Resistance to nuclear weapons involvement is apparently spreading among the Western allies, according to Pentagon and State Department officials. They said they were trying to formulate a policy to deal with the situation. “We are concerned about an unraveling here,” a high-ranking Administration official said. To deal with this, the officials said, they are putting together a policy of reassuring allies about their participation in nuclear issues and at the same time of being tough in holding them to existing commitments to play a role in nuclear operations and deployments.
The officials said they were trying to reassure allies that they would have full knowledge of nuclear decisions affecting their countries and would be involved in those decisions. This was embodied, Administration officials said, in a telegram to American embassies Tuesday in response to reports that the United States had developed contingency plans for deploying nuclear weapons in countries such as Canada and Iceland without having told them of such plans.
Seven Solidarity activists were detained today after a police raid on a Gdansk apartment where they were meeting, according to an aide to Lech Walesa. The aide, Grzegorz Grzelak, said Mr. Walesa was present at the meeting, but was promptly released. Mr. Grzelak, reached by telephone at Mr. Walesa’s apartment in Gdansk, said the seven others had been taken away.
The nations of the world spent more than $800 billion for military purposes during 1984, about $166 for every human being, according to a U.N. report. The “1985 Report on the World Social Situation” says military expenditures are growing at a rate faster than the global population, which is estimated at 4.8 billion. The report said that most of the military spending is done by six nations — the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, China, France and West Germany.
The Soviet Government press agency Tass published messages today from Konstantin U. Chernenko, the Soviet leader, to an Argentine and a northern European peace group. Mr. Chernenko, 73 years old, is reported to be ailing and has not made a public appearance in nearly seven weeks. Western diplomats see the regular publication of statements from him as an effort to keep his name before the public. Some Soviet officials have said he is sick, while others have insisted he is on a winter vacation. Tass said Mr. Chernenko’s messages responded to a letter from an Argentine group called the “Movement of 100 in the Name of Life,” and to one from a Nordic group named “Treaty Now,” which seeks a nuclear-free zone in northern Europe.
The Soviet Union urged the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization to stop employing Americans in light of the U.S. withdrawal from the agency. Soviet delegate Dmitri Yermolenko told the UNESCO executive board that the 143 Americans working for the U.N. specialized agency’s secretariat should be replaced by employees from countries that remain members. However, UNESCO Director General Amadou Mahtar M’Bow said the Americans are international civil servants and their jobs are not at risk.
Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou says he believes the “very bad climate” between Greece and the United States could be improved if Washington, on its own and through the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, would persuade Turkey to meet Greek demands. “For us there is really no other mechanism but that,” Mr. Papandreou said in an interview last weekend, before he left for talks in Moscow. “We are not in a position to do it.” Mr. Papandreou said American influence was needed in resolving the Cyprus problem and in removing what Greece considers a Turkish threat to Greek islands in the Aegean.
Dresden’s Semper Opera reopened 40 years after it was devastated by an allied bombing raid. The centerpiece of an ambitious reconstruction program that aims to give the Communist regime a firm claim on the German past, the Semper resonated tonight to the strains of Carl Maria von Weber’s romantic “Freisch”utz” – the last opera performed before the Nazis closed the theater in 1944 as they declared a total war effort. As the opera unfolded tonight the church bells of Dresden rang out, recalling the onset of the bombing of one of Europe’s loveliest cities on February 13, 1945. Over three days, successive waves of British and American bombers set Dresden’s old Baroque center ablaze and killed at least 35,000 people.
Lebanese troops moving into southern Lebanon as Israeli forces leave had a face-to-face confrontation with the Israelis at a key bridge on the Awwali River, but the two sides withdrew after five tense minutes, Reuters news agency reported. The Lebanese, who took over the bridge as the Israelis continued their pullback to the south, were suddenly confronted by two Israeli armored vehicles and trained their rifles on them, Reuters said. The stalemate ended when the Israelis drove off, and the Lebanese then withdrew.
Egypt has fallen seriously behind in payments on its $4.5 billion military debt to the United States and now owes between $250 million and $300 million in interest, financial authorities here said this week. The financial sources declined to say how many payments, or parts of payments, Egypt had missed. But they said the pattern of arrears became persistent about the middle of 1984. Neither Egyptian nor American officials here would commment on the debt problem. But Egypt’s military debt was said to be high on the list of issues that President Hosni Mubarak is to discuss with President Reagan and other American officials when he visits Washington in early March.
President Reagan and Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd issued a joint communique saying a stable Mideast peace “must provide security for all states in the area and for the exercise of the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people.” They differed, however, on how to achieve peace. In their two days of talks, Fahd supported the 1982 Arab League plan calling for a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. Reagan stood by his own 1982 proposal calling for self-rule for the Palestinians — in association with Jordan — on land captured by Israel in 1967.
Iraqi jets attacked an unfinished nuclear power plant in the southern Iranian port of Bushehr, killing one person and wounding several, the Iranian Embassy in Vienna reported. The International Atomic Energy Agency, headquartered in the Austrian capital, said Iran notified it of the attack. A spokesman for the U.N.-affiliated agency, which monitors nuclear installations worldwide, said there was no danger of a nuclear explosion. Iran accused Iraq of an earlier attack on the plant last March.
Mideast diplomatic sources said Iran has now agreed to supply oil to Nicaragua and that deliveries are expected to begin later this year. Last month, Iranian Prime Minister Hussein Moussavi visited Managua for two days, and the United States complained about pending Iranian oil and arms aid to the leftist Sandinistas. The sources said Iranian specialists are due in Managua shortly to discuss details, including the volume of oil deliveries and the form of payment.
Vietnamese gunners poured heavy shellfire on Khmer Rouge guerrillas, then sent in ground forces to surround the most important rebel stronghold in western Cambodia, Thai military officers reported. With the guerrillas backed against the Thai border, more than 10,000 Vietnamese troops were poised for a major ground assault against Phnom Malai, 14 miles south of the key Thai border town of Aranyaprathet, Thai and Western sources said.
The non-Communist nations of Southeast Asia took their strongest united stand against Vietnam this week, condemning it for ignoring “the established rules of orderly and peaceful conduct of relations between states.” The statement by Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Brunei, and the Philippines came amid growing regional alarm over Vietnamese attacks on rebels that have begun to spill into Thailand and frustration over repeated failures to bring Hanoi to the negotiating table. Today, 10,000 Vietnamese troops were reported to have surrounded rebel strongholds in western Cambodia, and the guerrillas were said to be fighting back with mortar and cannon fire. An estimated 35,000 civilians are believed to have fled across the Thai border since the Vietnamese push began on Tuesday.
Opposition forces, jubilant over their surprising surge in South Korea’s general elections Tuesday, said today that they would try to form a broad legislative coalition against the Government of President Chun Doo Hwan. Kim Dae Jung, the country’s leading dissident politician, said that although he was barred from politics he would seek a merger of rival opposition groups into a unified anti-Government camp. They would operate, he said, under the banner of the New Korea Democratic Party, formed by opposition politicians who were banned until recently and are generally allied with Mr. Kim and another leading dissident, Kim Young Sam. Only a month ago this party did not exist, but it captured enough National Assembly seats in the balloting Tuesday to become immediately the No. 1 opposition group.
An extortion gang that has terrorized Japan for a year placed cyanide-laced sweets on store shelves in Tokyo and Nagoya on the eve of Valentine’s Day, the police said today. The gang, which threatened to scatter the candy to press demands for payoffs from confectioners, ridiculed the custom of buying candy for a sweetheart. It said it would help couples “to commit double suicide by eating chocolate.” Police said they had found 12 packages of poisoned candy marked with warning messages in Tokyo and Nagoya. Valentine’s Day is a postwar import promoted by candymakers to increase sales. It has acquired a Japanese twist — it is the women who buy chocolates for their sweethearts, husbands and bosses.
President Ferdinand E. Marcos today ordered the release of two movie directors and 39 other people jailed on his orders for 16 days. Justice Minister Estelito Mendoza announced the action a day after the moviemakers, Lino Brocka and Behn Cervantes, filed a petition with the Supreme Court contending that the detention was unlawful. The Supreme Court has overturned some of Mr. Marcos’s actions in recent months. The 41 had been charged with illegal assembly and sedition for taking part in a demonstration in support of a strike by public transport drivers demanding cuts in gasoline prices. A local judge, Mirian Defensor-Santiago, earlier approved the group’s petition for bail and ordered the military to release them. The military refused to obey, saying only President Marcos could order the release of people he had ordered detained.
Improvements in human rights in Latin America, particularly in El Salvador, have been found by the State Department in its annual review of the rights situations around the world. The State Department, in an annual review, has found continuing deprivation and abuses of human rights in most countries around the world. But a senior department official asserted that the most important trend consisted of improvements in Latin America. Elliott Abrams, Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs, said at a news conference today, “Worldwide, I think I would say that the only significant overall trend is the trend toward improvement in the Western Hemisphere.” “In the last five years, I think, we are now up to nine countries that have gone from military dictatorship to democracy,” he said. “Zero countries have gone from democracy to dictatorship.”
A bitter diplomatic dispute between Costa Rica and Nicaragua led the Contadora group today to cancel its latest effort to negotiate a peace treaty for Central America. Representatives of the five Central American nations and the Contadora Group — Colombia, Mexico, Panama and Venezuela — were to have met in Panama on Thursday and Friday. Their plan was to work out a new section on verification and control of the arms reduction plans included in the peace treaty.
The State Department has contested a Congressional report that criticizes the United States aid program in El Salvador, calling the study “unfair and inaccurate.” A department spokesman also said, “We categorically reject the assertion that the Congress has been deceived by the Administration.” That charge and others were made Monday in a report from the Arms Control and Foreign Policy Caucus of the House and the Senate.
No big farm credit bailout will be enacted this year, in the opinion of David A. Stockman, the Federal budget director. Although Mr. Stockman came under sharp fire for the tartness of his criticism of both farm subsidies and the military pension system last week, he repeated the thrust of those comments today in a breakfast session with reporters. He differed with one report that Donald T. Regan, the new White House chief of staff, had told him to “keep his cool” on such issues. And although Mr. Stockman acknowledged he would not stay in the government indefinitely, he said that rumors of an early departure “ought to be adjusted to the seasonal factor” because they arise annually in the budget battle.
President Reagan participates in a question and answer session with the press to discuss international issues.
President Reagan travels to Rancho del Cielo in California.
Paper bags filled with cash from a family, the Angiulos, that was identified by Federal officials as leaders of organized crime, were accepted for years by the Bank of Boston without reporting the transactions to the government, according to Howard K. Matheson, the former head teller of one of the bank’s branches. Normally all cash transactions over $10,000 must be reported to the Internal Revenue Service, but certain retail businesses, such as supermarkets and restaurants, that generate large amounts of cash can be exempted. A Bank of Boston spokesman said he would not confirm whether the Angiulo companies were customers of the bank or, if they were, whether the bank exempted their cash transactions.
The government has delayed for “additional weeks” the licensing of a test designed to screen blood for evidence of the virus believed to cause AIDS — Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome — the Health and Human Services Department announced. Secretary Margaret M. Heckler acknowledged in a statement that the expected mid-February approval of the test has slipped, but gave no hint of when the Food and Drug Administration might act. “Additional weeks will be required for manufacturers to provide needed data… and for FDA to review it,” she said.
Edwin J. Feulner Jr., chairman of a commission that oversees U.S. Information Agency operations, said he favors domestic release of USIA editorials now beamed abroad in the government’s foreign propaganda program. Congress has banned dissemination of such material by the Voice of America and other USIA subsidiaries to limit the ability of any U.S. Administration to influence public opinion. Feulner heads the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy. He told a news conference that it might be time to rethink the policy. His group will hold public hearings.
The Labor Department announced that it has agreed to terms with the Teamsters Union Central States Health and Welfare Fund in its seven-year bitter court battle in Chicago over management of the fund. The fund will recover $4.4 million under a consent decree for money it was allegedly overcharged by a claims processing firm owned by reputed mobster Allen Dorfman. The decree, to be signed today by U.S. District Judge Hubert L. Will, severs all ties between the fund and Amalgamated Insurance Agency Services Inc., the firm Dorfman owned. The suit, for $10 million, was filed in 1978.
A divorce settlement was approved for U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Margaret M. Heckler and her estranged husband. The couple smiled and shook hands after the approval came through in Dedham, Mass. “We just wished each other luck,” said John Heckler, 57, after the court completed the first step in the dissolution of their 32-year marriage. Margaret Heckler, 53, said: “We’re very happy it’s over, particularly for the children.”
A prosecutor whose office was accused of mishandling a case in which 16 children were said to be the victims of a child-abuse ring today denied the assertions and said she would not resign. The prosecutor, Kathleen Morris, Scott County Attorney, said she intended to “aggressively work to protect children” from abuse. Her handling of the case in Jordan, Minn., was criticized in a report by the State Attorney General, Hubert H. Humphrey 3d. She said Mr. Humphrey asked her in a telephone conversation Tuesday, shortly before he issued his report, if she was going to step down. Mr. Humphrey later said he had not requested Miss Morris’s resignation. Miss Morris had brought charges of child sexual abuse against 25 people and dropped charges against 22 after a husband and wife were tried and acquitted. One person pleaded guilty.
Four persons were killed, including two hostages whose bodies were dumped by road, in a three-county police chase that ended in a shootout at a farmhouse, the Kansas Highway Patrol said. Four suspects were trailed to a farmhouse near Colby, Kansas, where three were apprehended and one apparently was shot by authorities, patrol communications officer Larry Fletchall said. A restaurant manager, two men taken hostage at a grain elevator and one of the suspects were slain, the Highway Patrol said. Authorities had no motive for the shooting spree.
Cathy Evelyn Smith, charged with murder and drug violations in the death of the comedian John Belushi, stood silent in court today as her attorney entered her plea of not guilty. Miss Smith, who decided to fight the charges against her rather than accept a plea bargain, was ordered to appear March 12 for a preliminary hearing. Her attorney, Howard Weitzman, said he would seek a delay. Mr. Weitzman said he has been told that news reporters he had been trying to subpoena would fight his effort to have them testify at Miss Smith’s hearing. Outside court, he said the reporters might include those who interviewed her for an article in The National Enquirer that told of her purported role in Belushi’s death. Mr. Belushi, 33 years old, the star of “Saturday Night Live” on television, died in a bungalow at the Chateau Marmont Hotel March 5, 1982. The coroner listed the cause of death as acute heroin and cocaine poisoning. A year later Miss Smith was indicted by a Los Angeles County grand jury on one count of second-degree murder and 13 counts of supplying and administering drugs.
The South Carolina Supreme Court ruled that castration is an unconstitutional “form of mutilation” and ordered three convicted rapists to be resentenced because they had been given the choice of castration or 30 years in prison. In a 3-2 decision, the justices ruled that the lower court’s sentence was void because castration is cruel and unusual punishment prohibited by the state Constitution. Judges “cannot impose conditions which are illegal and void as against public policy,” the decision said.
The worldwide body of Conservative Judaism has voted to allow women to become rabbis, the New York Times reported. The first woman will be ordained in May and will be introduced today when the Rabbinical Assembly is to formally announce its decision, the Times said. The change is expected to increase tensions between Conservative and Orthodox Jews, who oppose women rabbis.
Obesity is a killing disease that should receive the same medical attention as high blood pressure, smoking and other factors that cause serious illness and premature death, a Federal panel concluded here today. Any level of obesity increases health risks, the panel noted, but it singled out a level of 20 percent or more above “desirable” body weight as the point at which doctors should treat an otherwise healthy adult. For those who have other health problems, such as diabetes or high blood pressure, or a family history of such problems, treatment of overweight should start sooner, the panel said. The 14-member panel, composed of health officials from a variety of disciplines, was convened by the National Institutes of Health to try to arrive at a consensus on current knowledge about the dangers to health of various levels of obesity. Treatment of overweight was not considered, although the panel urged that this question be the focus of a future panel.
The trial of San Diego’s Mayor ended when a judge declared it a mistrial. After debating for nearly four days, the jury said it was “hopelessly deadlocked” 11 to 1 in favor of convicting the Mayor, Roger Hedgecock, of perjury and conspiracy to violate campaign financing laws.
Libel and slander suits, often brought by public officials, corporations and real estate developers, are being filed increasingly against outspoken people. Specialists say the wave of such lawsuits against individuals presents a threat to the First Amendment by intimidating people from speaking out on public issues.
A jury award to Vanessa Redgrave was thrown out by a judge who ruled that the Boston Symphony Orchestra could not be held liable for possible damages to her career after it canceled her performance in a 1982 concert series. In denying the $100,000 damage award, the judge said the orchestra must pay the actress $27,500 for breach of contract.
An academic organization’s attempt to multiply its reserve fund by investing in stock options has ended with a loss of more than $1 million. As a result, the future of the group, the Council on Social Work Education, as an accrediting agency has been called into question.
The New York Yankees re-acquire catcher Ron Hassey from the Chicago White Sox in a seven-player trade. Hassey, who had been traded to Chicago only two months earlier, returns to New York along with three minor leaguers for pitcher Neil Allen, catcher Scott Bradley, and minor league outfielder Glen Braxton.
Dow Jones Industrial Average closes at 1297.92 (record high) after topping 1300 earlier in the trading day.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1297.92 (+21.31)
Born:
Al Montoya, NHL goalkeeper (Phoenix Coyotes, New York Islanders, Winnipeg Jets, Florida Panthers, Montreal Canadiens, Edmonton Oilers), in Chicago, Illinois.
Owen Schmitt, NFL running back (Seattle Seahawks, Philadelphia Eagles, Oakland Raiders), in Fairfax, Virginia.
Logan Ondrusek, MLB pitcher (Cincinnati Reds, Baltimore Orioles), in Hallettsville, Texas.
J.R. Giddens, NBA small forward (Boston Celtics, New York Knicks), in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
Kwak Ji-min, South Korean actress (“Samaritan Girl”), in South Korea.
History Diaries 