Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher addressed a joint meeting of Congress today, where she warmly endorsed the policies of the Reagan Administration and said that the military strength of the Western allies “has brought the Soviet Union to the bargaining table in Geneva.” In an address that stirred applause in the packed House chamber — especially among Republicans — Mrs. Thatcher also stressed that she firmly supported President Reagan’s space-based missile defense research plan. The Conservative leader raised the prospect that British scientists “will share in this research.” “Let us be under no illusions,” Mrs. Thatcher said at one point to the throng, which included the diplomatic corps and Cabinet officials. “It is our strength, not their good will, that has brought the Soviet Union to the negotiating table in Geneva.”
During a day that began with television interviews on the morning news shows and ended with an elaborate dinner in honor of President and Mrs. Reagan at the British Embassy, Mrs. Thatcher spoke glowingly and in personal terms about her feelings for the United States and President Reagan. Mrs. Thatcher, the first British Prime Minister to speak to a joint meeting of Congress since Winston Churchill did so on Jan. 17, 1952, covered the same concerns that she later took to the White House: the arms control talks scheduled to start in Geneva on March 12; the uncertainty in the Middle East after talks between King Hussein of Jordan and Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader; the strength of the dollar, which is driving the British pound to record lows; trade protectionism, and terrorism in Northern Ireland and private American contributions to the Irish Republican Army. Beyond this, Mrs. Thatcher, echoing President Reagan, emphasized that the Western allies “should not expect too much too soon” from the arms talks. “They will be intricate, complex and demanding,” she said, adding, “We must recognize that we shall face a Soviet political offensive designed to sow differences among us.”
President Reagan meets with the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland Margaret Thatcher.
The President and the First Lady attend a dinner at the British Embassy hosted by Prime Minister Thatcher commemorating the 200th Anniversary of the establishment of U.S. – U.K. relations. Mr. Reagan spoke equally warmly about Mrs. Thatcher. In his toast at the dinner tonight marking the 200th anniversery of the start of diplomatic ties between the United States and Britain, Mr. Reagan recalled the closeness between Roosevelt and Churchill, as well as between President Kennedy and Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. “May I say to my friend the Prime Minister: I would like to add two more names to this list of affection – Thatcher and Reagan,” he said.
U.S. and Soviet officials concluded more than 10 hours of talks in Vienna on the Middle East and other regional issues, but there was no immediate information on their outcome. Richard W. Murphy, assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern and South Asia affairs, is expected to return to Washington today. U.S. officials have attempted to play down the importance of the talks.
Stringent conditions must be met before the deployment of new space defense weapons, according to Paul H. Nitze, the senior United States arms control adviser. One condition, Mr. Nitze said, is that the technology “must produce defensive systems that are survivable,” able to withstand a pre-emptive nuclear attack. Otherwise, he said, “the defenses would themselves be tempting targets for a first strike” and this would “decrease, rather than enhance, stability.”.
Ailing Soviet President Konstantin U. Chernenko is expected to emerge from eight weeks of seclusion to deliver a traditional election speech Friday on television, officials in Moscow said. One official said the address will be made from within the Kremlin but that Chernenko, 73, will not speak in the Palace of the Congresses, the main auditorium there and the traditional site for such speeches. Chernenko, reportedly suffering from emphysema, has not been seen in public since December 27.
The Irish High Court used a law today that was rushed through Parliament after banking hours Tuesday to seize $1.64 million from a bank, saying the money was a secret Irish Republican Army fund. The Justice Minister, Michael Noonan, said the money was derived from crimes committed by the I.R.A., ”specifically extortion under threat of kidnap and murder.”
The Irish government, in a major step toward liberalizing the country’s strict contraceptive laws, narrowly won a parliamentary vote allowing for the over-the-counter sale of male contraceptives for the first time. The controversial family planning bill, fiercely opposed by the country’s powerful Roman Catholic Church, passed its second test in the Irish Parliament on a vote of 83 to 80, with final approval expected today. Up until now, only married couples with a doctor’s prescription could purchase condoms.
Israel’s Prime Minister, Shimon Peres, offered today to go to Jordan for peace talks. He said Israel would also welcome a visit by King Hussein. Mr. Peres, speaking at a news conference here with Prime Minister Bettino Craxi, said he was “ready to go to Amman.” Last week, King Hussein was reported to have reached an agreement with Yasir Arafat, the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, on a joint peace approach.
The inner council of the Palestine Liberation Organization expressed backing for PLO leader Yasser Arafat’s peace moves with Jordan, provided that they receive “full Arab support.” The statement from the 10-man PLO Executive Committee, issued in Tunisia, was the first official endorsement of the still-secret “formula for joint action” toward Mideast peace worked out by Arafat and Jordan’s King Hussein in Amman on February 11.
Israeli forces raided a village east of Tyre today in what authorities here described as the opening of a crackdown against Shiite villages harboring anti-Israeli terrorists. Unofficial Israeli sources said two gunmen were killed and several buildings, including a gasoline station, demolished during the all-day operation.
Unidentified gunmen shot and killed a French truce observer at a post southeast of Beirut, his command announced today. A communique identified the victim as Commandant Paul Rhodes and said he was the commander of an observation post in the Druse town of Shuweifat, seven miles from the capital. Commandant Rhodes’s death brought to five the total number of French observers killed since they were deployed in and around Beirut last April to monitor the latest truce in Lebanon’s almost 10-year civil war.
Muhammad Ali, the former heavyweight boxing champion, left Beirut today after failing to win the release of four kidnapped Americans and a Saudi diplomat.
A tanker carrying kerosene exploded and sank in the Persian Gulf three days after it was struck by an Iraqi missile that killed one crewman and injured three others, shipping sources reported in Bahrain. The tanker, the 57,000-ton Liberian-registered Neptunia, was the first ship to sink in the gulf since Iraq initiated the so-called tanker war last March in an attempt to cut off the oil revenues of Iran, its foe in their four-year-old war. Since then, planes of the two nations have damaged more than 70 ships.
Rajiv Gandhi is pressing reform and extolling honesty and idealism. After little more than 100 days in office, the Indian Prime Minister is still jolting the expectations of backers and critics with a series of changes in the Government he inherited from his mother, Indira.
Vietnamese and Thai soldiers fought today on a hill near the frontier that winds 450 miles between Thailand and Cambodia. The Thai armed forces commander, General Arthit Kamlang-ek, told reporters that Vietnamese forces tried to storm Hill 347, about half a mile inside Thailand’s northeastern province of Buriram. He said a Thai officer was killed and two soldiers were wounded in the fighting, which included an artillery duel across the border. In recent weeks, a powerful Vietnamese offensive has overrun virtually all key bases of the Cambodian guerrillas along the frontier, putting the Thais and Vietnamese in direct confrontation along many stretches.
China said its troops are stepping up their state of alert along the Vietnamese border because Hanoi has turned a “deaf ear” to Peking’s warnings to halt provocations across the frontier. President Li Xiannian, in a Lunar New Year speech in Peking, said Chinese border forces have been advised to “be in combat readiness to repulse the aggressors.” Western diplomats believe Peking’s bellicose language may be a warning of possible action against Vietnam in support of Chinese-backed Khmer rebels fighting Hanoi’s occupation force in Cambodia.
American and Laotian soldiers dug handfuls of earth from the forest floor today in a search for remains of 13 United States airmen shot down a dozen years ago. The joint project, which began February 11 here in southernmost Laos, is the first excavation of a crash site since the Indochina War ended in 1975. Journalists arrived here on Tuesday, after a seven-hour trip by plane and helicopter from Vientiane. Two Americans in soiled T-shirts, blue jeans and headbands squatted in a 12-foot-deep crater, using knives, shovels and pickaxes to search for the remnants of the C-130. They handed over the dirt to Laotians in green fatigues, who clambered up the crater and sifted the earth. Each day the searchers have found teeth, pieces of bone, bits of military uniforms, jungle boots, parachute harness and live ammunition rounds. The C-130 was shot down in 1972 on its way back to a Thai base from a mission over the Hồ Chí Minh Trail, North Vietnam’s supply route to the south.
Hu Yaobang, the Chinese party leader, said in a speech published today that the Communists had ”wasted 20 years” since they came to power in 1949 because of ”radical leftist nonsense” associated with the ideas of Mao Zedong. Mr. Hu said that the party had ended a century of ”imperialist domination” in 1949 and gave itself another century at that time to modernize China and put it in the front rank of the world’s economies. But the goal was jeopardized by the political convulsions had ensued, he said. ”After the establishment of the new China, counting from 1949, we hoped that we could use the next hundred years, that is, by 2049, to catch up economically with the most developed capitalist countries,” Mr. Hu said. ”But of these hundred years, 36 have now passed, and there are not many of these in which we could say we have done a good job. You could say we have wasted 20 years.”
Secretary of State George P. Shultz today welcomed the unanimous decision of Australia’s Cabinet to reaffirm its support for the Australia-New Zealand- United States defense pact. The Australian decision came as the United States, still at odds with New Zealand over that country’s anti-nuclear policies, began planning a new military operation with Australia while excluding New Zealand. The State Department spokesman, Bernard Kalb, said the United States was adjusting its relations with New Zealand to take the new situation into account. He expressed “deep regret” that the adjustment was necessary and said a number of military exercises and meetings had been canceled.
Lewis A. Tambs, U.S. ambassador to Colombia, said individuals suspected of being drug traffickers tried to bribe U.S. Embassy guards to assassinate him. Tambs, 57, who is apparently being assigned to another diplomatic post, told a television station in Bogota that presumed drug traffickers planned to kill him because he defended an extradition treaty that has sent four Colombians to the United States for trial on drug-related charges. Earlier this week, the federal Drug Enforcement Administration confirmed reports that Colombian drug traffickers offered $300,000 for the kidnapping of DEA chief Francis Mullen or other DEA officials.
The push by Republican Senators for agreement on a major deficit-reduction package has run into significant problems in the last few weeks. Some leaders are considering moving ahead even if a consensus can not be reached with the White House or among Senate Republicans. Because of pressures from the Farm Belt, reductions in agriculture programs have joined the military budget and Social Security as major obstacles to agreement on a package. Republican senators say the absence of signs of White House willingness to compromise on the military budget is also a problem.
The Supreme Court ruling that 13 million state and local government employees are subject to federal wage and hour standards prompted a furor among governors, mayors and other local officials. There was a consensus that the ruling struck at the heart of efforts by state and local governments to win broader authority to run their jurisdictions. “I always viewed the Supreme Court in the role of referee, standing on the field in a striped shirt, mediating the contest between the state and Federal governments,” said Governor Bruce Babbitt of Arizona, a Democrat who is a leading advocate of restoration of state powers. “What this decision does is have the referee leaving the field and heading for the shower.”
Toxic chemicals could be incinerated on ships at sea under new regulations proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency. Without waiting for all of its research results, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed rules for burning hazardous liquid wastes at sea. Jack Ravan, assistant administrator for water programs, said: “We cannot research this question forever.” The proposal will not become effective until after public hearings and a 90-day wait for public comment, and probably not until October or November, Ravan said. A subcommittee of the EPA’s scientific advisory board warned in a draft report last December that several questions remain unanswered, among them the effects of burning on marine life.
The Supreme Court, hearing one of the most controversial church and state cases on its docket, was urged to allow municipalities to bar Nativity displays from public property when they may prove offensive to the community. Forcing a city to sanction such displays, said a lawyer representing the village of Scarsdale, New York, could invite demands that a community also permit swastikas, a hammer and sickle and racist or anti-Semitic symbols and slogans. But an attorney representing Nativity scene sponsors contended such displays should not be barred simply because they are controversial.
Bernhard H. Goetz filed countersuits against two of four youths he admits shooting on a New York subway, seeking damages of $1 from each. Goetz was arrested in the December 22 shootings of youths he said had threatened him. On February 4, the mother of Darrell A. Cabey filed a $50-million damage suit against Goetz on behalf of her son, who is paralyzed and in a coma. The next day, another of the youths, Troy Canty, filed a $5-million damage suit against Goetz.
The Government today dropped charges accusing a Soviet emigre couple of passing classified material to a foreign government, leaving conspiracy to commit espionage as the only espionage charge against them. No charges were dropped against Richard W. Miller, the former agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation who is accused of espionage conspiracy with the emigre couple. Mr. Miller remains accused of passing a classified document to agents of a foreign government as well as the overall conspiracy count. Mr. Miller is charged with conspiring with the two emigres, Svetlana and Nikolay Ogorodnikov, to pass secret FBI documents to Soviet intelligence. Bureau officials have called the Ogorodnikovs ”covert agents of the KGB,” the Soviet intelligence and internal security agency.
Stephen Bingham, a lawyer who was a long-time fugitive, was ordered today to stand trial on murder and conspiracy charges. The charges stem from an attempt to escape from San Quentin prison 13 years ago by George Jackson in which Mr. Jackson and five other people died. Judge William H. Stephens of Municipal Court instructed Mr. Bingham to appear in Marin County Superior Court on March 6. The decision came after a three- month hearing that included 56 witnesses and 242 marked exhibits. Mr. Bingham was accused in a grand jury indictment in October 1971 of smuggling an automatic pistol into San Quentin to Mr. Jackson, who had been accused of killing a guard at another prison.
John A. Zaccaro was sentenced yesterday to perform 150 hours of community service for his admitted involvement in a fraudulent real-estate transaction that prosecutors said was aimed at yielding millions of dollars for him and several associates. Mr. Zaccaro, a 51-year-old real-estate and insurance broker, told Acting Justice George F. Roberts in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, “I have learned my lesson, Judge, the hard way.” He also told the court, “I hope that this puts an end to my microscopic viewing by the press and people in general.” Mr. Zaccaro’s 20-minute sentencing in an 11th-floor courtroom at 100 Centre Street appeared to signal an end to what one of his attorneys called “his season in the light,” a prominence occasioned by last year’s Democratic Vice-Presidential candidacy of his wife, Geraldine A. Ferraro. However, the New York Secretary of State’s office said yesterday that it was preparing a complaint against Mr. Zaccaro and that it would subpoena him to appear at a hearing within several weeks to examine his fitness to hold brokerage licenses. The state could suspend or revoke the license or levy a fine.
A woman who had made threats against the sheriff barged into a Slidell, Louisiana, sixth-grade classroom and abducted the sheriff’s 11-year-old son at gunpoint, authorities said. The woman, Linda Danner, 30, was arrested two hours later and the boy was freed unharmed. Sheriff Pat Canulette of St. Tammany Parish said he does not know Danner.
William J. Schroeder, the second permanent artificial heart patient, has shown a stunning turnaround in the last few days. Officials said Mr. Schroeder might leave his Louisville, Kentucky, hospital as early as next week. Murray P. Haydon, the third artificial heart payment, continued his remarkable recovery. His family has already fitted him with a tuxedo for his son’s wedding March 16, an event that Mr. Schroeder has said was one of the main reasons he chose to participate in the artificial heart experiment. The tuxedo had to be altered to accommodate the air hoses that go through Mr. Schroeder’s abdomen to power his heart.
A prosecutor today ordered a grand jury to investigate a purported secret recording of a conversation in which Mayor Harold Washington was said to have offered a candidate for alderman a better city job if he would drop out of the race. Richard M. Daley, the Cook County State’s Attorney, said he had ordered an immediate grand jury inquiry into “allegations of illegal taping” by James Burrell, one of eight candidates opposing Alderman Dorothy Tillman, Mayor Washington’s choice, in next week’s special election. Mr. Burrell, who acknowledged Tuesday night that he recorded his meeting with Mayor Washington, apologized in a statement for any embarrassment he might have caused the Mayor or Mrs. Tillman. Mayor Washington, at a news conference today, said: “I don’t have anything to say today about the conduct of a person who would stoop to this level.”
John O. Marsh Jr., U.S. Secretary of the Army, has set up a high-level task force to help the Justice Department in searching for Dr. Josef Mengele, the Army said today. It said formation of the task force, to be headed by Darrell Peck, the Deputy Army General Counsel, showed how seriously the Army viewed the search for Dr. Mengele, chief physician at the Auschwitz death camp. Formation of the task force follows a charge Tuesday by Senator Howard Metzenbaum that the Pentagon was not vigorous enough in following up reports that American military units had Dr. Mengele in custody after World War II. Senator Metzenbaum, an Ohio Democrat, said the Army did nothing when given evidence in 1947 that Dr. Mengele was in its custody and apparently again did nothing when presented with the evidence this year.
Two Ku Klux Klan members and a klan sympathizer pleaded guilty in Montgomery, Alabama, to federal and state charges stemming from a fire set at the Southern Poverty Law Center. Joe M. Garner and Roy T. Downs Jr., identified as Klansmen, and Charles Bailey pleaded guilty to charges of conspiring to threaten, oppress and intimidate members of black organizations represented by the law center.
The Michigan Senate today sent legislation to Governor James J. Blanchard that would require automobile drivers and front-seat passengers to wear seat belts. Governor Blanchard strongly supports the bill. The bill would take effect in July and impose fines of $10 for drivers and front-seat passengers who failed to follow the law. That fine is to incease to $25 on January 1.
At least 400,000 people in the United States have now been infected with the virus that can apparently cause AIDS, and the growing epidemic will cost more than $500 million this year in treatment and prevention, researchers reported in the New England Journal of Medicine. “We’re dealing with a real, enormous, new human tragedy that deserves our fullest attention, regardless of our social or sexual orientation,” said the chief author of the report, Dr. Sheldon H. Landesman of the Downstate Medical Center in New York City.
AIDS has afflicted 8,000 people in the United States, with almost half of them in the New York metropolitan area. As the numbers of patients have grown, so have the support networks to meet the crisis.
After defending his WBC flyweight championship, Sot Chitalada’s check for $104,000 is stolen by a ringside pickpocket
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1283.13 (+2.54)
Born:
Ryan Sweeney, MLB outfielder (Chicago White Sox, Oakland A’s, Boston Red Sox, Chicago Cubs), in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
Vinnie Pestano, MLB pitcher (Cleveland Indians, Los Angeles Angels), in Newport Beach, California.
Jason Hill, NFL wide receiver (San Francisco 49ers, Jacksonville Jaguars, New York Jets), in San Francisco, California.
Julia Volkova, Russian pop singer (t.A.T.u. -single, “All the Things She Said”), in Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union.
Died:
Clarence Nash, 80, American voice actor (Donald Duck), dies of leukemia.
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