The top weapons control official in the Pentagon, Richard N. Perle, told a Senate hearing it was “a great mistake” for the United States to continue honoring weapons control agreements with the Soviet Union while Moscow was violating “quite important provisions” of them. Moscow has denied violating arms accords and has in turn accused Washington of breaking the agreements. Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the official, Richard N. Perle, Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy, said it was time to end the “double standard” of having Washington adhere “to every crossed ‘t’ and dotted ‘i’ ” while letting the Russians “think they could play fast and loose with these accords.” Mr. Perle made the comments when he was asked by Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, whether he believed President Reagan should continue to abide by the 1979 strategic arms accord with the Soviet Union, which was never ratified, or should dismantle some older Polaris submarines when the seventh Trident submarine, the Alaska, starts sea trials at the end of the year.
Analysts for the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon said today that there was evidence of a sudden spurt in Soviet spending on weapons procurement for the first time since the mid-1970’s. But the agencies differed sharply on the pace of this latest buildup and what it meant. The Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency estimated that the weapons part of the Soviet military budget had increased by 5 to 8 percent from 1982 to 1983, the last year studied, and said preliminary signs pointed to another increase in 1984. The C.I.A., basing its estimate on what one official called “a little more cautious” forecast of how fast the new weapons would roll off the assembly lines, said that Soviet weapons spending rose between 1 and 2 percent in 1983 and that it was too early to tell about 1984.
Britain’s Cabinet minister for Northern Ireland, Douglas Hurd, condemned a Roman Catholic politician’s secret meeting with Irish Republican Army leaders as a mistake that endangers peace talks. John Hume, leader of the moderate Social Democratic and Labor Party, which advocates Irish reunification, met with IRA leaders in an attempt to talk them out of their campaign of violence aimed at ending British rule in Northern Ireland. The session broke down after five minutes because Hume refused to allow it to be videotaped.
British miners returned to work in higher numbers than on any other day since a national strike began almost a year ago. About 49 percent of the union’s membership were said to be back on the job. The development came after the collapse of a major effort last week by the Trades Union Congress, the organization that represents all the British unions, to bring about a formal end to the strike. More than 3,800 miners reported for duty at collieries in all parts of Britain, according to the state-owned National Coal Board. The National Union of Miners disputed that figure, as it has every statistic put out by the board since the dispute began, but the union’s leaders conceded that the return to work had been substantial.
The Polish Government today abandoned plans for across-the-board food price rises in the face of protests from official labor unions and the outlawed Solidarity movement. The Government said it would replace the price rises with gradual increases cushioned by cash compensation for the low-paid. A statement issued after a Cabinet session said new proposals would be made known within a few days. The authorities, who had hoped to introduce the price rises next month, backed down after they were rejected as inflationary by the official unions representing five million workers.
Poland ordered the expulsion of a United States military attache today for taking photographs in a restricted military zone, the Government spokesman, Jerzy Urban, announced. Mr. Urban said the attache, Colonel Frederick Myer, and his wife, Barbara, had destroyed six rolls of film after being stopped Thursday in Makow Mazowiecki, 65 miles north of Warsaw.
The United States expelled a Polish military attache today in response to Warsaw’s expulsion of an American diplomat. The State Department said the Polish attache, Colonel Zygmunt Szymanski, had been ordered to leave promptly. The Defense Department said Polish officials were told Friday that Colonel Szymanski would be expelled if they did not clarify the arrest of the American military attache and his wife within three days.
An explosion, possibly caused by escaping gas, ripped through a French coal mine near the West German border today, killing 22 men as they worked more than half a mile underground, a mine spokesman said. Another 103 men were either injured in the blast or overcome by fumes, the spokesman said. The explosion occurred at 7:21 A.M. in the Simon mine at Forbach, 33 miles east of Metz in the Lorraine region. The mine is operated by the state-owned Houill eres du Bassin de Lorraine.
A Norwegian diplomat accused of espionage asserted to the police that he had been blackmailed with photographs taken at an orgy in Moscow, the High Court was told here today by the State Prosecutor on the first day of the diplomat’s trial. The statement was one of many that the diplomat, Arne Treholt, 42 years old, later repudiated, according to the prosecutor, Lars Qvigstad, in outlining of the state’s case. Seven judges are hearing the case against Mr. Treholt, who is charged with having supplied the Soviet Union with Norwegian and North Atlantic Treaty Organization secrets over a 10- year period until his arrest 13 months ago. The charges, in which Mr. Treholt is also accused of having spied for Iraq in recent years, took over half an hour to read this morning. Mr. Treholt, former head of the Foreign Ministry’s press office, stood calmly with arms folded, rocking occasionally on his heels, and pleaded not guilty.
Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres today cautiously welcomed President Hosni Mubarak’s call for direct negotiations between Israel and a joint Jordanian- Palestinian delegation. In an interview Sunday Mr. Mubarak, the Egytian leader, proposed that either the United States or Egypt act as host to direct peace talks between Israel and a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation. An international peace conference, he said, could be convened later to give its blessings to the results of such direct negotiations. Mr. Mubarak said a Jordanian-Palestinian delegation at such talks did not necessarily have to include known members of the P.L.O., but could be made up of moderate Palestinian figures anointed by the P.L.O. chairman, Yasser Arafat.
Two bomb-laden cars exploded in a densely populated Shia Muslim suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, killing six people and wounding at least 40 others, police said. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the blasts in Hay Madi, which followed three hours of clashes between Amal, the largest Shia militia, and the Party of God, a pro-Iranian Shia faction.
A curfew has been extended until Tuesday in the western Indian town of Dig, where 7 people have been killed and more than 200 injured in the last week, the Press Trust of India said today. The violence followed the killing of Man Singh, Dig’s representative in the Rajasthan state assembly. Eight people were injured today in a clash with the police during a funeral procession in the nearby city of Bharatpur.
The U.S. State Department, responding to reports that Pakistan tried to get timing devices whose main function is to trigger nuclear bombs, said today that the Pakistani Government has given assurances its nuclear program is “peaceful in intent.” The New York Times reported in today’s issue that a Pakistani agent was seized last June by Federal agents trying to smuggle 50 of the devices out of Houston, after operating inside the United States for nine months.
Pakistanis voted in moderate numbers today in a parliamentary election that opposition leaders had hoped would produce a nationwide boycott. Random checks of polling places by journalists indicated that the voting patterns varied, with some districts reporting a turnout below 20 percent and others well over 50 percent. It thus appeared that the political opposition to President Zia ul-Haq had fallen short of its goal of keeping the turnout below 10 percent. General Zia, who has said he would be satisfied with a turnout of 40 percent, has promised that, with the election of a National Assembly and of provincial assemblies, he would relinquish some of his powers and eventually lift martial law, which he imposed in 1977 when he took power in a coup.
China, where more than six million people die each year, has ordered cremations to replace most burials in an effort to save valuable land. The official New China News Agency, quoting new regulations, said that violations in areas requiring cremation will be punished but did not specify the areas or what the punishment would be. Cremation has been required cities and some rural areas since the mid1950s, but burial rites still prevail in the countryside.
Four key prosecution witnesses defied subpoenas and failed to appear to testify at the trial of the Philippines’ armed forces chief, General Fabian C. Ver, and 25 others in the 1983 assassination of opposition leader Benigno S. Aquino Jr. Prosecution attorneys said they were having trouble finding six other important witnesses, who were not named. The four who defied subpoenas are all members of the family of the late Rolando Galman, the man identified by the military as Aquino’s killer. They said they will not testify until all the defendants are in a civilian prison. Most of the accused servicemen are in the custody of their commanding officers.
A Philippine army commando team rescued a Roman Catholic bishop, two nuns and six other hostages after a 15-minute gun battle with Muslim guerrillas at a rebel hideout in Zamboanga de Sur province, 500 miles south of Manila, officials reported. Bishop Federico Escaler and the eight others were taken captive Friday by rebels involved in a Muslim separatist campaign in the southern Philippines. One rebel was reported wounded in the rescue.
New Zealand Prime Minister David Lange, before departing for Los Angeles, told reporters that he will defend his nation’s ban on visits by nuclear warships, a policy that has strained relations with Washington and threatened the defense alliance linking his country with the United States and Australia. Lange, who arrived in Los Angeles later in the day, said he will tell U.S. officials that “New Zealanders are a responsible people” and that Washington should not be “so extraordinarily heavy” in its response. Earlier this month, New Zealand refused to permit a port call by an American warship because the United States would not say whether it carried nuclear weapons. The United States and Australia have asserted that New Zealand’s decision was inconsistent with the ANZUS treaty.
An unarmed U.S. cruise missile parachuted to a soft landing on a frozen lake in northern Alberta, successfully completing a 1,500-mile test flight across the Canadian Arctic, officials said. The 3,000-pound missile was launched by a B-52 bomber over the Beaufort Sea in northern Canada and traveled at 500 m.p.h. at altitudes ranging between 1,000 and 4,000 feet over a zigzag course before landing four hours later. The test was the fourth cruise exercise in Canada in the last year. No further tests are planned for the rest of 1985, officials said.
Four men have been arrested in Mexico in connection with the abduction of a United States drug enforcement agent, the federal judicial police said today. They were identified as Enrique Gonzalez Aguilar, former head of transit in Mexico City; Tomas Morlett Borquez, an agent of the Federal Department of Security; Eduardo Ramirez Ortiz, believed to be a former agent of a Mexican security force, and Marciano Belaztegoitia Valverde, a pilot. They were arrested Sunday. The United States agent, Enrique Camarena Salazar, was kidnapped February 7 in Guadalajara. On Sunday, Frances M. Mullen Jr., head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, accused Mexican police officers of aiding the escape of a purported marijuana grower believed to have been involved in the kidnapping.
President Reagan’s remarks against Nicaragua have killed negotiations among the Contadora countries for a regional peace treaty in Central America, according to Victor Hugo Tinoco, Nicaragua’s Deputy Foreign Minister. In an interview, he said Mr. Reagan’s threats against Managua had destroyed the Contadora peace process.
Reports that Dr. Josef Mengele, the Nazi war criminal, was heavily involved with partners in illegal narcotics trafficking in Paraguay were being received by the C.I.A. beginning in 1971, according to declassified Government documents.
Adolfo Perez Esquivel, Argentine human rights activist, met today with Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, the United States delegate, to express concern about rights violations in Chile and elsewhere in Latin America. Speaking through an interpreter at a news conference before the meeting, Mr. Perez Esquivel called the Chilean regime of Gen. Augusto Pinochet “one of the bloodiest dictatorships in Latin America.” He said repression in Chile had intensified.
Vice President Bush bluntly condemned the Ethiopian and Soviet Governments today, saying their response to the famine in Ethiopia was “shocking.” Mr. Bush, who is scheduled to visit Africa next week on the food crisis there, singled out the Marxist Government of Ethiopia for policies in which, he contended, famine relief plays a secondary role to military needs. “Food for starving millions still takes a back seat to military cargo when authorities decide the order in which ships can dock in the ports of Ethiopia,” Mr. Bush said at the National Press Club this afternoon. Mr. Bush coupled his attack on Ethiopian policies with a broader attack on the Soviet Union. “Equally shocking has been the Soviet response,” he said. “The Soviets were fully capable of putting a billion dollars worth of military hardware and nearly 20,000 Cuban troops into Ethiopia between November 1977 and March 1978. “Yet they and their allies have donated only about $7 million in food, medical equipment and logistical support to the relief drive – 10 percent of what Americans have donated privately,” Mr. Bush added.
A leading African spokesman said today that the continent was “going through one of the darkest periods of her history” and was “looking with anguish toward the future.” The spokesman, Ide Oumarou of Niger, departing chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Organization of African Unity, cited the spread of internal conflict and the deterioration of Africa’s economy as the most alarming trends.
President Reagan attends a swearing-in ceremony for Edwin Meese as Attorney General. Edwin Meese 3d today assumed the office of Attorney General in a private swearing-in ceremony at the White House, then spent much of the day in briefings with top Justice Department officials. President Reagan and Vice President Bush attended the closed ceremony in the Oval Office. A public swearing-in ceremony is to be held the week of March 11, with Chief Justice Warren E. Burger administering the oath.
President Reagan told 45 of the nation’s governors today that there was “no justification” for Washington to continue aiding state and local governments when some have surpluses and the Federal Government has a deficit. Mr. Reagan made the comments at a White House meeting with about 45 governors today in which he appealed for understanding for the “tough calls” that he said were needed to curb the deficit. However, the President rejected recommendations from the governors, contained in a resolution awaiting adoption, that the deficit be reduced by further cuts in military spending, freezes in benefit programs and a possible increase in taxes. “There’s simply no justification, for example, for the Federal Government, which is running a deficit, to be borrowing money to be spent by state and local governments, some of which are now running surpluses,” Mr. Reagan said at the start of the meeting.
Governor Cuomo accused President Reagan of being “intransigent” for rejecting a budget agreement with state governors. The New Yorker, in a whirlwind day in Washington, said the governors would agree to some curbs on entitlement programs in return for Mr. Reagan’s acceptance of some curbs in military spending, and he quoted the President as saying, “Under no circumstances would I change my mind.”
Senate Republicans, who are still struggling to assemble a deficit-reduction package, will get some bad news Tuesday. Senator Pete V. Domenici, the chairman of the Budget Committee, is scheduled to tell his colleagues they will have to cut projected spending by $64 billion in 1986, $10 billion more than expected, to meet their deficit target, according to committee staff members. Mr. Domenici, a New Mexico Republican, also will say, according to the staff members, that meeting this target would mean accepting almost all of President Reagan’s proposals to eliminate and reduce programs, a freeze on other spending, including Social Security, and a cut in the President’s military budget increase. In addition, Congressional sources said today that the Congressional Budget Office is to predict later this week that Mr. Reagan’s budget cuts would reduce the deficit in 1988 to $171 billion, not the $144 billion the Administration has projected. The main reason for the higher projection is that the Budget Office assumes slower economic growth and higher interest rates than the Reagan Administration.
Six former Defense Secretaries today called for increased joint control of the nation’s military to restrain rivalries among the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines. The former officials said the reorganization was needed to correct “serious deficiencies” in how the military advises the President, divides the budget and plans for combat. Their remarks were made in the forword to a report on the American military organization, made public today by the Center for Strategic and International Studies at Georgetown University.
The Interior Department published final rules for managing its wilderness areas and one environmental organization said they would lead to more mining than Congress intended. The rules, pending in draft form since June, 1983, no longer require that the holders of old mining claims in wilderness areas of the Bureau of Land Management show that the claims contain “valuable” minerals, the Wilderness Society said. The claimant now has to show that minerals were “exposed” on the land before it was designated a wilderness area.
Armand Hammer, chairman of the President’s Cancer Panel, decried as a “tragic mistake” cuts made in the Reagan Administration budget for research into a cure for the disease. “It would just put back all the progress we’re making. It would turn the clock back,” said Hammer, the chairman of Occidental Petroleum Corp. The industrialist, in Philadelphia for a meeting of the panel, said that President Reagan’s proposed budget would slash 1,500 grants, including about 150 – or $40 million to $50 million – for the National Cancer Institute.
The dollar surged to record highs yesterday, encouraged by Washington’s apparent reluctance to intervene in foreign-exchange markets to force the dollar down. Currency traders at their computer screens expressed astonishment as light, nervous trading propelled the dollar to levels never before seen. Many said they had no relevant experience to judge what might happen next. “We’re in uncharted waters, and it’s anybody’s guess where the dollar is going to stop,” said Lawrence L. Kreicher, an economist at the Irving Trust Company.
An aerospace engineer charged with trying to sell United States military secrets to the Soviet Union plans to enter a conditional guilty plea to espionage because he is “very sorry for what he did,” his attorney said today. Manuel Araujo, the attorney, indicated that his client’s only motivation was contrition and that he had been “going through hell.” In an agreement with the Government, the engineer, Thomas Patrick Cavanagh, 40 years old, reserved his right to appeal any denials of his pretrial motions but agreed to plead guilty to two of four espionage counts in his indictment, Assistant United States Attorney Percy Anderson said.
Two Bank of Boston employees, a branch manager and a teller, who recently retired are under investigation by a Federal grand jury on suspicion that they may have helped the city’s organized crime family, the Angiulos, launder money through the bank, according to sources familiar with the inquiry.
Boston officials dropped all charges against a Nobel laureate, Dr. George Wald, and 11 other protesters of South Africa’s policy of racial separation as their trial was about to begin. The authorities decided that simple charges of criminal trespass did not justify transforming the Boston court into a foreign policy forum.
Hundreds of teachers protesting the lowest pay in the nation began wildcat strikes that closed three Mississippi school systems in the first widespread teacher walkouts in state history. But plans by the Mississippi Association of Educators for a statewide strike by its 13,000 members were halted when the state obtained a court order blocking a walkout for 10 days. There are about 26,000 public school teachers in the state. They are demanding a $7,000 salary increase over the next two years to bring their pay up to the Southeastern average. Teacher pay in the state averages $15,971 — lowest in the nation.
Three former cadets at Texas A&M University today pleaded guilty to reduced charges in the hazing death of a fellow cadet last summer. All had been charged with criminally negligent homicide in the death of Bruce Goodrich, 20 years old, a transfer student from New York who died of a heat stroke on Aug. 30 after participating in “motivational exercises.” The three 20-year-olds, Jason Miles, Anthony D’Alessandro, both of Houston, and Louis Fancher 3d of San Antonio, were given probated 90-day sentences. The homicide charges were dropped as part of a plea bargain. Each was also fined $250, ordered to perform 100 hours of community service and told to contribute $750 to an A&M scholarship fund established in memory of Mr. Goodrich.
The Rev. Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam, today repudiated an offer made Sunday by Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi, the Libyan leader, to arm black American soldiers so they can form a separate army to destroy “white America” and set up an independent state. “I am sure that American black people would like to get justice in America and get it in a way that keeps America intact,” Mr. Farrakhan said.
The only woman ever on the United States Marshal Service’s 15 Most Wanted list was captured after more than 18 months on the run, at a motel where she had been hiding with her two children, the authorities said. The woman, Judith Haas McNelis, 41 years old, and her children, David, 20, and Melanie, 18, were arrested Saturday night. Miss McNelis escaped on July 27, 1983, from the city jail in Valdosta, Ga., where she was awaiting trial on Federal drug charges. She was reportedly the former head of a $250 million-a-year marijuana smuggling ring.
The Town Council of Telluride, Colorado, voted unanimously to place a six-month moratorium on new stoves and fireplaces in the ski resort town to combat air pollution. The ordinance directs the Telluride environmental commission to formulate a plan to eliminate the community’s estimated 300 stoves and fireplaces over the next five years.
Senator Russell B. Long will retire in 1986, ending a career that will have spanned nearly four decades. The 66-year-old Louisiana Democrat, one of the last and the most colorful of the Senate’s Southern power barons, announced he would not seek an eighth term.
Flood crests rolled down rivers from Oklahoma to New York after forcing hundreds out of their homes. Record flood levels were reached in the wake of heavy rains and unseasonably warm weekend weather that melted thick piles of snow. In some places, ice jams backed up water in swollen rivers. The northern third of Indiana was hard hit by floods, and officials in Fort Wayne expected the Maumee River to crest at about 24 feet. Crews filled and stacked tens of thousands of sandbags against a river expected to reach nearly 10 feet above flood level. High water caused at least four deaths in Indiana, Illinois and Missouri, officials said.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1277.5 (+1.66)
Born:
Joakim Noah, NBA center (NBA All-Star, 2013, 2014; Chicago Bulls, New York Knicks, Memphis Grizzlies, Los Angeles Clippers), in New York, New York.
Gary Forbes, Panamanian NBA shooting guard and small forward (Denver Nuggets, Toronto Raptors), in Colon, Panama.
Xavier Paul, MLB outfielder and pinch hitter (Los Angeles Dodgers, Pittsburgh Pirates, Cincinnati Reds, Arizona Diamondbacks), in Slidell, Louisiana.
Albert Young, NFL running back (Minnesota Vikings), in Moorestown, New Jersey.
Jamie Fritsch, NHL defenseman (Philadelphia Flyers), in Odenton, Maryland.
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