Konstantin U. Chernenko’s death was announced by the Kremlin leadership, and hours later it named Mikhail S. Gorbachev, 54 years old, as the new Soviet leader. Chernenko had been in office 13 months, and had been ill much of the time, leaving a minor imprint on Soviet affairs. The succession was the quickest in Soviet history, suggesting that it had been decided well in advance. Whereas the Central Committee had taken several days to name a successor to Leonid I. Brezhnev and Yuri V. Andropov, Mr. Gorbachev was confirmed in his new job 4 hours and 15 minutes after Mr. Chernenko’s death was announced. Mr. Gorbachev outlined an urgent agenda to improve the Soviet economy.
Mikhail S. Gorbachev, coming to power at the age of 54, stands to guide the Soviet Union well into the next century. Mr. Gorbachev is expected to bring a new style of leadership to the Kremlin — possibly one less burdened with memories of Stalin’s terror and World War II. For the moment, Mr. Gorbachev seemed anxious to give fire to the program of economic change he had inherited from his mentor, Yuri V. Andropov. He revealed his impatience in a major speech last December when he said, “We will have to carry out profound transformations in the economy and in the entire system of social relations.”
Konstantin U. Chernenko was the caretaker of an interim regime. Nonetheless, he pressed on with a campaign against corruption and for economic experimentation that he inherited from Yuri V. Andropov and managed to keep the country on an even keel at a time of political flux and uncertainty.
A business-as-usual mood prevailed throughout the Soviet Union despite the death of Mr. Chernenko. Shops and offices remained open and the Kremlin went to great lengths to foster a sense that business and government were being conducted without a break in stride.
President Reagan is awakened at 4 AM to the news that General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Konstantin Chernenko had died.
President Reagan is informed that Mikhail Gorbachev had been elected to succeed Konstantin Chernenko as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
The President ruled out attending Mr. Chernenko’s funeral, but said he was “more than ready” to meet the new Soviet leadership. White House officials said Vice President Bush, who is in Geneva, would lead the United States delegation to the funeral in Moscow tomorrow. The Vice President also led the American delegations at the funerals of Leonid I. Brezhnev in 1982 and Yuri V. Andropov in 1984.
The shift to a new generation of Soviet leadership has raised cautious hopes in the Reagan Administration that over the long run this will bring new vigor and decisiveness in the Kremlin and could lead to improvements in Soviet-American relations. But President Reagan and his top advisers expect no significant changes in Soviet foreign policy to emerge over the next several months from the new leadership of Mikhail S. Gorbachev, a 54-year-old party official with a reputation for interest in modest internal economic changes. The Soviet decision to pursue arms talks in Geneva, with only a token ceremonial interruption, is seen by Government specialists as a deliberate Kremlin move to project both strength of leadership and continuity of policy despite the death of the third Soviet leader in 28 months. “Preserving the image of continuity at this point is at least as important as the fact of continuity,” a State Department official said. “They are embarrassed at the succession of infirm leaders they’ve had,” another Government specialist said, “and they don’t want Chernenko’s death to look as though it’s hampering them.”
Washington and Moscow agreed that a new round of arms control talks would begin today, as scheduled, despite the death of Konstantin Chernenko. American officials said the decision reflected a strong desire by the Soviet Union to demonstrate continuity in its approach to the arm control negotiations.
In the countries of the Soviet bloc, flags were ordered flown at half-staff today while radio eulogies for Konstantin U. Chernenko were interspersed with somber music. Official pronouncements emphasized praise for Mr. Chernenko’s contributions to world peace. In Czechoslovakia, the Communist Party Central Committee sent its condolences in a note praising Mr. Chernenko as a man who “dedicated his life to selfless service in the interest of his country and people.”
China moved promptly today to express its condolences over the death of Konstantin U. Chernenko, calling him “an outstanding leader of the party and the state” and noting that relations between the two Communist nations had improved “noticeably” in the 13 months that Mr. Chernenko was in power. The official News China News Agency, reporting swiftly on developments in Moscow throughout the day, followed close on the heels of Western agencies with its reports of Mr. Chernenko’s death and the choice of Mikhail S. Gorbachev to succeed him as General Secretary of the Communist Party. But the agency’s brief biography of the new Soviet leader gave no hint of the official reaction here to his designation.
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher plans a major shake-up of Britain’s counterintelligence service, MI5, and is likely to appoint one of her most trusted advisers, Sir Anthony Duff, 65, as its new director general, the Sunday Times of London reported. The move follows controversy over allegations in a television documentary that MI5 illegally tapped the telephones of trade union, civil liberties and anti-nuclear groups. Government investigators said they uncovered no wrongdoing.
The Greek Parliament will vote for a new President next Sunday, opening the way for Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou’s ruling Socialist Party to push ahead with major policy changes. The presidential vote had been scheduled for next Friday, but was postponed for two days after the incumbent, Konstantine Karamanlis, resigned. President Karamanlis, a 77-year-old conservative statesman, resigned Sunday after he was unexpectedly rejected as the Presidential candidate the night before by the Socialists.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger made a sharp attack on Greece’s leaders today over what he called the unceremonious dropping of President Karamanlis. Mr. Weinberger called the President’s resignation a disappointment and said: “Our understanding was that there had been a full promise made to Mr. Karamanlis of another term and that it was rather rudely and abruptly halted and reversed.”
An explosion that wounded eight people in a department store in Dortmund. West Germany, last week was not the work of terrorists but of four young men who rigged a homemade pipe bomb “for the fun of a big bang,” police said. The four youths are under arrest, and none has terrorist connections or a criminal record, an official spokesman said. Shortly after the blast, an anonymous caller told a West German newspaper that it was the work of Action Christian Klar — a group named for an imprisoned terrorist of the Red Army Faction.
Seven bomb explosions rocked French, West German and British businesses and homes in Lisbon and the central city of Evora, Portugal today, causing extensive damage but no injuries, Portugal’s public security police said. The extreme leftist group, the Popular Forces of April 25, asserted in a telephone call to a commercial radio station that it was responsible for the bombs. Another caller told the state-run news agency that the bombings had been carried out “against private interests and in defense of nationalizations.”
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak met with top U.S. leaders in Washington, beginning three days of intense lobbying aimed at gaining $870 million more in aid to his nation and convincing U.S. officials to meet with members of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Mubarak, who is to meet with President Reagan today, presented his case to Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger, Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Treasury Secretary James A. Baker III.
Senior Administration officials told President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt today that they had serious problems with his latest peace proposals for the Middle East and that the American economy would not support the kind of large-scale supplemental aid he is seeking, State Department officials said. Mr. Mubarak arrived here on Saturday and is to see President Reagan on Tuesday. He is hoping to persuade the Administration to play a more active mediating role in the Middle East and, as a first step, to invite a Jordanian- Palestinian group, including Palestine Liberation Organization representatives, to come to Washington. He has also asked Washington, in advance, for $1.6 billion in additional military and economic aid for the 1985 and 1986 fiscal years, above the $4.5 billion already appropriated or requested.
Israeli troops killed at least 24 people in a raid against the southern Lebanese village of Zrariyah. The raid came only about 12 hours after a suicide car bomber crashed into an Israeli Army convoy, killing 12 Israeli soldiers. The main street of this village was a scene of hysteria and chaos after the Israeli force withdrew just before dusk, with women shrieking and waving their hands in the air or sitting on the ground weeping. The casualty figures were still in doubt tonight. An Israeli military announcement said 24 people it described as “terrorists” had been killed, but the Israeli radio later put the death toll at 30. The Lebanese police and local radio stations said 25 people had died.
As 12 Israeli soldiers killed in a suicide bombing were buried in military cemeteries in different parts of the country today, demands for speeding up the evacuation of Lebanon intensified. Representatives of six small parties offered motions in Parliament calling for a complete pullback to the international border instead of the phased withdrawal as decided by the Government Jan. 14. At the same time, hard-liners said the lesson of the attack Sunday was that the withdrawal plans should be scrapped and the army should dig in on the Litani River line and take the initiative from the guerrrillas. Prime Minister Shimon Peres rejected pressures from both camps. During a tour of hospitals where he visited the 14 people wounded in the Sunday blast, he said: “Not the terrorists will determine our plans. We’ll decide by ourselves.”
Iran and Iraq sent their planes deep inside each other’s territory to strike the opposing capitals. Iranian jets hit the suburbs of Baghdad and Iraqi planes struck Tehran, as well as Tabriz and Bakhtaran and the Persian Gulf port of Bandar Khomeini. At least 100 people were killed and hundreds more wounded, war communiqués and witnesses reported. The Baghdad attack was the closest to the heart of the Iraqi capital in two years. The strike against Tehran, as reported by the Iranian news agency, was the first on a purely residential area of the Iranian capital since the war began more than four years ago and came less than an hour before the U.N.-proposed start of a ceasefire on civilian targets.
Iran announced today that it had accepted a deadline imposed by Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar for calling a halt to attacks on civilian targets in the Persian Gulf war. The announcement added that Iran would “reserve the right to retaliate” if Iraq did not also agree to call a halt, according to a letter by Iran’s Foreign Minister, Ali Akbar Velayati, made public at the United Nations. Iraq, meanwhile, called for a new United Nations agreement on a moratorium against attacks against civilian areas. In a letter to Mr. Perez de Cuellar that was made public today, Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz said Iraq was ready to “hold direct contacts” to negotiate a halt to the attacks. He said he would be willing to fly immediately to New York to meet with the Secretary General or would welcome the Secretary General in Baghdad.
Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, in an apparent attempt to open negotiations with the Sikhs, ordered the release today of eight prominent Sikh leaders imprisoned last year on sedition charges. The action was Mr. Gandhi’s first concrete gesture to the Sikhs since he took office in November. An aide described it as a “calculated initiative” to try to resolve an ethnic and religious conflict that has produced rioting, protests and an army raid on the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the Sikh religion’s holiest shrine.
The President and the First Lady host a private dinner in honor of Queen Sirikit of the Kingdom of Thailand.
Vietnamese troops, in heavy ground and artillery assaults, drove Cambodian guerrillas out of their last major base near the Thai border, authoritative military sources in Thailand reported. Prince Norodom Sihanouk, the rebel leader, ordered a retreat to save the estimated 3,000 guerrillas defending the Green Hill base, across the border from the Thai town of Tatum, the sources said. It was the first time since invading Cambodia six years ago that the Vietnamese had overrun all the major rebel border bases.
Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Foreign Minister Bernardo Sepulveda Amor of Mexico met today. Both sides later indicated a desire to tone down their differences over drug trafficking and other issues. In a brief statement after the two-and-a-half-hour discussion, Mr. Sepulveda described it as “very fruitful, very positive and very constructive.” “The two sides are most interested in insuring that all issues are dealt with in a friendly and cordial manner and that a solution can be found to every single issue,” he said. A senior United States official, who briefed reporters on the condition he not be identified, said Mr. Shultz did not repeat criticism of Mexico’s handling of its investigation into the kidnapping and murder of a United States Drug Enforcement Agency official in Guadalajara.
President Reagan told a White House luncheon that his Administration has followed up every hint by Cuban President Fidel Castro that he wants better relations, but each time “there has been no substance, only sound.” Reagan also made it clear that he is not ready to unleash anti-Castro elements to try to overthrow the Cuban leader.
Uruguay’s new civilian government freed nearly 200 political prisoners from more than a decade in military jails. The 173 men and 20 women, freed under a compromise amnesty agreement, were cheered and embraced by relatives and supporters as they left prisons in Montevideo and at Libertad, 60 miles north. The amnesty was approved Friday by Congress and signed by President Julio Sanguinetti, who took office March 1, ending nearly 12 years of rightist military dictatorship.
Thousands of Chileans in the city of San Antonio and in other cities hit hardest by last week’s earthquake are still living today in parks, schools and on sidewalks, and are not sure when they will have permanent housing. The March 3 earthquake, which registered 7.4 on the Richter scale and affected an 800-mile stretch of Chile, killed 146 people and injured some 2,000. The quake left more than 200,000 people homeless and damaged as many as 60,000 houses, according to the government. Much of the destruction occurred in this port city of more than 66,000 people, 70 miles west of the capital, and in Melipilla, 40 miles west of Santiago.
The security police in Khartoum, Sudan arrested more than 100 members of an Islamic fundamentalist group in a nationwide sweep after charges that the sect was plotting to overthrow the government, Western diplomats said today. The crackdown against the Muslim Brotherhood began in Khartoum Sunday and continued today, moving westward to the province of Darfur, the traditional stronghold of the Islamic fundamenalist sect.
Thousands of black students boycotted classes today after a weekend of riots left six people dead and at least 79 under arrest. About 20,000 pupils stayed away from 39 schools this morning but a government spokesman said others showed up for classes at seven other schools around Johannesburg. There have been several school boycotts this year and protests over the quality of black education have fueled general unrest in South Africa’s black townships. More 200 people, nearly all of them black, have died in township riots since last February. Sunday night two men were killed in a gun battle with the police in the Eastern Cape township of Tinus, while on Friday a man and a woman were killed there when police fired birdshot at rioters throwing stones, a police spokesman said.
A small growth in the President’s intestinal tract was found by doctors during Mr. Reagan’s annual physical, but the growth was not cancerous, the White House announced. It said the doctors also detected signs of blood in Mr. Reagan’s stools. His overall health was called excellent. Captain Walter Karney, chief of internal medicine at the naval hospital, who led the examining doctors, was quoted by the White House as saying: “President Reagan continues to enjoy good health. His overall physical and mental condition is excellent. I am especially impressed with the fact that his blood pressure is lower than a year ago — this is quite remarkable.”
Donald P. Hodel, the new Interior Secretary, intends to reduce the scope and pace of his department’s much-debated offshore oil leasing program. He says the department will announce its new five-year program for developing energy resources on the outer continental shelf soon, perhaps this week. In an interview last Tuesday, Mr. Hodel said he was “leaning” toward a program that would offer fewer acres to industry on a slower leasing schedule. In 1981, Interior Secretary James G. Watt provoked intense criticism from coastal state governments as well as conservationists when he adopted a five-year leasing schedule that would have offered as much as a billion offshore acres to industry. The critics said the size and pace of the leasing of exploration and mineral rights to oil companies did not allow adequate protection of the marine environment or of coastal economies.
How the military deals with products that are faulty is a subject of debate in the Pentagon and Congress. Representative John R. Kasich of Ohio expressed concern about the extent to which quality control problems and contracts awarded without competition had contributed to what he called “$100 billion in extra procurement over the last four years.”
A Mississippi judge promised not to implement a no-strike order this week while the Legislature tries to come up with a salary package to end wildcat teacher walkouts. At the same time, Governor Bill Allain told 1,000 teachers at a union meeting their raises should be held to 10%. A temporary court order against striking expires today. Judge Paul B. Alexander of Chancery Court has concluded that teachers are public employees and cannot strike. A temporary court order against striking expires Tuesday and a permanent order could have subjected striking teachers to fines and other sanctions. Judge Alexander, however, issued an injunction prohibiting walkouts in 14 districts that have not struck, including Jackson, the state’s largest school system. At the close of classes Friday, about 9,100 teachers and 172,000 school children in 55 school districts were affected by walkouts that began on February 25.
Murray P. Haydon was moved from a coronary care unit at Humana Hospital Audubon to a room next to William J. Schroeder’s, and the world’s only surviving artificial heart recipients shook hands and spoke to each other for the first time. “We’ll have to get together, now that we’re neighbors,” Haydon was reported as saying in Louisville, Kentucky. Schroeder, who received his Jarvik-7 pump November 25, was in satisfactory condition.
A new boom in southwest Wyoming is on the horizon. About 14,000 workers and their families are expected to move into the region to help build a huge Exxon gas treatment plant and some lesser projects. There is excitement over the prospect, but officials are concerned about the efficacy of a new Wyoming law requiring companies to soften the effect of sudden population growth.
The lawyer for Troy Canty, one of four youths shot by Bernhard H. Goetz on a Manhattan subway train last December, said that Mr. Canty had withdrawn his offer to testify before a new grand jury because of anonymous threats against the 19- year-old and his family.
The director of a survey of college freshmen said Education Secretary William J. Bennett misused his data in telling Congress an estimated 13,000 students from families with incomes of more than $100,000 get federal loans. “I’d say there are probably less than half that number” of wealthy students receiving such aid, said Alexander Astin, head of UCLA’s Higher Education Institute and director of the 1984 survey. “The American Freshman.” Also reacting to Bennett’s statement was John Phillips, president of the 850-member National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, who issued a statement citing Astin’s criticisms and blasting Bennett.
Jesse Jackson was arrested outside the South African Embassy in Washington along with two of his sons in an anti-apartheid demonstration that the civil rights leader called “non-cooperation with evil.” Jackson and sons Jesse Jr., 20, and Jonathan, 19, were arrested after going to the door of the embassy and holding hands while singing “We Shall Overcome.” The arrests of the three Jacksons was the latest in daily demonstrations outside the South African Embassy in protest of that country’s racial segregation policies.
The Rabbinical Assembly, which represents Conservative Jews, voted overwhelmingly to admit women as rabbis for the first time. Beverly Magidson of Clifton Park, New York, and Jan Carol Kaufman of Rockville, Maryland, were admitted, effective July 1. Only a “handful” of the nearly 400 Conservative rabbis who voted opposed the women’s admission or abstained, said a news release from the religious group meeting in Miami Beach. The door was opened to the two women last month with the assembly’s adoption of a constitutional amendment that admitted upon ordination the graduating class of the Jewish Theological Seminary’s Rabbinic School in New York City.
The Presbyterian Church has upheld the church’s ban on ordination of practicing homosexuals, church officials announced today. The officials said the 3.1 million- member denomination’s Permanent Judicial Commission, the church’s equivalent of a supreme court, has reaffirmed 1978 and 1979 actions by two General Assemblies that barred homosexuals from being ordained into the clergy or as elders and deacons in local congregations. The ruling said that the Westminster Presbyterian Church, of Buffalo, acted incorrectly in 1983 when it declared that it was extending to all of its members the opportunity for leadership including the right of homosexuals to be ordained as elder and deacon. Five members of the 24-member Judicial Commission dissented, saying the denomination’s Book of Order, the church’s book of laws, recognizes that the theological positions of church members may differ.
A defiant Lutheran minister walked away from a church disciplinary hearing in Pittsburgh and shouted down his bishop after he was forbidden to record the proceedings. The Rev. D. Douglas Roth, 33, former pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church in nearby Clairton, refused to face a 15-member panel called by Bishop Kenneth May, head of the regional Lutheran synod. May fired Roth in October over Roth’s repeated Sunday morning attacks on large corporations as sources of “evil” and the cause of Pittsburgh-area unemployment.
Rainfall halted the retreat of the bloated Illinois River, keeping hundreds of flood-weary evacuees from returning home, while Illinois declared 10 more ravaged counties disaster areas. Weekend surveys of the 272-mile channel boosted to about 2,700 the number of people believed to have fled their homes. That figure is 1,000 higher than estimates last week when the river peaked at 28.4 feet, 10.4 feet above Peoria’s 18-foot flood stage.
Righthander Mike Scott, coming off a 5-11 season, tests his new split-fingered fastball for the first time in live action. The two-inning stint against the Toronto Blue Jays is uneventful and Scott likes it that way. He hopes to earn the fourth spot in Houston Astros’ pitching rotation. Scott will win 86 games over the next 5 years and strike out 306 batters in 1986 and win the Cy Young Award that year.
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Born:
Greg Olsen, NFL tight end (Pro Bowl, 2014, 2015, 2016; Chicago Bears, Carolina Panthers, Seattle Seahawks), in Paterson, New Jersey.
Josh Wilson, NFL cornerback (Seattle Seahawks, Baltimore Ravens, Washington Redskins, Atlanta Falcons, Detroit Lions), in Houston, Texas.
Ryan Harris, NFL tackle (Denver Broncos, Houston Texans, Kansas City Chiefs, Pittsburgh Steelers), in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Derek Schouman, NFL tight end and fullback (Buffalo Bills, St. Louis Rams), in Sandy, Utah.
Marko Mitchell, NFL wide receiver (Washington Redskins), in Port Huron, Michigan.
Paul Bissonnette, Canadian NHL left wing (Pittsburgh Penguins, Phoenix Coyotes), in Welland, Ontario, Canada.
Taniela Moa, Tongan rugby union halfback (20 caps; Auckland Blues, Section Paloise RUFC), in Tofoa, Tonga (d. 2021).
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