President Reagan won pledges of bipartisan support from Congressional leaders before sending his negotiators to a new round of arms control talks in Geneva. The House majority leader, Jim Wright, emerging from a White House meeting with the President and his negotiating team, likened the prospects in Geneva to President Nixon’s reopening of relations with China. Mr. Wright, a Texas Democrat, declared that “nothing should be permitted to stand in the way” of success at the talks with the Soviet Union, which begin Tuesday. He and other Democratic leaders stopped short of offering the President the one token of support he wants most, an endorsement of continued production of the MX missile. The first MX missiles will be deployed next year before their warheads and guidance systems have been fully tested, according to a draft of a General Accounting Office report given to the Senate Appropriations Committee.
The reliability of MX warheads and guidance systems will not have been fully tested before the first of the missiles are fielded next year, according to a draft of a General Accounting Office report. “We asked G.A.O. to tell us what they knew,” Senator Lawton Chiles, a Democrat of Florida who is a member of the Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, said today. “They see some problems in the testing area. Tests have been successful, but have only shown that the missile can fly. It’s on a very fast-track schedule at this stage; we’re rushing towards deployment.”
Talks conducted over three days between a bipartisan group of members of Congress and 30 members of the Supreme Soviet were cordial but failed to resolve disagreements between the two countries in critical areas, the participants said today. At a news conference, leaders of the two sides said the areas of disagreement included arms control, human rights, economic relations and what the two sides called “regional tension,” particularly in Afghanistan.
Weapons for a defensive shield against ballistic missile attacks could be used with devastating offensive effect, according to many supporters and critics of President Reagan’s proposal. The President’s Strategic Defense Initiative, known popularly as “Star Wars,” would not use weapons of mass destruction, like the current nuclear arsenals, that could obliterate tens of millions of people, the experts agree. But the same experts, in government, industry and the universities, say the proposed defensive system, if it is actually built and deployed at full strength, could serve several major offensive functions, including these:
- It could be used as a defensive adjunct to an offensive nuclear attack, allowing nuclear-armed missiles to be launched in an offensive strike while the defense is held in reserve to cope with any retaliatory strike, according to arms-control experts.
- It could attack and destroy enemy space satellites, which are generally far easier targets than the ballistic missiles the system would be designed to intercept, according to experts assembled by the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment. Satellites have become an increasingly important part of the military systems of the United States and the Soviet Union.
- It might even be used, some experts believe, in lightning-fast strikes from space against relatively “soft” ground targets, such as airplanes, oil tankers, power plants and grain fields, causing instantaneous fires and damage that, in the words of John D. G. Rather, a laser expert and “Star Wars” proponent, could “take an industrialized country back to an 18th-century level in 30 minutes.”
But Edward Teller, a nuclear physicist with close ties to the Reagan Administration, said the Strategic Defense Initiative was “unequivocally defensive and not offensive.” Dr. Teller said he hoped new weapons could be designed strong enough to “destroy the vulnerable, flimsy structure of a missile in the boost phase.” But he said such weapons would almost certainly be “completely helpless against silos” and would probably have great difficulty finding and tracking ground targets, which could be more readily destroyed by existing weapons. “To use this expensive system to accomplish something as pedestrian as that, something that could be accomplished much more easily by methods already available, what kind of sense is that?” Dr. Teller asked.
In a speech to a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress, Italian Prime Minister Bettino Craxi called on the world’s democracies to join in repudiating Latin American dictatorships. Craxi strongly denounced the rightist government of Chile, saying that the people there have “a right to free elections.” And he urged coordinated action “to try to stop every authoritarian tendency and every unjustified recourse to violence.” However, he cautioned that U.S. military intervention in leftist-led Nicaragua would be “a great mistake.”
East Germany’s Communist Party daily has reprinted remarks by a Hungarian official that seem to question the so-called Brezhnev doctrine of limited sovereignty for Eastern European countries. The East German gesture, according to specialists on Eastern Europe, appears to reflect a debate within the Warsaw Pact over the renewal of the alliance, which expires in May. In an interview last week with the Hungarian labor union newspaper Nepszava, Istvan Roska, the Deputy Foreign Minister for Soviet bloc relations, defended Hungary’s attempt to forge somewhat independent policies. When asked whether the alliance had reached a high enough level of tolerance so that differences did not become obstacles, he noted that the alliance members had similar principles and goals.
Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher of West Germany paid a quick visit to Poland today. Mr. Genscher arrived here with little advance notice after his talks with the Soviet Foreign Minister, Andrei A. Gromyko, in Moscow, and before heading on to Bulgaria tonight.
Scottish miners ended a revolt against their union, obeying a union directive calling for a halt to Britain’s yearlong coal strike. The National Coal Board said 95% of the nation’s miners — about 176,000 men — were back on the job. But about 3,000 miners in Yorkshire, the militant heartland of the dispute, and 1,700 in Kent in southeast England continued to defy the back-to-work directive.
Turkish security forces have arrested 11 Jehovah’s Witnesses, including a Briton and a Canadian, in the southern province of Adana, the Anatolian News Agency reported. It said they were picked up in a weeklong operation and accused of engaging in religious activities in violation of Turkey’s secular laws. The agency did not cite specific charges, but members of the Christian sect who are arrested in Turkey are usually prosecuted for seeking converts.
Israel has failed to progress in its economic recovery plan, according to the Reagan Administration. As a result, it told Congress, the $2.6 billion sought by Israel in new American aid would be wasted and “quickly disappear” because of Israel’s failure to date to cope with budgetary and fiscal problems. Israel received $1.2 billion in economic aid and $1.4 billion in military aid for the 1985 fiscal year, which began last Oct. 1. It has asked, said W. Allen Wallis, Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, for $800 million as a supplemental economic grant for 1985 and $1.8 billion in economic aid for the 1986 fiscal year.
Americans working with United Nations peacekeeping forces in southern Lebanon have been taken off the job for fear of possible attacks by Shiite Moslem militants, United Nations officials said today. Although there was no known specific threat to the Americans, the move appeared to be keyed to an expected American veto of a Lebanese resolution in the United Nations Security Council criticizing the current Israeli crackdown on the Shiite-led guerrilla movement in southern Lebanon and punitive raids on Shiite villages there. Local papers have reported that the American ambassador, Reginald Bartholomew, has informed the Lebanese Government that Washington will veto the resolution if the Lebanese press it, and the reports have already stirred widespread resentment here. Mr. Bartholomew and other members of his staff have already left the country, ostensibly for consultations in Washington. The United Nations peacekeeping force’s spokesman here, Timor Goksel, said a recommendation had come from the headquarters in New York on Friday to remove the Americans and had been put into effect on Saturday.
King Hussein of Jordan and President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt said that the United States must begin a dialogue with a joint Palestinian-Jordanian delegation if the Mideast is to move toward peace. The two conferred for 2½ hours in Egypt’s Red Sea resort of Hurghada in an effort to reach a unified position for the Egyptian to carry to Washington for his meeting Tuesday with President Reagan. “I share President Mubarak’s feelings that the dialogue he suggested is a vital element for progress,” King Hussein said in this Red Sea resort. Speaking two days before Mr. Mubarak flies to the United States, King Hussein said of the Egyptian leader, “Our vision is one and the same.” The Jordanian ruler made his remarks at a news conference in which he was joined by President Mubarak after they had held three hours of discussions and a luncheon. The meeting, their fourth since last September, when Jordan restored relations with Egypt, was held to resolve policy differences over the prospective peace talks, Egyptian and Jordanian officials said.
Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and his political allies won most of India’s state elections this week but fell short of duplicating their sweeping parliamentary victory of three months ago, according to preliminary results announced today. After weeks of campaigning, Mr. Gandhi and his governing Congress (I) Party retained majorities in all eight of the states they had controlled previously. But they failed to make inroads in those controlled by the opposition.
Thai troops and aircraft attacked Vietnamese forces that had crossed the border in an effort to surround the last major Cambodian resistance camp, the Thai Army said today. The Thais said they had driven the Vietnamese troops from one of three hills the Vietnamese tried to seize and had killed 60 soldiers. The Vietnamese were seeking high ground from which to attack the Tatum guerrilla base, which is situated on a cliff and ringed with land mines.
President Reagan, in a statement made public today, has told the newly arrived Ambassador of New Zealand that the United States “deeply regrets the decision by the New Zealand Government to change the operational character of our previous cooperation under the Anzus alliance.” The statement did not refer directly to a ban declared by New Zealand on port visits by American warships carrying nuclear weapons or propelled by nuclear power. The United States refuses to say which of its ships carry nuclear weapons. The dispute led to cancellation of exercises by ships of the Anzus alliance of Australia, New Zealand and the United States. The statement was issued when the Ambassador, Sir Wallace Rowling, presented his credentials at the White House on Tuesday. “We continue to regard the people of New Zealand as our friends,” the statement said, adding: “And it is our deepest hope that New Zealand will restore the traditional cooperation that has existed between our two countries.”
Canada announced a new program aimed at cutting acid-rain causing emissions in half by 1994. The initiative includes stricter controls on automobile emissions, beginning in the 1988 model year, and the spending of more than $200 million over the next 10 years to curb sulfur dioxide. The acid rain problem is expected to be a topic of discussion when President Reagan visits Prime Minister Brian Mulroney later this month. Canada contends that 50% of its acid rain comes from the United States.
Two badly decomposed bodies, found on a ranch 70 miles southeast of Guadalajara, Mexico, were tentatively identified as a kidnapped American drug agent, Enrique Camarena Salazar, and a Mexican who worked as his pilot, United States officials announced. The Drug Enforcement Administration agent and the pilot, Alfredo Zavala Avelar, have been missing since February 7, when they were abducted within hours of each other by armed men in Guadalajara. The two bodies, bound hand and foot and wrapped in plastic bags, were discovered early this morning at the edge of El Mareno ranch in Vista Hermosa in Michoacan State. There were conflicting reports over whether they were found by the Mexican Federal Judicial Police or by a passing peasant.
Suspected marijuana traffickers opened fire on Mexican state police near the farming town of San Fernando, killing four officers and a civilian, authorities said. The officers were ambushed by gunmen escorting a gasoline tanker truck believed to contain three tons of marijuana. Three officers who chased the fleeing suspects were wounded, officials said. A police spokesman said that the shootout left half the town’s state police contingent either killed or wounded. Two suspects were arrested later in Reynosa, Mexico, across the border from McAllen, Texas. Texas authorities were searching for other members of the ring.
Nicaraguan rebels were accused of having engaged in a systematic pattern of attacks and atrocities against civilian targets over the last three years, according to a new report by a private group. A preliminary draft copy gives details of 28 incidents that it says “have resulted in assassination, torture, rape, kidnapping and mutilation of civilians.” Four of the 28 incidents were chosen at random and witnesses were independently interviewed by The New York Times. These interviews seemed to verify some of the details in the report. The new report, prepared by a three-member team headed by Reed Brody, a former New York State Assistant Attorney General, is based on interviews conducted in Nicaragua between September 1984 and January 1985. It is to be officially released in Washington on Thursday.
A senior relief official said today that Ethiopian authorities were not honoring a pledge to keep three berths at this Red Sea port continuously available for the unloading of food for famine victims. “This is disappointing,” said Desmond Taylor, deputy representative in Ethiopia of the World Food Program, “particularly in view of the assurances at the highest level that emergency food supplies would be given priority.” The Ethiopian Government agreed earlier that relief aid would have priority over other types of cargo and that three of the six berths at Assab would be available at all times for unloading relief shipments. The World Food Program has been coordinating the arrival by sea of relief supplies in Ethiopia.
American officials and international relief authorities said here today that the Sudanese famine was more serious than they had previously believed, with possibly a third of the population at risk of starvation. The crisis for the Sudanese has been overshadowed, they say, by the problems of the flood of refugees who have migrated across the border from northern Ethiopia in search of food. It could become worse in coming months as a result of a continued regional drought, which they say has affected crop production and shifted living patterns in some parts of this country.
South African riot police fired rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse crowds of black demonstrators as about 40,000 black students across the nation boycotted classes. Police said they used the weapons in Welkom and nearby Wesselsbron, 160 miles southwest of Johannesburg, after patrols were stoned. More than 200 blacks have died in more than a year of sporadic rioting that began in disputes over black education and spread over general resentment of apartheid.
President Reagan vetoed emergency farm credit legislation today, saying the measure was a “massive new bailout that would add billions to the deficit.” In his first major confrontation with Congress over the budget since the start of his second term, the President essentially triumphed over a coalition of Democrats and farm-state legislators. Soon after Mr. Reagan’s veto, the Speaker of the House, Thomas P. O’Neill Jr., conceded that there were not enough votes in the House or Senate to override the veto. In sharply worded remarks in the Oval Office, Mr. Reagan said: “The bottom line is that someone in Washington must be responsible. Someone must be willing to stand up for those who pay America’s bills, and someone must stand up to those who say here’s the key, there’s the Treasury, just take as many of those hard-earned tax dollars as you want.”
The Senate budget panel signaled strong reluctance to make the deep cuts in domestic spending that Republican leaders had sought as part of a deficit reduction plan. In a series of votes, the committee rejected President Reagan’s proposed cuts in the Government’s farm programs and refused to drop from the budget the Rural Electrification Administration and the purchase of crude oil for the strategic petroleum reserve. On spending to stabilize farm incomes and prices, the committee rejected spending cuts proposed by the committee’s chairman, Senator Pete V. Domenici, Republican of New Mexico, on a vote of 13 to 9. Six Republicans, mostly from farm states, joined seven Democrats to form the majority.
Concern over domestic spending cuts is felt by most Americans, according to a New York Times/CBS News Poll that found considerable uneasiness, some of it exacerbated by misconceptions, about President Reagan’s effort to hold down Government spending. More than half of the respondents expressed fear that they, their families or the nation would be hurt if Congress enacted the plan.
Pilots at Pan American World Airways agreed to cross picket lines set up by striking ground crews and work to “restore normal service” to the financially troubled airline. The agreement meant the airline could immediately increase its operations to 50%, compared to the 33% it has been operating at since the walkout began February 28, Pan Am Chairman C. Edward Acker said in New York. The top priority will be restoring 18 international flights and two domestic runs: New York-Los Angeles and New York-Miami, the company said. The agreement was a setback to both the striking Transport Workers Union and the airline’s 5,000 flight attendants, who have set an April 1 strike deadline.
Senator Jake Garn (R-Utah), whose space debut as an observer was delayed by the cancellation of Challenger’s flight this week, will be on the crew of Discovery later this month or in early April, NASA announced. With the exception of French astronaut Patrick Baudry, the entire crew of the scrubbed flight has been reassigned to the Discovery mission. Garn is chairman of an appropriations subcommittee that oversees funding for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Narcotics sales in the United States have skyrocketed at a rate of $10 billion annually since 1978, grossing $110 billion for traffickers last year, a House committee reported. The upsurge brought the number of U.S. heroin addicts to more than 500,000 for the first time since 1973 and increased overdose deaths by 93% from 1979 through 1983, the Select Committee on Narcotics said in a report.
An Atlanta judge voided the contract awarded by the state for construction of a parkway to Jimmy Carter’s presidential library and permanently enjoined the contractor from continuing the work. Superior Court Judge Osgood Williams, ruling on a suit filed by parkway opponents, said the contract was awarded improperly to Shepherd Construction Co. by the state Department of Transportation last fall. The road was designed to connect Carter’s planned library complex with downtown Atlanta.
Amid an emotional outpouring of public support, the State of Mississippi adopted landmark legislation in late 1982 aimed at improving the quality of a public school system often ranked last among the 50 states. Now there is growing concern here in the nation’s poorest state that the future of those efforts could be at risk in a sharp and angry standoff with teachers who are the most poorly paid in the nation. The teachers’ salary demands have resulted in strikes that the state says now involves nearly 9,000 teachers in 53 of its 154 school districts. Under intense pressure from parents and teachers, the State Legislature is trying to come up with a compromise plan for new taxes to finance a pay package satisfactory to Mississippi teachers. But Governor Bill Allain has threatened to veto any plan that he says would again increase taxes. In 1982, the Legislature passed the largest tax increase in state history to pay for the educational package, but the state has been forced to spend some of that money elsewhere to meet budget shortages.
Videotapes played in court today showed Norman Saunders, Chief Minister of the Turks and Caicos Islands, counting $20,000 he had accepted from an undercover agent, then offering his protection for cocaine smugglers in the West Indies islands. Mr. Saunders appeared before a Federal Magistrate with two other island officials and a Canadian businessman arrested with him on narcotics conspiracy charges. The islands are a self-governing British possession. Portions of the two-hour videotape played in court by Assistant United States Attorney Richard Gregory also showed the four suspects discussing a plan to set aside money for a bail fund with which they could post bond and flee to Colombia if they were caught. The Magistrate, Herbert Shapiro, set bail at $2 million for Mr. Saunders, $1 million each for the other officials and $5 million for the Canadian. The four were arrested in Miami Tuesday.
Stephen Bingham, a lawyer who surrendered after 13 years in hiding, pleaded not guilty today to charges of murder and conspiracy stemming from an attempted escape from San Quentin prison in 1971. Mr. Bingham, who is free on $300,000 bail, was ordered February 20 to stand trial on five counts of murder and one of conspiracy. He was accused in an October 1971 indictment of smuggling a 9-millimeter automatic pistol into San Quentin to George Jackson, a black revolutionary. Mr. Jackson, two other inmates and three guards died on August 21, 1971, in a violent melee at the prison. Mr. Bingham surrendered to Marin County authorities last July 9.
Katie Jackson Booker, a black candidate for Mayor in Dixmore, Illinois, awoke at 2 AM today to see a wooden cross burning in her front yard. She said she doubted that the incident was racially motivated. “I know it’s political,” she said. The police said the cross, about five feet tall, was one of two that were set on fire in this suburb south of Chicago. The other was in front of Mrs. Booker’s campaign headquarters. Mrs. Booker said the incident was intended by “outside forces” to stir up the village’s black community and to keep the incumbent white mayor, Kenneth Fisher, in power. But she did not place blame on Mr. Fisher. Her other opponent in the April 2 election is Shelton Mackey, who is black.
An experimental artificial heart was implanted in a dying 32-year-old man whose body had rejected a transplanted human heart. The operation was carried out by doctors at the University of Arizona at Tucson, apparently in defiance of a federal warning against performing the experiment. The patient was reported to be in stable condition.
A lawyers’ group, answering doctors’ assertions, said in a study that “there is no medical malpractice insurance crisis” and that the average American doctor spends less than 3 percent of gross income for such insurance. The study, by the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, also said that malpractice insurance accounts for less than one-half of 1 percent of annual health care costs.
The case in which seven officials of the Virginia McMartin Preschool are accused of sexual abuse of children has cost the courts more than $1.2 million since February 1984, and may become Los Angeles County’s most expensive criminal case, officials said today. A report by county auditors showed that the case has cost $1,266,008 so far. In the most expensive case to date, it cost the county $1.6 million to prosecute Charles Manson and several of his followers for the 1969 murders of the actress Sharon Tate and others. The McMartin case is in the seventh month of a preliminary hearing.
The Mayor of Hagerstown in western Maryland has left town in the midst of a re-election campaign, and his brother says he “may be back next week and he may be back next year.” The Mayor, Donald Frush, 54 years old, left Hagerstown over the weekend without saying where he was going. Acquaintances offered varying explanations for his departure. Winnie Nolte, a family friend, said Mr. Frush’s wife, Nadine, had left him. Mr. Frush’s brother, Calvin, said he told the Mayor to go away to “get a little privacy.” The Republican Mayor, seeking a second term, is being challenged by a Democrat, Steve Sager.
A salvage crew finally wrestled a beached 190-foot freighter into deep water, delighting a beachfront homeowner in Palm Beach, Florida, who enjoyed her first clear view of the Atlantic since a November storm drove the ship into her sea wall. “It’s wonderful,” exclaimed Mollie Wilmot. “I never realized how great this view is. I really appreciate it now, from here to eternity.”
A photographer who was accidentally injected with a toxic preservative during surgery last week was pronounced dead after his life-support systems were disconnected at his family’s request, a hospital official said in Miami. Bob East, 64, who had been declared brain dead, died shortly after his respirator was unplugged. “The family was there,” said Jackson Memorial Hospital spokeswoman Zondra Thompkins. East lapsed into a coma Friday after doctors injected a formaldehyde-like chemical into his spine, believing that it was spinal fluid.
The NASA space shuttle Atlantis (OV-104), the fourth operational shuttle orbiter, is rolled out at Palmdale.
Yul Brynner appears in his 4,500th performance of “The King & I”.
Enos Slaughter and Arky Vaughan are elected to the Hall of Fame by the Special Veterans Committee.
Future undisputed world heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson KOs Hector Mercedes at 1:47 in round 1 of 4 in Albany, NY in his first professional fight.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1280.37 (-11.48)
Born:
Daniel Winnik, Canadian NHL centre and left wing (Phoenix Coyotes, Colorado Avalanche, San Jose Sharks, Anaheim Ducks, Toronto Maple Leafs, Pittsburgh Penguins, Washington Capitals, Minnesota Wild), in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Pierre-Édouard Bellemare, French NHL left wing (Philadelphia Flyers, Vegas Golden Knights, Colorado Avalanche, Tampa Bay Lightning, Seattle Kraken), in Le Blanc-Mesnil, France.
Chad Jackson, NFL wide receiver (New England Patriots, Denver Broncos), in Birmingham, Alabama.
Pretty Yende, South African operatic soprano, in Piet Retief, Mpumalanga, South Africa.
History Diaries 