President Reagan will seek to meet with the new Soviet leader, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, in the United States in hopes of improving American-Soviet relations. The officials said Mr. Reagan would “prefer” a meeting in the United States because talks between American and Soviet leaders over the last decade have taken place abroad. The officials said Mr. Reagan’s message would be delivered Wednesday to Mr. Gorbachev by Vice President Bush, who is leading the American delegation to the funeral of Konstantin U. Chernenko, the Soviet leader, who died Sunday evening. Thoughts of Legacy A ranking White House official said Mr. Reagan “was beginning to think about his legacy.” A ranking White House official said Mr. Reagan sought to meet Mr. Gorbachev “to work out an accommodation on arms control.”
World leaders gathered in Moscow to pay their respects at the bier of Konstantin U. Chernenko, who is to be buried beside the Kremlin wall today. As mournful music played, the new Soviet leader, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, led his Politburo colleagues in honoring Mr. Chernenko, who died Sunday at the age of 73. Thousands of Muscovites in heavy winter coats shuffled through the House of Unions to pay their last respects to Mr. Chernenko. Vice President Bush arrived here with Secretary of State George P. Shultz, bearing what he said was “a message of peace” from President Reagan. “We have no greater hope and no greater goal than to create a more stable and constructive relationship with the Soviet Union,” he said.
American specialists are struck by the unusually prominent role of Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko in the shift of the Soviet Communist Party leadership, and some say they now regard him as the second most powerful figure in the Soviet hierarchy. The 75-year-old Soviet diplomat was given the politically significant and prestigious assignment of nominating Mikhail S. Gorbachev as the new Soviet leader Monday. Normally that task goes to a defeated rival for the party leadership or to the second-ranking figure in the Soviet hierarchy. In other ways, too, Mr. Gromyko has ranked high in Kremlin protocol lately.
If the Soviet Union stood at the start of a new era under a young leader, the fact was not immediately evident in the guarded reactions of Muscovites plying their daily rounds under gloomy skies. Shoppers moved briskly in and out of stores along Gorky Street, hardly perturbed by the lines of soldiers sealing off side streets, and barely glancing at the motorcades of black limousines whizzing up and down the largely emptied avenue. Though the death of Konstantin U. Chernenko and the ascension of Mikhail S. Gorbachev filled the newspapers, radio and television, people in the street seemed reluctant to discuss the latest events and retreated behind generalities. A middle-aged engineer ventured that “no one lives forever” and that, yes, it probably was better to have a younger man in charge. A couple at a cafe agreed, noting that a younger leader might have more initiative. Then they quickly bustled off, saying they were late for the theater.
The first formal U.S.-Soviet talks on arms control in 15 months opened in Geneva as negotiators met for 2 hours and 45 minutes to discuss nuclear and space weapons. Max M. Kampelman, the chief American negotiator, said “the two sides had a serious and businesslike discussion.” Another official said they had discussed technical arrangements and the “concepts” they planned to explore in future meetings. They will meet again on Thursday.
A release of MX funds was approved by a House subcommittee. The panel voted 7 to 4 in a step toward freeing $1.5 billion to build 21 more of the strategic missiles. Congressional experts said the vote reflected the growing belief on Capitol Hill that President Reagan now held the high ground in the MX battle that will be fought out over the next few weeks. Even opponents of the missile concede that Mr. Reagan has been successful in linking support for the MX with support for the arms talks that began today in Geneva.
The leaders of the two Germanys, forced by East-West tensions to cancel a meeting last fall, conferred for more than two hours in Moscow, where they were to attend today’s funeral of Soviet President Konstantin U. Chernenko. West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and East German leader Erich Honecker, in a joint statement after their meeting in a guest house, pledged to work for better bilateral relations and said the new Geneva arms talks could bring smoother relations between East and West.
Greece assured its Western allies that it remains committed to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Economic Community despite the resignation of pro-American President Constantine Karamanlis. Veteran politician Karamanlis quit Sunday after Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou and his ruling Socialist party dropped their support for his reelection. Western diplomats saw the move as a victory for the left wing of Papandreou’s party and a signal of possible pressure on Papandreou to fulfill promises to pull out of NATO and reconsider membership in the EEC.
Turkey’s Prime Minister called on his Greek counterpart today to meet with him “anywhere, anytime” to discuss the issues dividing their two nations. “I propose here and now to the Greek leadership to proceed to comprehensive negotiations,” Prime Minister Turgut Ozal said. “We are ready to participate in such negotiations anywhere, anytime and at any level they like.”
Spanish aviation authorities said that errors by both the pilot of a Colombian airliner and air traffic controllers led to the plane’s crash outside Madrid on November 27, 1983, killing 181 people. The Avianca Boeing 747 hit a hillside as it approached Madrid from Paris. Only 11 survived. Spain’s Civil Aviation Authority said the jet began its descent off course and too low, and without tower approval for an instrument landing, and the crew failed to respond to the plane’s automatic low-altitude alarm.
A Libyan student, Salhen Salem, 28, was convicted and sentenced to 15 years for his role in six London bombings last year, including one that wounded 23 in a nightclub. A London jury found him guilty of conspiring to cause six explosions on March 10, 1984. Co-defendant Ali Musbah was acquitted. The prosecutor said the bombings were aimed at exiled opponents of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi.
Scottish miners at Polmaise Colliery, the last group holding out against the end of Britain’s coal strike, went back to work a year to the day after the start of the country’s longest nationwide labor stoppage. Polmaise, near Stirling, was one of 20 mines earmarked for shutdown last year. Disclosure of the plan prompted the strike March 12, 1984. The National Union of Mineworkers gave up the walkout in the face of deadlocked negotiations and a surge of defections.
President Reagan meets with President of the Arab Republic of Egypt Mohammed Hosni Mubarak to discuss the situation in the Middle East. Mubarak was praised by President Reagan for trying to revive interest in Middle East diplomacy. But Mr. Reagan, in a White House meeting, rebuffed the Egyptian President’s proposal that the United States meet with a joint delegation of officials of Jordan and the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Two Israeli soldiers were killed in an ambush by Shiite Moslem guerrillas in southern Lebanon today. Seven others were wounded in separate incidents. The incidents today brought to 18 the number of Israeli soldiers killed since Israel began the first stage of its announced three-phase pullback from the Sidon area on February 16. They withdrew into what has proved a porous defense line that includes the heartland of the Shiite resistance.
The United States vetoed a resolution before the United Nations Security Council that would have condemned Israel’s crackdown on guerrilla resistance in southern Lebanon. The veto was the only vote against the measure, which was backed by 11 of the council’s 15 member countries. Britain, Australia and Denmark abstained. The resolution had called for a condemnation of “Israeli practices and measures against the civilian population in southern Lebanon” that violated international law. It would have demanded an immediate end to such practices and an immediate withdrawal of Israeli troops from Lebanon.
Iraq said tonight that its forces foiled an Iranian offensive Monday night on the Hawizah marshes in southern Iraq and were preparing a counterattack on the rest of the invading troops. The official daily war communique said the Iranians had pushed through toward the western edges of the Hawizah marshes, but “our forces countered and surrounded them, turning their offensive to a great failure.” The Hawizah marshes straddle the border east of the Tigris River where Iran mounted a major ground offensive in February last year. The communique said Iraqi forces had killed a “large number of Iranian troops” and destroyed four Iranian Chinook helicopters carrying soldiers.
A prominent Sikh leader freed today after nine months in prison charged that the Government had failed to address any of the major grievances of the Sikhs. The Sikh leader, Harchand Singh Longowal, a high-ranking religious and political leader in the Punjab, also said that Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was preventing a “conducive atmosphere” for negotiations by refusing to consider Sikh demands for self-rule. “The real threat to peace comes from the one who occupies the throne of power,” Mr. Longowal said in an interview tonight. His comments were his first after being released from prison. He said that before negotiations could occur with the Government, it would have to release thousands of Sikh prisoners and show a willingness to punish those who attacked Sikhs in the rioting after the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi last year. Mr. Longowal’s harsh comments came as Mr. Gandhi made new moves toward resolving the conflict with the Sikhs. In an unexpected move, Mr. Gandhi chose a top party leader and close adviser, Arjun Singh, a Sikh, as the new Governor of Punjab State, which has a majority Sikh population.
A member of the Chinese Politburo told the Soviet Ambassador here today that the Peking leadership had taken “special note” of the hope for improved relations expressed by Mikhail S. Gorbachev after his designation as Soviet leader Monday. Peng Zhen, an 82-year-old ally of Deng Xiaoping, the pre-eminent Chinese leader, visited the Soviet Embassy to sign a book of condolences for Konstantin U. Chernenko. The official New China News Agency said that afterward he “conversed cordially” with the Soviet envoy, Ilya S. Shcherbakov. The agency quoted him as saying: “We took special note of General Secretary Gorbachev’s speech to the effect that Soviet-Chinese relations will see a significant improvement. We too cherish the same hope. The Chinese Government will do its best to constantly develop Sino-Soviet relations in various fields.”
Three Armenian terrorists stormed the Turkish Embassy in Ottawa, blasted the door open with explosives and held a dozen hostages for more than four hours before surrendering to the police. A Canadian civilian security guard was shot to death after he sounded an alarm.
Senior Reagan Administration officials said today that they were irritated by what they saw as a casual reaction by Mexican officials to Secretary of State George P. Shultz’s concerns about Mexico’s drug traffic. Mr. Shultz met with Mexico’s Foreign Minister, Bernardo Sepulveda Amor, for two and a half hours on Monday and “made it clear that the United States sees narcotics as a significant foreign policy issue and an international issue,” a senior United States official said today. But a senior Mexican official said the United States reaction to the kidnapping and murder of an American drug agent in Mexico last month had been blown out of proportion. He called it “really just a police matter.” A senior American official called that descripton incredible.
A report on the human rights situation in Haiti asserts that authorities there are arbitrarily arresting and torturing political opponents of President Jean-Claude Duvalier’s Government. The report, issued yesterday by Amnesty International, said that journalists, opposition leaders and trade union activists have been the main targets of President Duvalier’s secret police and militia, commonly known as the Tonton Macoutes. Among those whose human rights were violated last year and in earlier years, according to the report, were Gregoire Eug ene, founder of the Social Christian Party; Sylvio Claude, founder of the Christian Democratic Party; Dieudonne Fardin, a newspaper editor; Pierre Robert Auguste, a magazine publisher, and Hubert de Ronceray, a professor at the National University and former Government minister.
Tancredo Neves, Brazil’s president-elect, named the 26 Cabinet-rank ministers who will take office with him Friday. Olavo Setubal, a Sao Paulo banker, was appointed foreign minister. Other key officials who will help negotiate with the International Monetary Fund and foreign bankers on Brazil’s $100-billion foreign debt are Francisco Dornelles, minister of finance; Joao Sayad, minister of planning, and Antonio Carlos Lembruger, president of the central bank.
Amnesty International charged that Chile continues to accept the systematic use of torture, notably of those under arrest, and it called for an independent inquiry into the fate of hundreds of missing people. “The way that investigations… have been handled by the authorities indicates that torture is condoned at the highest levels of Chilean government,” a representative of the rights group, Claudine Rey, told the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva. In another, formal report, Amnesty indicted Haiti for arbitrary arrests, mistreatment of prisoners and even killings.
The proposal to end revenue sharing next year was rejected by the Senate Budget Committee. The panel voted to continue the program in fiscal year 1986 and then to let it expire, as present law provides. The committee also approved a freeze in pay for Government civilian employees and put a two-year moratorium on Federal hiring. It rejected Mr. Reagan’s proposed 5 percent cut in pay for the civilian employees. The committee also voted against any tax increases. So far, the panel has approved $32.6 billion in spending cuts.
A lower minimum wage for youths is being pressed by the Reagan Administration. It has begun a campaign to gain support from black leaders for a proposed minimum wage of $2.50 an hour for teen-age workers instead of the $3.35 minimum that now applies to all workers. A rising number of black leaders, citing persistent unemployment among young people, back the proposal. Among those who have recently indicated support for the measure are the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Education, representing 114 historically black colleges and universities; the National Association of Minority Contractors, and a number of black ministers, including the Rev. Leon Sullivan of Philadelphia, president of Opportunities Industrialization Center Inc., which operates job training programs around the country. Some of them are Republicans.
President Reagan meets with Representatives from the state of Maine to discuss trade issues with Canada.
Holocaust survivors’ testimony was introduced at an extradition hearing in Cleveland to show that a retired auto worker is the Nazi guard “Ivan the Terrible” who tortured Jews as he herded them into death-camp gas chambers. U.S. government attorneys presented the evidence on behalf of Israel, which is seeking to extradite John Demjanjuk, 64, of suburban Seven Hills to stand trial for slaying Jews during World War II. He allegedly ran the gas chamber at the Treblinka death camp in Poland, where 900,000 Jews died in 1942 and 1943.
Workers will need a week to 10 days to repair damage done to space shuttle Discovery by a falling work bucket, delaying until mid-April its flight with Senator Jake Garn (R-Utah) in the crew, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said. It also was announced that Discovery definitely will fly the mission. Challenger originally had the assignment until a design defect was discovered in one of the satellites it was to carry.
FBI Director William H. Webster said his agents cannot investigate alleged harassment against abortion clinics because none of the reported cases involve apparent civil rights violations. Webster, testifying before the House Judiciary subcommittee on civil and constitutional rights, said the Justice Department advised him the FBI has no basis to enter cases where clinic operators and patients have been threatened on the telephone or outside abortion centers by protesters.
The House task force reviewing the nation’s longest-running congressional election decided to recount all 233,500 ballots in the 8th Congressional District in southern Indiana. Since January 3, the House has held vacant the district’s seat, pending a report on whether Republican Rick McIntyre or one-term Democrat Frank McCloskey won the race. The House twice has refused to provisionally seat McIntyre, who holds the state certificate of election and was the winner of a state recount.
A third top aide to Vice President George Bush, and one of the most prominent blacks in the Administration, is quitting to return to the business world, officials confirmed. But associates of Bush’s domestic policy chief, Steven Rhodes, said it was not true he was quitting in anger because the vice president ignored his suggestion to take some black Republicans on his recent tour of drought-stricken African countries. Rhodes told Bush “he would like to explore (job) opportunities on the outside” of government at about the same time he was lobbying for inclusion of black Republicans on the tour, said White House spokesman Larry Speakes.
Democratic Party Chairman Paul G. Kirk Jr. said in Atlantic City, New Jersey, that the country does not need “two Republican Parties” and rejected the idea that Democrats must move further to the right to win the White House in 1988. In a speech to a union group, the new leader of the Democratic National Committee acknowledged that his party “lost a serious election on the national level” last November when President Reagan overwhelmed Walter F. Mondale by winning 49 states.
A judge approved a new grand jury to investigate Bernhard H. Goetz’s shooting of four teen-agers in a Manhattan subway car last December, saying that District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau had “significant new evidence” against Mr. Goetz. Mr. Morgenthau refused to make public the new evidence against the 37-year- old engineer. But under state law a district attorney may seek a judicial order for a new grand jury only if he finds evidence that was not available to the first grand jury. The law permits a prosecutor only one additional opportunity to present a case, and a judge must review the new evidence before a new grand jury can be authorized.
Former President Richard M. Nixon has decided to do without the Secret Service detail that has accompanied him since he left the White House in 1974, and he plans to choose protection that will not by paid by the taxpayer. Mr. Nixon has commissioned “a complete study of his security needs,” his assistant, John Taylor, said today. “Once that’s done, he will decide how to proceed.”
A man convicted of killing three young women in 1981 and who said he was converted to Christianity by his last kidnap victim was executed by injection early today. The convict, Stephen Peter Morin, 34 years old, was executed for the death by shooting of Carrie Marie Scott, 21, outside a San Antonio restaurant. He also received death sentences for the 1981 killings of Janna Bruce, 21, in Corpus Christi, Texas, and Sheila Ann Whalen, 23, of Denver.
A minister was deposed from the ordained ministry of the Lutheran Church in America on the ground that he had violated the church constitution. The activism of the minister, the Rev. D. Douglas Roth, against unemployment split his congregation in Clairton, Pennsylvania.
Voters in Hemingway, South Carolina today defeated a proposal that would have allowed the mostly white township that includes this community to secede from a predominantly black county. The proposal needed a two-thirds majority to carry, but only about 62 percent of the 2,481 people who voted backed the idea of seceding. Voters were asked whether Hemingway and surrounding Johnson Township, now part of predominantly black Williamsburg County, should be annexed by neighboring Florence County, which is mostly white. Supporters of secession said the change would provide better schools and services because Florence County has a better tax base. Opponents said the move was racially motivated and accused the community’s whites of not wanting to share decision-making powers with a black majority. One secession opponent, Stanley Pasley, said he hoped those who favored secession “will devote the same kind of effort to bring the county together.” In a vote last July, the proposal had failed to win the needed margin, but the results were invalidated. Under state law, the proposal cannot be brought up again for five years.
A former supervisor at the disabled Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, was fined $2,000 and sentenced to two years’ probation for cheating on relicensing examinations. James R. Floyd, 48, was supervisor of operations at TMI’s Unit 2 in March, 1979, when it was the scene of the worst accident ever at a U.S. commercial nuclear plant. He was convicted in November of two counts of making false statements for cheating on the federally required exams in June 1979. “You may very well never be able to obtain employment as a nuclear engineer in the nuclear industry,” said Judge Sylvia Rambo of Federal District Court, “and perhaps that is the most appropriate penalty.” Mr. Floyd said he cheated because the nuclear accident and other matters made studying impossible.
Minnesota Governor Rudy G. Perpich plans to appoint a commissioner to investigate charges of misconduct against a prosecutor who led an inquiry on allegations of widespread child sex abuse, a top aide to the Governor said today. Tom Triplett, Governor Perpich’s planning agency director, said he hoped a commissioner would be appointed before the end of the week. Last year the prosecutor, Kathleen Morris of Scott County, charged 24 adults with hundreds of counts of child sexual abuse but dropped the charges against 21 people after the first couple to be tried were acquitted. A report issued last month was sharply critical of the investigations. The Governor’s decision came after the Attorney General’s office informed Mr. Perpich’s office today that petitions calling for Miss Morris’s ouster constituted charges against her.
U.S. teenagers become pregnant and give birth or have abortions at significantly higher rates than do adolescents in other industrialized countries, according to a study made public by the Alan Guttmacher Institute. The study also reported that the United States is the only developed country in which teenage pregnancy has been increasing. The pregnancy rate for Americans 15 to 19 years old stands at 96 per 1,000, compared with 14 per 1,000 in the Netherlands, 35 in Sweden, 43 in France, 44 in Canada and 45 in England and Wales, the countries that were studied in depth as a backdrop to the experiences of American teen-agers. The teenage abortion rate for the United States was found to be as high as the combined abortion and birth rates for the other countries studied. Although pregnancy rates among black American teenagers are much higher than rates among white teenagers — 163 pregnancies per 1,000 as against 83 per 1,000 — this does not account for the United States’ high rates compared with industrialized nations.
Bendectin doesn’t cause birth defects in children when taken by pregnant women in properly prescribed doses, a federal court jury decided in a trial of about 1,000 consolidated lawsuits. The drug was once prescribed to pregnant women for nausea.
Eugene Ormandy died of pneumonia at his home in Philadelphia at the age of 85. Mr. Ormandy had been the music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra for 44 years until his retirement in 1980.
11th People’s Choice Awards: Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep win (Motion Picture) and Tom Selleck, Joan Collins, and Linda Evans win (TV).
Larry Bird scores a Boston Celtic-record 60 points.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1271.75 (+3.2)
Born:
P.J. Walters, MLB pitcher (St. Louis Cardinals, Tornto Blue Jays, Minnesota Twins), in Dothan, Alabama.
Derrick Roberson, NFL defensive back (Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Cleveland Browns), in Oakland Park, Florida.
Stromae [Paul Van Haver], Belgian rapper and songwriter, in Brussels, Belgium.
Died:
Eugene Ormandy, 44, Hungarian-American violinist and conductor (Philadelphia Orchestra, 1936-80), of pneumonia.
History Diaries 