He’ll spend six-and-a-half years in captivity. His daughter, born a few months after this, will be six before he meets her.
The United States was accused by the Soviet negotiator at the Geneva arms talks of seeking to back way from the agreed approach to the talks. Viktor P. Karpov, said in a Soviet television interview that the United States did not seem prepared to negotiate seriously about banning weapons in space, one of the discussion areas agreed to in January. Karpov said in a Soviet television interview that the subject and aims of the talks were settled at the January meeting when Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko and Secretary of State George P. Shultz agreed to treat the separate discussions on long-range missiles, medium-range missiles and space arms as interrelated. Karpov said the U.S. side seemed intent on discussing what he called the usefulness of a space-based defense system, known as “Star Wars.”
The first 16 of 48 U.S.-made cruise missiles earmarked for deployment in Belgium under a North Atlantic Treaty Organization plan have been installed at an air base south of Brussels and are now operational, Belgian government officials said. Defense Minister Freddy Vreven said the missiles were flown directly from the United States by U.S. Air Force transport planes to the base at Florennes. They arrived several hours after Premier Wilfried Martens informed Parliament that Belgium would accept the missiles, thereby ending months of uncertainty over whether Brussels would stick to its decision to accept the NATO deployment.
Konstantine Karamanlis, who lost the governing Socialist Party’s support for a second term as President a week ago, was assured the night before that the Socialists intended to nominate him, according to reliable reports. Because of the Socialist rebuff, Mr. Karamanlis, a conservative who is Greece’s senior political figure, withdrew his candidacy for re-election and resigned Sunday. The dispute indicated a major shift to the left by the Socialists and further political polarization. A source close to Mr. Karamanlis said Friday that Interior Minister Agamemnon Koutsogiorgas called on a senior presidential aide March 8 to tell him that 10 percent of the Socialist Party Central Committee was reluctant to support a second five-year term for Mr. Karamanlis. The message was said to have been delivered on behalf of Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou.
Tens of thousands of workers called for the resignation of Portugal’s Socialist-Social Democratic Government today as they marched through Lisbon and other cities to protest government economic policies. The rallies were organized by the country’s Communist-led labor federation. In Lisbon, thousands of people packed one of the city’s main boulevards chanting, “We want work, not unemployment!” and “The struggle goes on! Government out!” The marchers protested proposed new labor legislation and government plans to restructure money-losing public companies by opening them up to private capital. They were also opposing recent sharp rises in the prices of food and public services and a government bill to lift a freeze on rents and set annual increases linked to inflation.
Foreign ministers from the 10 European Economic Community nations are to meet in Brussels for four days beginning Sunday for discussions that are considered crucial to Spanish entry into the Common Market. European diplomats agree that the 10 must reach accord on their own proposals in that gathering, and at a meeting of heads of state at the end of the month, if there is to be any hope of concluding a treaty with Spain and having it ratified by the Parliaments of the Common Market members before a January target date. Timing is crucial because Spain has scheduled a national referendum for April 1986 on whether to withdraw from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
The Middle East peace talks cannot be revived unless the United States agrees to meet with a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation, according to King Hussein. He says he can move no further toward re-starting the long-stalled talks without the United States. In an interview in Amman, he also flatly ruled out any talks that do not include the Palestine Liberation Organization. ‘I have done my utmost to move towards peace,” King Hussein said in an interview Friday, the first he gave to a Western newspaper since he and the P.L.O. signed an accord Feb. 11. That accord is the basis for a joint bid for peace in the Middle East.
Thousands of Israelis demonstrated in Tel Aviv’s central square in favor of immediate and complete withdrawal from Lebanon. Organizers estimated the crowd at 40,000. The demonstration came hours after the army chief of staff said he sees no need to expedite withdrawal despite guerrilla attacks that killed 14 Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon last week. The army has begun the second stage of its withdrawal and is expected to complete the pullout by fall.
Gunmen in Beirut kidnapped the chief Middle East correspondent of The Associated Press, Terry Anderson, as more United States diplomats were evacuated from Lebanon to Cyprus. Mr. Anderson, 37 years old, had just dropped off a colleague in West Beirut when three young men forced him from his car, bundled him into a green Mercedes and drove away. His companion, an Associated Press photographer, Donald Mell, was unharmed. Describing the abduction later, Mr. Mell said that the kidnappers were bearded and that two of them carried pistols.
Syrian troops moved closer to Christian-controlled territory in northern Lebanon today, apparently in a show of support for President Amin Gemayel against a Christian rebellion. The move was announced in Damascus by Defense Minister Mustafa Tlas, but denied by rebel leaders here. Witnesses reached by telephone said that the Syrian activity was concentrated near the Madfun bridge, 26 miles north of here. The bridge is guarded by the Lebanese Army. About two miles down the highway, militiamen loyal to the rebel leader, Samir Geagea, maintain a checkpoint.
Iraq said its jet fighters attacked “selected targets” in 11 Iranian cities today after a powerful explosion shook Baghdad, the Iraqi capital. Iran said it retaliated with air raids and artillery attacks on 10 Iraqi cities. Iraq reported that the explosion in downtown Baghdad shattered windows, but it made no mention of casualties. War communiques issued by Iran and Iraq also described fierce ground fighting in the Huwaizah region of southern Iraq for control of the strategic Basra-to-Baghdad highway. A communique distributed by Iran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency, or I.R.N.A., said Iranian forces had killed or wounded 3,100 Iraqi soldiers and taken more than 1,019 prisoners in the Huwaizah fighting. The agency, in a dispatch monitored in Nicosia, Cyprus, also reported that the Iraqi air raids on residential areas of the Iranian cities had killed 109 people and wounded 296.
Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, in a shift of tactics, is trying to renew contacts with Sikh leaders and is exploring ways to accommodate some of their demands. In quick succession, Mr. Gandhi this week ordered the release of eight prominent Sikh leaders imprisoned on charges of sedition nine months ago and then eased the conditions that others in his Government had imposed on negotiating with them or their allies. He appointed a respected confidant and party leader as Governor of Punjab, the state on the Pakistani border that is the focus of Sikh demands for greater self-government. The Governor, Arjun Singh, was told to join with a committee of Cabinet members to seek talks with Sikh leaders later this month.
A Defense Department audit shows that the South Korean Government has refused to pay its full share for combined military operations in South Korea. Although the amounts involved are small by Defense Department standards, the audit disclosed long-running irritations that a senior official said would be given priority when Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger meets with Korean leaders in Seoul during the spring. “When it comes to financial matters,” a Defense Department official said, “the Koreans are tough people to do business with.”
Some Reagan Administration officials are concerned that Peking’s efforts to improve relations with the Russians have led to a softer Chinese stand against Soviet involvement in Vietnam and Afghanistan. Even before the latest friendly exchanges between Peking and Moscow in connection with the accession to power of Mikhail S. Gorbachev as the Soviet leader, the Americans were noting what they described as unsettling indications from China about Afghanistan and Indochina. A key element in the American policy of seeking close relations with China has been the strategic component. It is the belief that Chinese- American ties compel the Soviet Union to maintain large forces along the Chinese border that may be otherwise deployed in Eastern Europe, and that an anti-Soviet China provides support for Southeast Asian countries that may otherwise be cowed by Vietnamese or Soviet pressure.
Fifty-nine suspected Communist guerrillas and eight soldiers were killed in separate gunbattles Thursday on Mindanao Island in the southern Philippines, military spokesmen said today. The army command said that 44 guerrillas of the New People’s Army and 2 soldiers were killed and that 10 soldiers were wounded in two clashes near an isolated mountain town, 30 miles west of Pagadian in Zamboanga del Sur Province, 300 miles south of Manila. In another encounter, about 150 guerrillas reportedly opened fire on an army patrol on the outskirts of Tagbina in Surigao del Sur Province, 550 miles southeast of Manila. A military spokesman said 15 guerrillas and 6 soldiers were killed.
President Reagan makes a Radio Address to the Nation on his upcoming visit to Canada. President Reagan will visit Quebec tomorrow for talks with Prime Minister Mulroney of Canada. Discussions on trade, military cooperation and acid rain are on the agenda.
The approaching vote in Congress on whether to renew aid to the Nicaraguan rebels is a turning point in the debate over United States policy in Central America, according to everyone involved. They say that whatever the outcome of the vote, which is expected this spring, the United States position is likely to change profoundly. The White House says it probably does not now have the votes it needs and plans an “all-out press on this issue” in the weeks ahead.
Vice President Bush harshly criticized Nicaragua’s Sandinista leaders today for creating a “Marxist-Leninist totalitarian Government” and said there would be “no letting up” in Administration efforts to secure renewed funding for Nicaraguan anti-government guerrillas. Mr. Bush made his comments during a brief four-hour stopover in Honduras today, during which he met Honduras’s President, Roberto Suazo Cordova, and other Government officials. “What I told President Suazo is we’re going to fight with everything we have to continue to support the freedom fighters against the Marxist-Leninist totalitarian Government in Managua,” Mr. Bush said at a press conference.
The Contadora group of nations announced today the resumption of its Central American peace efforts after a six-month interruption marked by growing tensions in the region. The group, comprising Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela and Panama, said it would meet representatives of the five Central American countries in Panama on April 11 and 12 in the hope of moving quickly toward a regional peace accord. Nicaragua’s President, Daniel Ortega Saavedra, who was among the foreign dignitaries attending Friday’s inauguration of Brazil’s new civilian Government, welcomed the announcement but called once again for simultaneous talks between Nicaragua and the United States.
U.S. technicians and equipment were sent to the Galapagos Islands, off Ecuador, to join the fight against a stubborn bush fire that is threatening one of the islands’ unique ecology. The blaze erupted February 28 and officials twice thought that it had been extinguished. But last week, it started burning again. The wild fire is burning on La Isabela, the Pacific island where Charles Darwin conducted studies leading to the theory of evolution. The area is home to a wide variety of plants, birds and animals — including the Galapagos tortoise, a prehistoric species of giant land turtle.
Ethiopia and the United States have informally agreed to extend food aid into at least some rebel-held areas in the northern part of Ethiopia, Newsday said in a report from Geneva. The newspaper, quoting unnamed sources, said the two countries agreed in secret talks to specify which locations will be allowed to receive emergency food aid to alleviate a famine. The United States has charged that the Ethiopian government has blocked food shipments to inhabitants of the rebel-held areas.
A senior Ethiopian Government official says reports about forced resettlement of famine victims are either misunderstandings or the work of the Central Intelligence Agency and other foreign agents who he says have “intentionally spread false propaganda.” Representatives of at least five non- Government relief agencies working in Ethiopia have told Kurt Jansson, the United Nations Assistant Secretary General who is in charge of emergency operations here, of instances in which they say they or members of their staffs have watched famine victims being recruited by coercive measures for the resettlement program. Under that plan up to 1.5 million people are to be moved this year from northern areas afflicted by drought, famine and civil strife to more fertile areas in the south and southwest. Critics of the plan charge that it is designed to remove support from northern regions where there is substantial rebel activity.
The Angolan rebels said Friday in a statement here that they had shot down a MIG-21 fighter-bomber near Bie, killing the Cuban pilot, Captain Garcia Ortega Gonzales. The Angolan Government press agency said that the plane had crashed while trying “a difficult maneuver” and that the pilot was an Angolan.
The bodies of 61 people who were killed by unknown assailants have been found in three places near Kampala, Ugandan newspapers reported today. The daily Star quoted an opposition Member of Parliament, Evaristo Nyanzi, as saying a truck believed to belong to the Ugandan Army had taken 33 people to a secluded spot near Kibutu, a village 40 miles west of Kampala, where they were “hacked, bayoneted or shot” to death. The opposition Democratic Party newspaper Munnansi said 20 people believed to have been detainees last Sunday were taken in an army truck to Kasangati, just north of Kampala, and shot dead. The paper also said a villager had led a reporter to a spot near Kampala where there were eight bullet-riddled bodies.
The Rand Daily Mail, South Africa’s leading opposition newspaper and a longtime critic of apartheid, will cease publication April 30, its owners announced. A statement by South African Associated Newspapers said the English-language Johannesburg daily lost $7.5 million in 1984 and nearly $23 million in the last 10 years. Founded in 1902, the Rand Daily Mail won international acclaim in the 1960s with attacks on racial segregation. It is considered the voice of white liberalism, although blacks make up almost two-thirds of its 116,000 circulation.
Only 61 American farmers have been helped so far by a Reagan Administration loan guarantee program to help banks restructure their most troubled farm loans, the Department of Agriculture said. A spokesman for the Farmers Home Administration said only $8.4 million of $650 million set aside for the special guarantees has been issued since the fiscal year began last October 1. Frank Naylor, undersecretary of agriculture in charge of farm loans, said that many rural banks are sending debt-strapped farmers to the Farmers Home Administration rather than taking advantage of the loan guarantee program.
The reopening of 71 Ohio banks Monday without another customer run on deposits was the aim of talks between Governor Richard F. Celeste, who ordered the state-chartered institutions closed Friday, and federal officials. Mr. Celeste was seeking a way to provide the state-insured thrift institutions, which were hit by a multi-million dollar run on deposits late last week, with federal deposit insurance in order to restore confidence. The meeting, which was held at the Federal Reserve in Cleveland, was attended by representatives of the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Ohio’s superintendent of banking and superintendent of savings and loans, aides to Governor Celeste and Ohio bankers. According to a spokesman for the Federal Reserve, the meeting was to continue into the night and on Sunday.
An official record of telephone calls made by federal employees will be compiled by computerized telephone equipment the government is now installing. Frank J. Carr, chief of communications of the General Services Administration, said the major purpose of the equipment was to enable managers to provide improved and cheaper telephone service, and said that the capability raised questions of employees’ rights to privacy.
Changes in asylum rules for aliens are being prepared by the Reagan Administration. Officials said the changes were intended to streamline the asylum process and to give the immigration agency more flexibility in handling applications.
The Environmental Protection Agency has allowed millions of tons of pollutants to be pumped into the air because it failed to enforce a 1970 ban on tall smokestacks at power plants, environmentalists charged. The National Clean Air Coalition complained that tall stacks have been a “fundamental pollution control issue” for nearly 15 years. A utility industry spokesman called the coalition’s claims “blatantly false.” The environmentalists cited findings by the Natural Resources Defense Council that 212 power plant units opened since 1970 use tall stacks.
The congressional Office of Technology Assessment said the Energy Department should revise its draft plan for permanent disposal of spent nuclear fuel to ensure that the first site will open on time. The nonpartisan agency’s report said that the plan, scheduled to be submitted in final form to Congress later this year, doesn’t guarantee that the first waste repository will be ready by 1998, the year set by law as the target for opening the first of two permanent storage facilities deep in the earth.
Two medical manufacturers have issued recalls for nearly 11,000 hospital and ambulance heart defibrillators that may carry faulty power packs, the Food and Drug Administration said. Officials said the FDA is investigating an undetermined number of deaths but that they may have been caused by devices not involved in the recall. The recalls of the devices, which give electric jolts that can restore proper heartbeats, were issued by Physio Control Corp. of Redmond, Washington, and Datascope Corp. of Paramus, New Jersey, because of nickel cadmium battery failures.
A group of parents of children allegedly molested at the McMartin Pre-School dug several holes in an empty lot adjacent to the closed Manhattan Beach school, searching for evidence of animals the youngsters said were killed to frighten them into silence, police said. After digging for five hours, the parents found a plastic toy shovel, a broken handle from a sand bucket, a rusty pipe and a safety pin. Police were not involved in the search.
[Ed: Nothing was found, because there IS nothing to find. The entire sordid case was leading questioning, implanted false memories, quack psychiatry, parental hysteria, and prosecutorial misconduct.]
A jury in New Braunfels, Texas, ordered a 75-year prison term for a Houston youth, convicted of the murder of a letter carrier, whose parents had been jailed for refusing to testify against him before a grand jury. David Port, 18, also was ordered to pay a $10,000 fine for his conviction in the June 7 slaying of Debora Sue Schatz, 23. David’s parents, Bernard and Odette Port, were jailed briefly on contempt-of-court charges after contending that the same legal protections that allow spouses not to testify against each other permitted them not to testify against their son.
The Mississippi Legislature passed a three-year, $4,400 pay raise for teachers but delayed sending the measure to the governor because of opposition by some lawmakers to anti-strike provisions. The legislators, meeting in a rare weekend session, sought a compromise before Monday, the day the Mississippi Association of Educators designated for a statewide strike.
William J. Schroeder missed his son’s wedding today, but it was a historic and happy day for the second recipient of an artificial heart, who equaled the 112 days the first recipient survived. “He’s in really good spirits today,” said Larry Hastings, clinical director at Humana Hospital Audubon in Louisville, Kentucky, where Mr. Schroeder remained today. Doctors had decided that the 90-mile trip to Jasper for the wedding of his son Terry would have been too stressful for him. Instead the hospital took the wedding party to Louisville Friday for a dress rehearsal and dinner that Mr. Schroeder attended.
A recent book by a retired U.S. Army general rejects the thesis that the Vietnam War was lost because civilian policy makers “tied the hands” of the military and refused to “go all out.” He says that senior officers must share the “onus of failure.” “The 25 Year War,” written by General Bruce Palmer, says that the senior officers “apparently did not clearly and unequivocally tell the President and the Secretary of Defense that the strategy was fatally flawed and that U.S. objectives were not achievable unless the strategy was changed.” General Palmer, a former Army Vice Chief of Staff and a corps commander in Vietnam, is also critical of purely military policies and shortcomings, saying the Army should have insisted on a voice in senior promotions in the South Vietnamese Army in order to create professionally competent partners who could pacify their own country.
A worker in a South Connellsville, Pennsylvania glass factory, “furious” at being suspended today, returned to the plant and shot five supervisors, killing four of them, before he shot himself to death, the authorities said. The man, Mansel (Sonny) Hammett of nearby Dunbar, was an employee of the Anchor Glass Container Company in the Fayette County town, 50 miles from Pittsburgh, the police said. Phillip Halfhill, of Mount Braddock, a plant worker, said Mr. Hammett was reprimanded for talking to his wife, who also worked at the plant. “He got furious over that and so they took him into the office and suspended him,” Mr. Halfhill said. The dead were Donald Abbott, Mr. Hammett’s shift foreman; John Coligan, quality control supervisor; and Ralph Tamaro and Paul Gabelt, both department managers.
A Massachusetts man was charged with vehicular homicide today after his 3-year-old son, who was not wearing a seat belt, died in a car crash, the police said. The man, Kevin McNulty, 24, of North Dartmouth, was charged with passing a red light and failing to keep his son, Kyle, secure with a seat belt, the police said. State law requires children under 5 to be secured with a seatbelt while riding in a car. Mr. McNulty’s car collided with one driven by David Souza of New Bedford, who suffered minor injuries.
More than 1 million spectators jammed New York’s 5th Avenue for the world’s oldest and largest St. Patrick’s Day parade, which stepped off a day early this year to avoid any conflict with the Roman Catholic Church over a Sunday event. However, the selection of Peter King, Nassau County comptroller and an active IRA supporter, as grand marshal prompted the Irish government to boycott the event. Thousands viewed a parade in Chicago, which continued a civic tradition by dumping green dye into the Chicago River.
Massachusetts courts have given the state Attorney General’s office access to a psychiatrist’s notes of patient sessions in connection with an investigation of Medicaid fraud, breaching one of the most protected physician-patient relationships. Some of the notes are now in the open court file, something legal experts say they cannot remember happening in any other case.
Members of a retail clerks’ union overwhelmingly approved a new three-year contract today, ending a walkout by 5,000 Oregon supermarket workers less than 24 hours after it began. A tentative agreement reached overnight in telephone negotiations among union leaders and supermarket executives was approved by retail clerks of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 1092. Union members accepted a two-year wage freeze, with a wage increase of 35 cents an hour in the third year for journeymen, who now earn $10.70 an hour.
Denny McLain, winner of the American League Cy Young Award in 1968, is convicted of racketeering, extortion, and cocaine possession in Tampa, Florida. McLain will serve 29 months of a 23-year sentence before an appeals court overturns the decision.
Born:
David Nixon, NFL linebacker (Oakland Raiders, Houston Texans, St. Louis Rams), in College Station, Texas.
Colin O’Brady, American athlete and adventurer, first to cross Antarctica solo unassisted, in Olympia, Washington.
Nicole Trunfio, Australian supermodel, in Merredin, Australia.
Died:
Eddie Shore, 82, Canadian ice hockey player and NHL hall of famer (Boston Bruins), of a lung infection.
Jean Purdy, 39, British embryologist and nurse (pioneer in developing IVF), from melanoma.
Roger Sessions, 88, American Pulitzer Prize winning composer (Concerto for Orchestra; The Black Maskers), musicologist, and educator (Princeton, 1936-45, 53-65; Berkeley, 1945-53).
History Diaries 