Plans to deploy nuclear arms in Canada, Iceland, Bermuda and Puerto Rico have been charted by the United States on a contingency basis over the last decade, according to Reagan Administration officials and a government document outlining the plans. Recent press reports abroad that the plans exist have caused embarrassment in Washington because American officials have not informed the governments involved. The existence of the plans, some of which have been in effect as long as a decade, was confirmed to the foreign authorities only after the press reports appeared, Administration officials said. Administration officials stressed in response to inquiries that these were contingency plans, that the President had not delegated authority in advance to the Pentagon to deploy the weapons and that, in any event, deployment would require approval by the other governments. Nonetheless, the press disclosures in recent weeks in Canada, Iceland, Bermuda and Puerto Rico prompted wide- ranging public debate and criticism, particularly in Canada and Iceland.
A planned meeting between Konstantin U. Chernenko and the visiting Prime Minister of Greece was called off today because of the Soviet leader’s health, a Greek spokesman said. The announcement followed reports from Greek diplomats that Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou, on arriving Monday, had been advised that he would see Mr. Chernenko. There was no confirmation from Soviet officials that a meeting had been planned. A Foreign Ministry spokesman told Western reporters that Mr. Chernenko was out of town and no meeting would be held.
Three Israelis and a Nigerian were convicted today of kidnapping and drugging a fugitive Nigerian politician in an attempt to fly him home. They were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 10 to 14 years. For their part in the July 5, 1984, kidnap of Nigeria’s former Transport Minister, Umaru Dikko, Alexander Barak, 27 years old, an Israeli businessman, was sentenced to 14 years in prison, and Mohammed Yusufu, 40, a Nigerian, was given a 12-year term. Lev-Arieh Shapiro, 43, an Israeli anesthesiologist, and Felix Avital, 31, an Israeli shopkeeper, were sent to prison for 10 years. All four men pleaded guilty.
A government-appointed body said Britain’s immigration policy discriminates against poor and black people and often causes intolerable delays in reuniting them with their British families. The Commission for Racial Equality said blacks are 300 times more likely to be refused entry than whites and that 20% of black women are barred when they try to join husbands who have settled in Britain. Commissioner Juliet Cheetham called the predicament of divided families especially serious, saying delays of three to four years are commonplace.
UNESCO’s 50-member executive board opened a politically charged debate today on the consequences of the United States withdrawal. Richard W. Aherne, head of the formally unaccredited United States Observers’ Mission to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, could not find a seat in the public part of the conference hall at this morning’s crowded opening session and watched the proceedings standing at the back. The American withdrawal dominated the discussion and the political maneuverings on the first day of this five-day executive board session. Washington’s move has cut the organization’s budget overnight by a quarter, confronting it with the urgent need to make drastic economies.
Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union continued at only a trickle last month, with 61 Jews arriving in Vienna on their way to new homes in Israel and other countries, the Intergovernmental Committee for Migration reported in Geneva. The figure for December was 91. A total of 908 Soviet Jews emigrated last year, the first time the number had fallen below 1,000 since it reached a peak of 51,330 in 1979. Yearly figures have declined steadily since then, the committee said.
Israel is losing its military edge over its Arab neighbors, according to an analysis published today by the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies. “The Middle East Military Balance,” published in Hebrew and English editions, includes surveys of the major developments in the region in 1983 and early 1984, an inventory of armed forces in the Middle East, analyses of various local balances and an overall appreciation of the balance.
Israeli-backed militiamen of the South Lebanon Army abandoned all their major posts in the southern port city of Sidon. The pullout of the predominantly Christian militia left only a small contingent of Israeli soldiers in the Sidon area. By next Monday, the last units of Israeli soldiers will have moved south from Sidon in the first step of a three-stage withdrawal from Lebanon.
A Hussein-Arafat agreement on a framework for peace was called a “significant breakthrough” in efforts to revive long-stalled Middle East talks by President Hosni Mubarak’s senior foreign policy adviser. The Egyptian adviser, Osama el-Baz, who was in Amman, Jordan, to monitor the two days of talks between King Hussein and Yasser Arafat, the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, declined to provide details of the accord. The Jordanian press agency announced Monday night that the Jordanian King and Mr. Arafat, the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, had agreed on the framework for a joint bid to achieve a “just and peaceful settlement” of the Palestinian issue.
U.S.-Soviet talks on Middle East issues will be held next Tuesday in Vienna, State Department officials said. They said the delegations would be headed by Richard W. Murphy, an Assistant Secretary of State, and Vladimir P. Polyakov, his Soviet counterpart. The idea for discussing the Middle East in detail was originally accepted in principle after President Reagan proposed it to Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko when they met here last fall. It was discussed briefly by Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Mr. Gromyko in Geneva last month.
President Reagan has breakfast with the King of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Fahd bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud to discuss the Middle East peace plan.
An Iraqi warplane fired a missile into an oil-laden Greek-owned tanker south of Iran’s main Persian Gulf oil terminal at Kharg Island, and Iraqi troops reported victories in ground attacks on Iranian positions. The crew of the tanker, the Liberian-registered Fellowship L, put out a fire after the attack, and there were no casualties, the owners said. Iraq reported that its troops overran Iranian positions on the central and southern fronts, killing more than 100 of the enemy. There was no immediate comment from Iran.
Visiting Polish Premier Wojciech Jaruzelski said in New Delhi that he promised Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi his government will investigate possible Polish involvement in a defense espionage ring. Gandhi had expressed displeasure over the firs official charge of Polish complicity in the spy network, in which military secrets were reportedly traded for favors. The scandal has forced the resignation of one of Gandhi’s top aides. France, East Germany and the Soviet Union have also been mentioned in Indian press accounts of the spy ring.
One of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s bodyguards has been charged with murdering her, and two other Sikhs have been charged with criminal conspiracy in her October 31 assassination, according to court documents.
Vietnamese forces mounted a powerful drive today in western Cambodia’s mountain jungles, crushing Khmer Rouge guerrilla positions in a two-pronged assault, Thai military officers said. Thousands of Cambodian civilians were reported to have fled into Thai territory. The sound of Vietnamese artillery and mortar fire rumbled through this border town.
A new party of anti-Government politicians picked up surprisingly strong support and emerged today from general elections as South Korea’s leading opposition group. The ruling Democratic Justice Party, as expected, retained its majority in the National Assembly. But potentially the most significant result of Tuesday’s legislative elections was the success of the New Korea Democratic Party, formed by opposition figures who only three months ago were banned from political life by President Chun Doo Hwan. The new party’s strong showing created a possibility that the fundamentally weak legislature could become a more vigorous political forum.
Fire swept through a luxury hotel in Manila, killing at least 16 people, two of them Americans. The U.S. victims were identified as Edward Carroll, a regional officer of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service based in Tokyo, and Louis Carol Rowney, 62, from the Subic Bay Naval Base. About a dozen IRS employees were attending a conference at the hotel, the Regent of Manila. At least 20 people were reported injured in the blaze, and it was feared that the death toll might rise. Some of those who survived were forced to leap from windows.
Gander International Airport has become a key jumping-off point for people seeking to flee to the West. Soviet-bloc airlines make 23 or so stops each week at the Newfoundland facility to refuel on trips from Eastern Europe to Havana and back. Immigration officials said that 96 people jumped plane there last year. Of those, they said, 34 were Sri Lankan, 26 were Cuban, 20 were Iranian and 16 were from Soviet-bloc countries.
The United States Embassy said today that a Mexican pilot associated with the Drug Enforcement Administration was kidnapped in Guadalajara last Thursday, hours after an American drug enforcement agent was abducted from a street there. The pilot, Alfredo Zavala Avelar, occasionally flew missions for the drug agency in Mexico. He was a friend of the kidnapped agent, Enrique Camarena Salazar, according to an embassy spokesman.
Dominican President Salvador Jorge Blanco announced a partial rollback tonight in price increases on basic food items in an effort to prevent further unrest. Two weeks of scattered protests against the imposition last month of austerity measures demanded by the International Monetary Fund led to a general strike Monday. The country was reported calm today as people returned to work. Speaking on television tonight, Mr. Jorge Blanco said price reductions of 18 to 20 percent on items such as milk, bread and cooking oil would take effect Wednesday. Food and fuel prices were increased by up to 70 percent last month. He said he had submitted a program to the Chamber of Deputies proposing a 10 percent overall wage increase. He also criticized the leftist Dominican Front, which organized the general strike. “Work stoppages create disturbing social tensions which are sometimes painful and regrettable,” the President said.
The United States routinely has about 120 soldiers in El Salvador but is not violating the 55-man limit that Congress imposed for military advisers, a United States Embassy spokesman said today. Responding to allegations by three members of Congress that the Administration is deceiving Congress about the extent of American involvement in El Salvador, the embassy provided a breakdown of military personnel here. The embassy spokesman said soldiers were here in addition to the 55 advisers but were handling other duties.
Chile’s President Augusto Pinochet dismissed two civilian members of the Cabinet who had urged him not to renew the state of siege he has used to crack down on the political opposition. Pinochet accepted the resignations of Interior Minister Sergio Onofre Jarpa and Finance Minister Luis Escobar but reappointed the other 14 Cabinet members. The entire Cabinet had resigned the day before at Pinochet’s request.
If popularity could be measured by the number of walls a politician’s name had been scrawled on, Juan Domingo Perón would still rank first among Argentina’s leaders. Mr. Perón, reviled by many as a fascist, dominated Argentine political life for more than 40 years, galvanizing the working class with shirt-sleeve oratory and generous wage increases. He died of a heart attack in 1974, but the Perónist movement lived on, at least in name. This month two groups, each claiming to be the real Perónist party, held separate congresses, a development analogous to two wings of the Democratic Party in the United States holding competing national conventions.
Additional police officers were sent to a black township today after the death of a black youth who apparently was wounded by rubber bullets fired by the police during rioting the day before. A police spokesman in Pretoria said there were no reports of renewed violence in Seisoville, about 125 miles south of Johannesburg. On Monday, black rioters burned and looted scores of shops in Seisoville, near Kroonstad in the Orange Free State. A 17-year-old boy died overnight in a hospital, apparently from rubber- bullet wounds, the police said. The police and witnesses said the rioting started when students poured out of two high schools and began stoning the school buildings and cars owned by teachers. It was not known why the students rioted, although they have demanded the right to elect student councils and complained about what they call a second-rate education.
President Reagan today urged an assemblage of Nobel laureates and other distinguished scientists not to “think small” about his proposed space-based defense against missiles but to approach it instead with “vision and hope” as an ambitious plan to save mankind from nuclear destruction. In a brief, anecdotal speech to about 100 scientists who had been invited to the White House for lunch, the President praised science as “revolutionizing our lives,” stressed that his latest budget would increase funds for certain kinds of science and urged the “accumulated brainpower” present not to sell short the idea of a missile defense system. “I believe that our nuclear dilemma presents us with some of the major unfinished business of science,” Mr. Reagan said. “We have begun research on a non-nuclear defense against nuclear attack. You on the cutting edge of technology have already made yesterday’s impossibilities the commonplace realities of today. Why should we start thinking small now? In protecting mankind from terrible nuclear destruction, I think we must be ambitious.”
President Reagan attends a Cabinet Council meeting to discuss the clean up of toxic waste dumps.
President Reagan seems more unshakable on pet ideas in face-to-face interviews than he does on television or in print. For the force of his position comes across as much in his body language as in what he says. From afar, many people are tempted to assume that some things any President says are for effect and may represent posturing, perhaps at the start of complicated negotiations with Congress or Moscow. But from close up, Mr. Reagan communicates not only his stand on policy matters but also the hierarchy of his priorities. He conveys a clear division between the issues forced on him by circumstance or the bureaucracy and those on which he has deep personal feelings.
Senator Barry Goldwater, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has proposed trimming President Reagan’s military budget by $33 billion over the next three years as part of an overall Republican plan to reduce Federal deficits, Congressional sources said today. Mr. Goldwater, an Arizona Republican, made the recommendation privately to Senator Bob Dole of Kansas, the Senate majority leader, and stressed that it was contingent on the Republican leadership’s rallying support for a series of cuts in domestic programs to round out the deficit-cutting plan, according to the sources, who requested anonymity. Mr. Goldwater’s proposal mirrored the demands of many Republicans who have linked their support for cuts in domestic programs, including a one-year freeze in Social Security benefits, to a reduction in the military buildup.
Union Carbide hopes to reopen by April 1 its West Virginia plant that makes methyl isocyanate, the pesticide ingredient that killed more than 2,000 people in a leak at a similar plant in Bhopal, India. The company said the U.S. facility, which has been closed since the December 3 India leak, would reopen with one major safety improvement — a computer system to track chemical leaks. Union Carbide Corp. said its Institute, West Virginia, plant is preparing to resume production in April of the poisonous chemical responsible for more than 2,000 deaths in India. State and federal officials questioned the move, and a congressman called for a hearing on the matter. Carbide said that an internal investigation of the December 3 leak of methyl isocyanate from a chemical plant at Bhopal, India, owned by a Carbide subsidiary, probably will be finished by April and that any concerns about safety in Institute “will be satisfactorily resolved” by then.
Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-California), responding to the lethal gas leak in Bhopal, India, launched a major effort to evaluate the public health threat from the more than 5,000 chemical plants in the United States. Waxman, chairman of a House subcommittee on health and environment, wrote to the heads of the nation’s largest chemical companies, asking them to identify the dangerous chemicals in their inventories, to estimate the amount of poisonous gases regularly leaking into the community’s air and its adverse health effects, and to evaluate the potential for major poison gas leaks. Waxman said he will use the information to draft legislation ensuring the safety of chemical plants.
About 5,000 farmers attended a rally in Pierre, South Dakota, protesting the worst farm economy crisis since the Great Depression and urging action to save the family farm. Small-businessmen closed their shops and schools canceled classes in support of the farmers, who arrived in school buses and pickup trucks for the rally. Farming is the No. 1 industry in South Dakota, but 25% of the state’s farmers are considered to be in weak financial condition because of high interest rates, tight money and low crop prices.
Medicaid is unnecessarily spending “500 million to more than $1 billion” a year to pay medical bills that should be paid by private insurance companies, according to the General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress. Medicaid, a Federal-state program, finances health care for 22 million low- income people. The Federal share ranges from 50 percent to 78 percent, depending on a state’s per capita income. But under Federal law, the report said, the Government is not supposed to pay for health care if the beneficiary has private insurance that could pay the costs.
An inquiry into sexual abuse of children in Jordan, Minnesota, was improperly conducted and “a tragedy,” according to state officials. After a four-month review, they said the state would not refile criminal charges against 21 adults.Minnesota officials said they will file no criminal charges in the case of an alleged child sex ring in Jordan because the original investigators made too many errors. But they said at least 16 children in the area had been molested. “The credibility problems resulted from the initial handling of these cases by Scott County authorities, including repeated questions, a lack of investigative reports and cross-germination of allegations,” state Attorney General Hubert H. Humphrey III said in a statement.
Kevin Coe was again found guilty today in rapes that terrorized a Spokane neighborhood from 1978 to 1981. Mr. Coe, who again faces life in prison, was convicted of raping three women. The jury was unable to reach a verdict on a fourth count. Mr. Coe, 38 years old, was charged in four of the nearly 40 assaults ascribed to the “South Hill rapist.” His original convictions in 1981 were overturned last summer by the state Supreme Court, which found mistakes by the judge and prosecutor. The second trial for the former real estate salesman was moved to Seattle. A defense lawyer said an appeal would be filed.
A federal judge in Phoenix dropped charges that two Catholic nuns helped smuggle Central American refugees into the United States as part of an underground church sanctuary movement. U.S. District Judge Earl Carroll said he dismissed the charges because one of the nuns is ill. Still accused in the case, the result of an Arizona federal grand jury crackdown on the sanctuary movement, are another nun, two priests, a minister and 10 other church workers. The charges against Anna Priester and Mary Waddell, members of the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, were dismissed. Because of Priester’s health, Carroll said he dismissed all charges against the two nuns under the principle of protecting persons from government harassment.
General William C. Westmoreland imposed a “dishonest” ceiling on reports of enemy strength in South Vietnam in 1967 because higher figures were “politically unacceptable,” according to the testimony of a retired Army colonel at the CBS libel trial. The colonel, Gains B. Hawkins, was in charge of estimating enemy strength in 1967.
A Federal jury convicted Eduardo Arocena, reputed chief of the anti-Castro group Omega 7, on weapons and conspiracy charges today. The jury, which included three Latins, also convicted Mr. Arocena’s co-defendant, Milton Badia, a firearms dealer, on one charge of conspiracy. The jury found Mr. Arocena guilty on all 23 charges, involving at least three machine guns and three pistols, all with silencers. The convictions could bring a maximum penalty of 115 years for Mr. Arocena and five years for Mr. Badia. Judge William Hoeveler set no date for sentencing. In October, Mr. Arocena was sentenced in New York to life plus 35 years in the slaying of a Cuban diplomatic attache, Felix Garcia, and as the organizer of 25 bombings in 10 years of terrorism by Omega 7.
The Department of Justice Monday filed a lawsuit charging Massachusetts with violating the civil rights of 435 mentally ill patients at Worcester State Hospital by withholding proper medical care. The Justice Department started an investigation of Worcester State in October 1982 and the findings were reported to Governor Michael Dukakis in April, Federal officials said. Assistant Attorney General William Bradford Reynolds said the Government had tried but failed to correct the situation through negotiations. The Justice Department lawsuit charged that the hospital was insufficiently staffed, provided inadequate medical care and treatment and failed to give proper evaluation of patients on admission. A spokesman for the Governor said Mr. Dukakis would not comment before he had a chance to study the charges. Officials at the hospital were not available. The suit was filed under the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act of 1980.
The Reagan Administration today approved a proposal by a private concern to send cremated human remains into space. Jennifer L. Dorn, of the Transportation Department’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation, said the company, Space Services, “has presented a creative response to the President’s initiative to encourage the commercial use of space.”
A malfunctioning power line knocked out power early this evening in portions of 6 states in the Pacific Northwest. Power was lost in parts of Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, California, Oregon and throughout much of Montana, said Dean Conklin, a spokesman for the Montana Power Company.
A storm draped a blanket of snow from the Great Lakes down along the Appalachians and into the Deep South, closing highways with snowdrifts and jackknifed trucks. Parts of the southern Appalachians got a foot of snow or more, and the storm also poured heavy rain along the East Coast, causing scattered lowland flooding. One Indiana county threatened to arrest anyone driving without good reason. Elsewhere in the state, traffic accidents were down because roads were “so bad they can’t get close enough to hit each other.” The weather, which closed schools, has been blamed for 19 deaths nationwide since Saturday.
37th NHL All-Star Game, Olympic Saddledome, Calgary: Wales Conference beats Campbell Conference, 6–4; MVP: Mario Lemieux, Pittsburgh Penguins, Centre.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1276.61 (+0.55)
Born:
Cole De Vries, MLB pitcher (Minnesota Twins), in St. Louis Park, Minnesota.
Konstantin Pushkarev, Kazakhstani NHL right wing (Los Angeles Kings), in Ust-Kamenogorsk, Kazakh SSR, Soviet Union.
Martin Houle, Canadian NHL goaltender (Philadelphia Flyers), in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Saskia Burmeister Croft, Australian actress (“Hating Alison Ashley”), in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
Died:
Nicholas Colasanto, 61, American actor (“Cheers”; “Family Plot”; “The Counterfeit Killer”), of a heart attack.
Van Lingle Mungo, 73, American baseball pitcher (MLB All-Star 1934, 1936, 1937, 1945; NL strikeout leader 1936; Brooklyn Dodgers, New York Giants).
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