 2004-15 – “Misery Business”; “Still Into You”), in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Died:
William Lyons, 84, British industrialist and automobile manufacturer (Jaguars).
Marvin Miller [Mueller], 71, American actor (“Space Patrol”, “Dead Reckoning”, “Millionaire”), from a heart attack.
Tom Greenway, 75, American actor (“Miami Story”), of a heart attack.
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