Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, urged NATO today to stop its deployment of Pershing 2 and cruise missiles in Europe in order to hasten an agreement at the Geneva arms talks. In return, he said, the Kremlin could freeze Soviet “countermeasures.” The remarks, reported by the official Soviet press agency Tass, were made to a visiting Socialist delegation and were Mr. Gorbachev’s most detailed comments on arms control since he became Communist Party leader March 11. But two Western arms-control experts interviewed in Moscow said they saw nothing new in the statement.
Mr. Gorbachev did not specify the countermeasures to which he was referring. But Moscow has said it is basing SS-21, SS-22 and SS-23 tactical nuclear missiles in East Germany and Czechoslovakia and increasing the nuclear arsenal of submarines off the United States in response to the installation of Pershing 2 and cruise missiles by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Western Europe. NATO has said its missiles are intended to counter the Soviet Union’s SS- 20 medium-range missiles.
Britain moved to keep AIDS patients in hospitals as a last resort if they are considered a public health risk. Government regulations gave British magistrates broad authority to protect the public from the spread of AIDS, including in some circumstances the power to order a person to be taken to a hospital and kept there if the local authorities consider him a risk to others. The local authorities may also prevent relatives of a person who has died of the disorder, acquired immune deficiency syndrome, from taking possession of the body. The authorities are required to take “all reasonably practical steps” to prevent people coming near or into contact with the body of a person who has died of AIDS. These are believed to be the first government restrictions on the movements of AIDS patients. In announcing these measures, Kenneth Clarke, the Health Minister, stressed Thursday that the new powers would be used only as a last resort.
France’s vice consul was kidnapped in West Beirut. A French Embassy official and his daughter were reported missing and feared kidnapped. The Islamic Holy War organization claimed responsibility for the abduction of the vice consul, Marcel Fontaine, and the disappearance of the embassy protocol officer, Marcel Carton, and his 34-year-old daughter, Danielle Perez, a secretary at the embassy. The 42-year-old vice consul, who has worked in Beirut for the last two years, was seized by three unidentified gunmen when he stopped his car on a street behind the French Embassy to buy newspapers, witnesses said. The gunmen forced him into a blue automobile and drove off, according to the witnesses.
Israeli troops were reported to have raided another Shiite village in southern Lebanon today, rounding up 300 people for questioning. According to information from United Nations officials and local radio stations, one Lebanese man was killed and another was wounded. Private radio stations in Beirut said the storming of the village, Qlaile, came after an attack in the vicinity by Lebanese guerrillas against an Israeli patrol. A communiqué issued by the Lebanese National Resistance Front said several Israeli soldiers were killed and wounded in the attack. An Israeli Army spokesman made no mention of it. The reported action came 24 hours after a large Israeli force stormed Shiite villages in the Sidon area and killed 21 people. The Lebanese state radio said the number of dead in nine villages had risen to 30 after several bodies were recovered from under the debris of houses destroyed by the Israelis. Timur Goksel, the spokesman for the United Nations force in the south, said 70 Israeli soldiers entered the village of Qlaile today and that the casualties occurred in a shooting incident.
The chief objective of Israel’s new aggressive military policy in southern Lebanon, military analysts in Jerusalem say, is to make Israel’s northern border secure. In adopting what has been called an “offensive defense,” the analysts say, Israel has finally turned its back on the idea of improving its security by installing a more stable or sympathetic government to the north. Instead, they say, the idea now is to make Galilee secure by sending a message to the Lebanese about what life will be like in the future if there are attacks on northern Israeli settlements from southern Lebanon.
Prime Minister Shimon Peres of Israel yesterday defended the judgment of an Israeli tank crew in southern Lebanon whose shellfire killed a cameraman and a soundman employed by CBS News. In a written reply to a protest lodged hours after the incident by Edward M. Joyce, the president of CBS News, Mr. Peres said it appeared that the camera crew “took a position in the midst of a group of armed men who were engaged in active hostility against the I.D.F.” The tank crew, Mr. Peres added, “did not deviate from the strict orders concerning the protection of innocent bystanders.” Mr. Joyce said later that he was “not encouraged” by Mr. Peres’s response. “CBS News,” he said, “is grateful for your expression of sorrow at the death of our camera crew in Lebanon, but is disappointed that you chose to ignore the testimony of eyewitness journalists on the scene who made it clear that the group fired upon were not armed or engaged in hostilities, that the cameras as well as the press markings on the cars were in clear view of the tank crew and that the Israeli attack was entirely unprovoked.”
Secretary of State George P. Shultz is considering meeting with the Foreign Ministers of Egypt and Jordan to discuss the makeup of an Arab delegation to negotiate peace with Israel, Reagan Administration officials said today. Egypt supports such a meeting, but the Jordanians are resisting the idea because they say they prefer the first step be an American invitation to a Jordanian- Palestinian delegation. Jordan says Washington and the Palestine Liberation Organization need to start talking. Administration officials say Mr. Shultz has discussed the idea with President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, who suggested the meeting as a way to avoid the Palestinian issue, and with Foreign Minister Tahir al-Masri of Jordan, who has been in Washington this week. The officials said Richard W. Murphy Jr., Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs, would pursue the question of what to do next when he goes to the Middle East in the next two weeks.
The United States has nearly finished building installations in Oman, Somalia and Kenya for use by the Rapid Deployment Force in the event of a crisis in the Persian Gulf, according to the Pentagon. Omani sites at Masira, an island off the coast in the Arabian Sea, and at Thamarit will be able to support United States tactical operations into the gulf area when completed, Major General David Watts of the Army told a House Appropriations Committee panel on Thursday.
Indian police raided the homes of Afghan and Iranian refugees today, detaining 14 people and questioning hundreds of others in a hunt for the killers of a Soviet official. A spokesman for Afghan refugees in New Delhi said several of those detained were believed to have links with Muslim guerrillas fighting Soviet forces in Afghanistan. The spokesman also said the slaying Thursday of Valentin Khitrichenko, 48 years old, by two men near the Soviet Embassy coincided with a day marked by the city’s 6,000 Afghan refugees to show support for the rebels. The police are also investigating a possible link between Mr. Khitrichenko’s slaying and the disappearance Sunday of Igor Gezha, a Soviet official here, a police spokesman said.
A Chinese military vessel whose crew apparently mutinied entered South Korean waters today and was taken into port, according to the American Embassy in Seoul. No hostilities were reported between the Chinese ship and South Korean vessels. Six of the 18 Chinese crew members were killed in the mutiny and three were wounded, according to Harry Dunlop, political counselor of the American Embassy. Mr. Dunlop said he did not know whether any crew members had requested political asylum in South Korea. A Government source in Seoul said that the vessel had been towed into the port of Kunsan and that the crew had sought asylum, Reuters reported from Seoul.
The top law enforcement officials of the United States and Mexico agreed today to meet this summer to discuss the drug trafficking problems that have caused friction between the two nations. The two officials, Attorneys General Edwin Meese 3d and Sergio Garcia Ramirez, said in a joint statement that they had had “positive and fruitful” talks about the problem, which was dramatized by the recent abduction and slaying of a United States drug agent in Mexico.
Norman Saunders resigned today as Chief Minister of the Turks and Caicos Islands, 17 days after his arrest in Miami on charges of conspiring to smuggle drugs into the United States. Governor General Christopher J. Turner announced the resignation and said “all other ministers and the parliamentary secretaries have under the Constitution ceased to hold office as such” in the British protectorate. The Governor General said the islands’ Legislative Council would meet Wednesday to chose a new Chief Minister. He said Mr. Saunders remained a member of the Legislative Council.
When Konstantin U. Chernenko died last week, the Nicaraguan Government declared three days of national mourning for the Soviet leader. To sorrowful strains of Chopin and Tchaikovsky, nightly news broadcasts praised “Comrade Chernenko” as a “great statesman and untiring fighter for the cause of world peace and solidarity.” For some Nicaraguans and many foreigners, the tributes to the Soviet leader were one more sign of the Government’s eagerness to align itself with the practices and the values of the Eastern bloc. “It was just the sort of thing you would see in Moscow,” said a diplomat with experience in Communist capitals.
Heavy fighting has broken out between Ethiopian Government troops and rebels in parts of the Tigre and Wallo regions, according to Western diplomats and relief officials. The diplomats say tanks, artillery and air support are involved in what is believed to be a Government offensive to clear rebels from bases near the country’s main north-south highway. Clashes have been reported along more than 100 miles of the route between the cities of Makale and Kobo.
The deaths of 18 black South Africans, and the wounding of nearly 40 more, who were fired on by the police Thursday, will be investigated by a judicial panel ordered by the Government. The police say the dead and wounded were among 4,000 people walking to a funeral. Louis Le Grange, Minister of Law and Order, said the crowd had attacked the police with stones, sticks and gasoline bombs, but a white opposition legislator, Helen Suzman, said there was no evidence of incendiary devices among the crowd. The shooting was said to be the worst police attack on blacks since the Sharpeville massacre of March 21, 1960, in which 69 blacks were killed.
The leader of the Congressional Black Caucus criticized President Reagan today for his suggestion that rioting by blacks was at least partly responsible for the police slayings of 18 [Ed: actually 35] black people in South Africa on Thursday. The matter became an embarrassment for some Administration officials because Mr. Reagan and Secretary of State George P. Shultz made strikingly different statements about the shootings on Thursday. White House and State Department officials made no effort to reconcile the differences today. Representative Mickey Leland, Democrat of Texas, the head of the caucus, said at a news conference that “I was not proud of my President last night.”
A special budget panel was approved by the Reagan Administration and Senate Republican leaders to resolve the major differences over the budget between the Reagan Administration and Senate Republican leaders. President Reagan and the Republicans agreed that the panel would include four or five Administration representatives and a small group of Republican senators. The first meeting might be held Tuesday. The group set up today is the first significant move by the White House and the Senate Republican leadership to try to work out major differences over the military budget, sharp cuts in domestic programs proposed by the President and elimination for one year of the cost- of-living increase in Social Security benefits. Larry Speakes, the White House spokesman, said, “I think what it begins is an effort to look at the differences in the two budgets and to try to seek some way to arrive at an accommodation and then present it to the President to see if it’s any way acceptable to him.”
President Reagan attends a meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff to receive reports on the state of each branch of the military.
President Reagan attends a working lunch with Republican Senators to discuss the 1986 Budget.
A rise in the Consumer Price Index of three-tenths of a percentage point in February continued the trend of modest inflation that has kept price increases to 4 percent or less since 1981, the Labor Department said. The data, published by the Labor Department today, contradict an inflation gauge that on Thursday showed a sharp jump in the current quarter. Analysts said the new data confirmed that the Thursday report was substantially overstating the upward pressure on prices. “It looks like we are drifting along at about a 3 1/2 percent inflation rate,” commented Edward Guay, an economist at the Cigna Corporation, an insurance group. Patrick C. Jackman, a Labor Department official, said that “it’s basically the same pattern we’ve had for some time.”
Margaret M. Heckler, Secretary of Health and Human Services, said today that it was doubtful that the rate of death among black infants could be reduced enough in this decade to meet the national goal for the year 1990. It was the first acknowledgment by a Federal official that the nation might not achieve the goal, adopted in 1980 and reaffirmed by the Public Health Service every subsequent year. In 1982, the last year for which the figures are available, the infant mortality rate for blacks was 19.6 for each 1,000 live births, the Secretary said. The goal for 1990 was that no racial or ethnic group in the population should have a rate of more than 12.
Resegregation of public schools is a trend in Little Rock, Arkansas and elsewhere, as whites, encouraged by real estate speculators and political leaders, move to the suburbs. In Little Rock, the scene of a historic battle for desegregation in the 1950’s, a court order that would merge the heavily black city school district with two adjoining ones where many whites have settled is being appealed by the merger’s opponents.
Despite protests by more than 3,000 teachers that closed some schools last month, Arkansas becomes the first state in the nation Saturday to test its teachers on their competence in basic skills. Teachers who fail the 100-question examination will have as many as four chances to take it again. However, any teacher who has not passed by June 1, 1987, can never again teach in Arkansas.
The United Mine Workers yesterday announced a tentative agreement that would end strikes against a Pennsylvania coal company that refused to sign the national contract last fall. The union said a ratification vote is scheduled next week on the agreement with the National Mines Corporation, of Pittsburgh, which covers 550 union members, some of whom have been off the job since August 1. Tom Rabbitt, a member of the union’s International Executive Board, said the tentative pact included all the provisions of the union’s 1984 contract with the Bituminous Coal Operators Association as well as “greatly improved” job security. Meanwhile, in Charleston, West Virginia, Governor Arch A. Moore Jr. said that a strike against the A. T. Massey Coal Company and its subsidiaries was close to being resolved, but that some issues remained to be settled. “We’ve been given sufficient encouragement from both parties,” he said.
Veterans who are unhappy with the handling of their disability claims by the Veterans Administration cannot appeal those rulings to higher authorities, a Federal appeals court ruled today. In a 2-to-1 decision, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that Federal law did not allow families of veterans to sue over V.A. policies on benefits. The court cited a law passed by Congress that says V.A. decisions on benefits “shall be final and conclusive and no other official or any court of the United States shall have power or jurisdiction to review any such decision.” The ruling invalidates a District Court order requiring the V.A. to draw up new rules concerning disability claims for radiation exposure. Congress intentionally prohibited judicial review of such decisions, the appeals court said, to avoid court interference in the daily affairs of veterans.
One month before the filing deadline, the Internal Revenue Service had received 1984 tax returns from fewer than half the nation’s taxpayers, the agency said today. Through March 15, the latest figures available, the I.R.S. had received 45.6 million returns, down 1.8 percent from the same period a year ago. The number of returns the service has processed through the first 11 weeks of 1985 was down almost one-third from 1984, 19.6 million compared with 29 million at this point last year. The slow processing was attributed to a switch to new computers at the 10 I.R.S. regional centers. The agency says those problems should delay refund checks by four days at the most. According to the new figures, only 12.6 million returns have been certified eligible for refunds, down almost 40 percent from the same period of 1984. The filing deadline is April 15.
A group of more than 300 Franciscan friars has joined the alien sanctuary movement, promising to offer haven to Central American refugees in defiance of the law and Federal policies. “We have discovered in helping the poor that you can hand out sandwiches forever, but unless you get to the cause of the hunger, nothing is done,” said the Rev. Joe Baur, associate pastor of the Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Phoenix, who announced the decision at a news conference Thursday. Father Baur said the friars, who belong to the province of Santa Barbera, which represents Franciscan friars in Western states, want to emphasize a growing dissatisfaction with the Reagan Administration’s policies on Central American refugees. “We recognize that legal consequences may result from our action,” Father Baur said. “But we recognize that far more serious and greater consequences would be entailed if we failed to follow the call and command found in the Bible. The Federal Government contends the aliens are not political refugees and therefore are not entitled to asylum.
Clara Peller, the star of Wendy’s highly successful “Where’s the Beef?” commercials, has lost her job with the fast-food chain. Mrs. Peller was dismissed for appearing in commercials for a spaghetti sauce made by the Campbell Soup Company, said William M. Welter, executive vice president of Wendy’s International Inc. “The commercial infers that Clara found the beef at somewhere other than Wendy’s restaurants,” Mr. Welter said. “Unfortunately, Clara’s appearance in the ads makes it extremely difficult for her to serve as a credible spokesperson for our products.” Mr. Welter said the 10 commercials in which Mrs. Peller appeared for Wendy’s contributed to increases of 31 percent in annual revenues.
A passenger in a small airplane, aided by air traffic controllers and a flight instructor, made a “perfect landing” after the pilot apparently suffered a fatal heart attack, officials said today. Dean Doughty, an air traffic controller at the Greater Peoria Airport, said the single-engine Cessna 210, flying from Chicago to St. Louis, was 15 miles from the airport when the pilot called on an emergency frequency shortly before 4 PM Thursday and said he needed help.
The International Business Machines Corporation said yesterday that it now expected first-quarter profits to decline from last year’s $1.2 billion, or $1.97 a share. This would be the first drop in earnings for the company since the fourth quarter of 1981.
NASA launches Intelsat VA F-10 (aka Intelsat 510). It was the tenth of fifteen Intelsat V satellites to be launched. The Intelsat V series was constructed by Ford Aerospace, based on the Intelsat-VA satellite bus. Intelsat VA F-10 was part of an advanced series of satellites designed to provide greater telecommunications capacity for Intelsat’s global network.
Roger Gambill, a tenor with the New Kingston Trio since 1973, died on Wednesday at St. Joseph’s Hospital here after having had a heart attack on March 2. He was 42 years old and lived in Roswell, Georgia.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1267.45 (-0.77)
Born:
Mike Jenkins, German-born American NFL cornerback (Pro Bowl 2009; Dallas Cowboys, Oakland Raiders, Tampa Bay Buccaneers), in Neuenburg am Rhein, Baden-Wurttemberg, West Germany.
Kory Lichtensteiger, NFL guard and center (Denver Broncos, Washington Redskins), in Van Wert, Ohio.
Justin Masterson, MLB pitcher (All-Star, 2013; Boston Red Sox, Cleveland Indians, St. Louis Cardinals), in Kingston, Jamiaca.
James Wolk, American actor (“Mad Men”, “Watchmen”), in Farmington Hills, Michigan.
Katie Stuart, Canadian actress (“A Wrinkle in Time”, 2003), in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Died:
Roger Gambill, 42, American singer (“New Kingston Trio”).
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