Eighty-two congressmen, setting the stage for a possible compromise, have asked President Ford for a dialogue on phasing out all US. aid to South Vietnam and Cambodia. The congressmen — 12 senators and 70 House members — told Mr. Ford in a letter that the time has come for a decision “as to how we will extricate ourselves from the situation in Southeast Asia once and for all.” The President has said he would be willing to halt large-scale aid to South Vietnam in three years if Congress appropriates sufficient money during that period.
The battle for control of the Mekong River in Cambodia is becoming the battle for the survival of the country’s capital, Phnom Penh. Cambodian insurgents, who have laid mines in the river for the first time and installed heavy guns along its banks, have sunk 19 supply vessels in the last 10 days. This has effectively halted traffic on the river, which is the major supply line to the capital. However, the government of Marshal Lon Nol is showing no signs of panic. The Cambodian insurgents, by laying mines in the Mekong for the first time and by digging in with heavy guns along the river banks, have sunk 19 supply vessels in the last 10 days and for the moment have effectively halted traffic on the river which normally brings in more than 80 percent of Phnom Penh’s vital supplies of food, fuel and ammunition.
An American Embassy official said yesterday that the situation now in regard to ammunition stocks was “dangerous” and he added: “If the river stays closed for another two weeks and we don’t get additional supplies by airlift, it would be a lot more than dangerous. It would be critical.” The Americans provide nearly all the vital supplies for the Phnom Penh Government and American aid is the only thing that keeps the Government of President Lon Nol alive. With the Mekong blockaded, the only supply line still running from the outside world is a modest airlift from Thailand that amounts to a maximum of 10 cargo flights a day with a total of 150 tons of supplies, mostly ammunition.
But this fills perhaps only a tenth of the daily needs of this city of two million people, and according to the Americans, this particular airlift — which is run by a civilian company under contract to the Defense Department, using Air Force planes with the insignia painted out — cannot be expanded any further under the terms of the contract. The only other apparent alternative is the contingency plan the Americans have prepared for a much bigger airlift, which would be run by the United States Air Force from its bases in Thailand. According to reliable sources here, the Ford Administration is reluctant to mount such an airlift for fear of antagonizing Congress by seeming to increase direct American involvement in the war. Yet many Western diplomats here think that, reluctant or not, unless the Mekong supply route is opened reasonably soon, the Americans might have to turn to the airlift as a last resort.
Meanwhile, the Americans here are pressing the Cambodians to do everything possible to clear the mines off the river and wrest control of some of the river bank from the Communist-led insurgents. So far, the reports are not optimistic. Although the mines are fairly primitive, apparently “command-detonated” by wires that run to the banks and are operated by persons watching the ships from there, the Cambodian Navy is equally primitive and the makeshift riverboat “minesweepers” that have been trying to cut the wires have had little success. One reason is the devastating insurgent fire from the river banks with heavy weapons that include captured American 105mm. artillery pieces. This fire has also kept Cambodian troops from recapturing territory along the banks. Two weeks ago, two battalions of government troops landed in the enemy lines on the river about 20 miles southwest of Phnom Penh and trica to push inland. They were virtually wiped out. Of a force of 500 men, 100 were killed and 300 wounded. The tattered survivors straggled back to Phnom Penh three days ago.
The last convoy that tried to make the run up the Mekong from South Vietnam, consisting of four tugs pulling two ammunition barges, was ripped apart. Three of the tugs hit mines and sank, whereupon the remaining vessels reversed course and raced back to South Vietnam for safety. Two crewmen were killed and 30 were wounded. It has become increasingly difficult to recruit the civilian crews — who are usually Vietnamese, Taiwanese and Filipinos — and the Americans and Cambodians have been discussing the possibility of quickly training Cambodian Navy personnel to man the supply ships, which are usually commercially hired by Defense Department civilian contractors. The Americans have also reportedly decided to replace the coastal freighters and tankers that have been carrying rice and fuel with tug-towed barges so as to present a lower profile and thus a smaller target to the insurgent gunners. But with the introduction of the mines, these vessels are just as vulnerable as any.
The farmers in Long Trạch, South Vietnam have never heard of protecting the ecology. But they have stopped using American insecticides to kill the worms in their rice. Instead they have reverted to the traditional Vietnamese method — letting ducks loose in their rice paddies, now ripening under the relentless tropical sun in this village 20 miles south of Saigon on the edge of the Mekong delta. For the farmers the change was a simple matter of economics. With the vastly increased price of oil and oil-based products in the last year, and with a simultaneous cutback in American aid, which financed virtually all imports, insecticides have simply become too expensive. Chemical fertilizer and gas for the water pumps that the villagers use to irrigate their fields have also become too expensive. Like insecticides, they were introduced into Vietnam in the nineteen‐sixties by American aid, and — where the war permitted — they helped many Vietnamese increase rice production and achieve a measure of prosperity.
Now, with the high price of oil, the farmers are worried that their output will drop. And for the 5,200 people of Long Trạch, oil has become as important a problem as the war. The village, a thin line of houses spread for a mile along a narrow dirt road, has been lucky to escape the recent intensified fighting. The only visible signs of war in Long Trạch are those all Vietnamese have grown accustomed to: an occasional thump of artillery in the distance, green army fatigue uniforms drying on the family clothesline, rifles stacked like umbrellas in the corner of the mud‐walled village office. But the all‐pervasive war still reaches out to claim its victims in Long Trạch.
Take the case of Phạm Chánh Truyền, a tall, gaunt 38‐year‐old man who was a Communist guerrilla when the Việt Cộng controlled the village. It was under the Communists from the beginning of the war against the French in the late nineteen‐forties until the American Ninth Infantry Division swept through Long Trạch in 1968. Mr. Truyền was wounded in the fighting. An older brother was killed. The family buried him in a white tomb, marked with a red star, in the rice field in front of their house, which ironically is made of cardboard marked “Made in U.S.A.” Last month Mr. Truyền learned that his younger brother, a soldier in a government militia unit, had been declared missing in action when his company was overrun by North Vietnamese troops.
The I.R.A. Provisionals announced an open-ended renewal of their cease-fire in Northern Ireland and Britain with the statement that “hostilities against Crown forces” would be suspended at 6 P.M. today while discussions proceeded between representatives of the Republican movement and the British on ways to achieve an effective new truce. The announcement was made as Northern Ireland appeared to be entering another particularly bloody phase. Among other incidents, two Roman Catholics were shot dead in Belfast as they left an evening mass.
The I.R.A. Provisionals’ announcement received a guarded welcome from British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Merlyn Rees. In a brief statement he emphasized that there had been no change in Britain’s policy. The renewed cease‐fire has come as a considerable surprise, despite persistent rumors since hostilities were resumed in midJanuary that the I.R.A. was still considering an indefinite truce. The main obstacle was believed to be the hunger strike by Provisionals being held at Portlaoise jail in the Irish republic. A cease‐fire was not expected by politicians here until that strike had been called off or the Dublin Government had offered to concede some of the strikers’ demands.
The Soviet Union may be the first nation to tame the power of the hydrogen bomb for use in generating commercial electricity, a U.S. scientist said. Dr. Charles Gilbert of the Energy Research and Development Administration said Russian scientists were ahead of the United States in research to perfect a fusion reaction process that produces more energy than it consumes. Gilbert said the fusion process is superior to the present fission process because it produces few radioactive wastes, poses no threat of nuclear runaway and has no emergency reactor core cooling problems. He said a breakthrough would probably occur within the next five years.
[Ed: FIVE YEARS? LOL! It’s now 50, and still no commercial fusion reactors.]
Soyuz 17 cosmonauts Georgi Grechko and Aleksei Gubarev returned to Earth after one month in orbit aboard the Salyut 4 space station. The cosmonauts began powering down the station on 7 February 1975 and they returned to Earth in the Soyuz capsule two days later, on 9 February 1975. They safely landed near Tselinograd in a snowstorm with winds of 72 km/h and wore gravity suits to ease the effects of re-adaptation. The 43‐year‐old astronauts—both on their first space mission — touched down at 2:03 P.M. Moscow time, according to Tass, the offiical press agency.
A West German military transport crashed into the mountains of western Crete, killing all 42 people on board. The Transall C-160D carried 37 West German soldiers and a crew of five to the NATO’s missile base on Crete. The approach to Chania Airport was initiated in poor weather conditions with fog and snow falls. While descending to an altitude of 5,000 feet, the airplane struck the slope of Mt Kukules located about 24 km from the airport. The aircraft disintegrated on impact and all 42 occupants were killed.
The Turkish Army rules northern Cyprus with a strong hand, raising doubts even among Turkish Cypriots about its willingness to yield territory or control.
Turkey will probably order the closing of some United States military installations here it Congress does not restore military aid to Ankara soon, according to diplomatic and government sources here. For 25 years, Turkey has relied almost entirely on the United States to guarantee her defense. Many Turks now feel that even if aid is resumed, their relationship with Washington has been badly damaged. “This action casts doubt on the credibility of American Support for Turkish security,” said a government official with strong pro‐American feelings. “It will be very difficult to convince public opinion that a country which indulges itself in an arms embargo against an ally is willing to come to its support when that country is in danger.”
Prison guards at Limerick Prison, southwest of Dublin, foiled an escape attempt by Rose Dugdale, a millionaire’s daughter turned Irish guerrilla, when they discovered a hacksaw used to cut through bars in a first floor lavatory window. The 34-year-old former debutante was jailed for her part in a $19 million art theft and the hijacking of a helicopter used in the bombing of a Northern Ireland police station. Her infant son, born last December at the prison, lives with her in her cell.
The man who flew the world’s first jet fighter was found dead at his home in Augsburg, West Germany, a hunting rifle at his side. Police could not immediately say whether the death of Fritz Wendel, 59, was suicide or accident. A World War II test pilot for Messerschmitt aviation company, Wendel was the first to test the ME-262, on July 18, 1942.
Denmark’s Queen Margrethe asked acting Prime Minister Poul Hartling to form a new government and thus end the nation’s 2-week-old political crisis. Three parties — the Conservatives, the Christian People’s Party and the Center Democrats — told the queen they were willing to join Hartling’s Liberals in a minority coalition, which would have a total of 65 seats in the 179-seat parliament.
Secretary of State Kissinger has gone on an exploratory mission to the Middle East that he hopes will lead to an interim agreement next month between Israel and Egypt. In an interview today with the Netherlands Broadcasting Foundation, Mr. Kissinger said that this trip “will not yield results” and that he wanted to find out what were the “real convictions of the chief protagonists.” He will then return to Washington to formulate the American view and go again to the Middle East to conclude the negotiations. The second trip is being tentatively planned for early next month.
An attack by Iraqi forces on Iranian frontier posts has been repelled, the Iranian press agency said today. The Iraqi soldiers, supported by tanks and heavy artillery, were checked by border guards, according to the news agency. It said the attack was preceded by heavy shelling yesterday morning and that shooting was continuing along the border late today. Reliable reports reaching Tehran from the border region indicated that Iraq has been involved in a build-up of forces on the border since February 1. Large numbers of troops and tanks have moved into areas opposite the Iranian town of Mehran and also near the Ganjan-Jam Dam, according to the reports. The aim of the buildup is to fortify hills overlooking Iranian border positions. A year ago, major clashes occurred between Iranian and Iraqi forces in the same region. Several Iranian soldiers were killed in the clashes.
The Pakistani government arrested 44 top opposition leaders following the assassination of the senior minister in the North West Frontier province. Among those seized were Abdul Wali Khan, head of the National Awami Party and leader of the opposition in the National Assembly, and all of Khan’s lieutenants. Most of the arrests were made in Peshawar, 100 miles west of Islamabad. The charges were not announced.
Smallpox has broken out in Dacca and hundreds of Bangladesh villages, government officials reported. The death toll for January stood at 350, while 953 cases of the disease had been reported from 567 villages since the beginning of the year. The government and representatives of the World Health Organization pledged to rid the nation of 70 million of the disease by the end of this year.
A bus carrying 90 passengers tried to beat a freight train to a crossing at Tultepec, 30 miles north of Mexico City, despite frightened screams of the passengers. The train crashed into it, resulting in 30 deaths and injuries to 27 persons — all of them on the bus. Survivors said there were no warning lights at the crossing, only on the main road running parallel to it. But they stressed that the train was easy to see and had sounded at least two warning blasts. The passenger capacity of the bus was 44.
Argentine President Maria Estela Peron ordered the army into action against left-wing guerrillas, a move which might bring troops into the cities for the first time since the last military government stepped down in May, 1973. The first report of soldiers moving under their new mandate came from the northern provincial capital of Tucuman.
Richard Helms, former Director of Central Intelligence, told a closed hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January that there was “no doubt” that in 1970, the Nixon administration wanted President Salvador Allende of Chile overthrown. His testimony was made public today. Mr. Helms said that the overthrow of Dr. Allende, a Marxist, “became a thing that they were interested in having done.” His testimony contradicted sworn and public statements made by many former officials of the State Department and other government agencies, who had insisted that the United States scrupulously adhered to a policy of nonintervention in Chile.
Fire from machine guns and light weapons was heard in the outskirts of Asmara tonight after a day of quiet in the troubled Eritrean capital. Residents reported that the firing on the southeastern fringe of the city, though not intense, was continuing. After bitter fighting between government troops and secessionists in Eritrea, Ethiopia’s northern province, food was reported running out in Asmara and the Ethiopian military government was believed to be favoring a truce. The week‐long fighting has taken some 1,600 lives.
A high‐ranking Sudanese delegation arrived in Addis Ababa today with a message from President Gafaar al‐Nimeiry calling on both the government and the Eritrean rebels to halt the fighting. The members include Mansur Khaled, a former Sudanese Foreign Minister, who is now Minister of Education, and Gamal Mohammed Ahmed, Minister of State in the Foreign Ministry, who is a former ambassador to Ethiopia. The Sudan is Ethiopia’s neighbor to the west.
In a discussion of the nation’s economy in a television interview, George Meany, the 80-year-old president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., said, “we’re past the recession stage, we’re going into a depression,” and that the nation’s unemployment rate may reach 10 percent by July. He said that measures must be taken “like you take when you are fighting a war.” One measure he proposed would cut home mortgage interest rates to 6 percent to revive the home-building industry. Mr. Meany also said that Arthur Burns, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, was “a national disaster.”
A survey by the congressional Joint Economic Committee has found that higher tax payments exceeded all other price increases in the 1974 consumer budget and that they had a greater impact on low-income and middle-income taxpayers than on the wealthy.
Electronic listening devices were planted in two Washington area houses of prostitution by the FBI in the mid-1960s to tape improprieties of foreign diplomats, Newsweek magazine reported. It quoted what it called a highly placed source, who said. “The bureau hoped to obtain tapes of foreign diplomats in compromising situations to be used possibly in blackmailing them into working for the US Newsweek said the bugs had picked up congressmen and other important Americans. Information was passed on by then FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to President Lyndon B. Johnson who, it said, “enjoyed placing a stack of FBI dossiers conspicuously on his desk while subjecting vulnerable congressmen to some political arm-twisting.”
President Ford completed a weekend of relaxation and paperwork at Camp David, preparing for another round of traveling salesmanship on behalf of his economic recovery proposals. The President is to depart today on a two-day trip to Texas and Kansas designed to drum up public support for programs that have run into heavy congressional opposition. His first speech was set for late afternoon at an energy conference sponsored by the Houston Chamber of Commerce. In the evening, he will have dinner with the governors of Texas, Arkansas, Arizona, New Mexico and Oklahoma.
Leaders of the conservative movement in Republican patics are talking about campaign strategy for 1976, seemingly with scarcely a thought of supporting President Ford as a candidate. Most of them guess Mr. Ford will not be running, in which case they foresee an easy victory by former Gov. Ronald Reagan of California over Vice President Rockefeller for the party’s nomination. But if Mr. Ford does run for an elected term organized conservatives here see prospects of a serious challenge within the Republican party, or else a third‐party race, or both.
“The liberals can’t find a horse,” said Anne Wexler Duffey, a prominent Democratic organizer, “and when they can’t find a horse they feel insecure.” With the withdrawals by Senators Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Walter F. Mondale of Minnesota from the Presidential race, the active Democratic field seems overloaded to the right—at least to many of the liberal activists who backed Senator George McGovern of South Dakota in 1972. Few of them take the candidacy of former Senator Fred R. Harris of Oklahoma seriously, and few of them think that the candidacy of Representative Morris K. Udall of Arizona, which they take more seriously, has caught on so far.
Rabbi Baruch Korff said today that former President Richard M. Nixon, in view of his poor “physical and emotional health,” had no intention at present of seeking either Republican party chores or foreign policy assignments.
Elijah Muhammad, founder of the Nation of Islam, was in critical condition in Chicago’s Mercy Hospital after suffering congestive heart failure, a hospital spokeswoman said. Muhammad, 77, who had been in the hospital since January 30 for a general checkup and tests, was moved to the intensive care unit Saturday night after suffering heart failure, the spokeswoman said.
The Central Intelligence Agency has, on at least two occasions, obtained credentials from local police departments for use in operations inside the United States.
Yale University’s activist chaplain. the Rev. William Sloane Coffin Jr. announced he would resign this December the post he has held at the school for the last 17 years. I have no idea where I am going but New Haven has become a bit of a safe haven, 17 years a little too much security,” he said in announcing his decision to the congregation at on-campus Battell Chapel. The Rev. Coffin, 50, a Presbyterian, was active in the civil rights and peace movements in the 1960s. He said he did not plan to retire from the ministry but would not be a chaplain at another school. “What’s to become is still unsure, and that’s the way it should be,” he said.
Population projections for the year 2000 have been reduced 2% to 4% because young women expect to have fewer children, the Census Bureau reported. It estimates that the nation’s population will range from 245.1 million to 287 million at the turn of the century. Last year the projections placed the figures at 250.1 million to 300 million. The current population is estimated at 213 million. Campbell Gibson, chief of census population estimates and projections, said the trend had been moving steadily downward since the late 1960s. He attributed it to longer life, steady immigration, improved contraception, legalized abortion, and changing women’s roles.
The campaign committee of Rep. Al Ullman (D-Oregon) finished 1974 with a $24,700 surplus, swelled by three $1,000 contributions after the November 5, 1974, elections, the Minneapolis Tribune reported. The newspaper said the post-election contributions were from the Life Insurance Political Action Committee, a similar group representing the banking profession, and H. Ross Perot, a Texas millionaire who has made a fortune processing Medicare claims for the government. Ullman succeeded Rep. Wilbur D. Mills (D-Arkansas) as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee early this year.
A water pollution authority from Philadelphia has received the $150,000 Pepperdine University Tyler Ecology Award, which has been described as the largest scientific prize in the world. Dr. Ruth Patrick, 67, head of the board of the Academy of Natural Sciences, was recognized as the “individual in the world who has done the most in the field of ecology to help his fellow man.” She is best known for her work in algae. Dr. Patrick told a forum in Los Angeles that Americans must increase conservation of energy. “Water and energy are closely tied together because we cannot generate electricity without water. We are going to have to learn how to recycle water and glass so as not to pollute our water,” she said.
The 12,000-member machinists union at McDonnell Douglas Corporation, where Phantom fighter jets are manufactured, set up picket lines at 12:01 A.M. today in a strike that could spread to 18,000 other workers.
Thomas F. Olmsted, director of the United States economic aid program in Cambodia, died last night in Thailand in a Bangkok hospital, where he was rushed a week ago after a sudden attack of pancreatitis. He was 45 years old.
Seattle SuperSonics’ coach Bill Russell, the former Boston Celtics’ star who was elected to the National Basketball Hall of Fame yesterday, said today he would refuse induction. The decision brought a startled reaction from Lee Williams, executive director of the Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts. Williams said today that he had received no formal refusal by Russell and that he was shocked to hear of Russell’s decision. Russell would not explain his decision except to say, “For my own personal reasons, which I don’t want to discuss, I don’t want to be a part of it. I’m not going. They know that. I’ve felt this way for many years.” There was some opinion that Russell’s decision had racial undertones since there are no other black players from the N.B.A. in the Hall of Fame.
Born:
Vladimir Guerrero, Dominican MLB outfielder (Hall of Fame, inducted, 2018; AL MVP, 2004; All-Star, 1999-2002, 2004-2007, 2010; Montreal Expos, Anaheim-Los Angeles Angels, Texas Rangers, Baltimore Orioles), in Nizao, Dominican Republic.
Vincent Amey, NFL defensive end (Oakland Raiders), in Los Angeles, California.
Terry Billups, NFL cornerback (Dallas Cowboys, New England Patriots), in Wiesbaden, Hesse, West Germany.
Died:
Constant Burniaux, 82, Belgian writer (“The Abandoned”) and art historian (“Temps Inquiets”).
History Diaries 