The killing of an Army major, Arthur D. Nicholson Jr., 37, by a Soviet sentry in East Germany last night was “totally unjustified,” the United States said. The United States Army major on a reconnaissance mission in East Germany was fatally shot yesterday by a Soviet guard near a Soviet military installation, American officials announced today. The Soviet Union asserted that the officer had been in a prohibited area and had been shot after he disregarded warnings to halt. The United States rejected the Soviet account, calling the shooting “totally unjustified.” Richard R. Burt, Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, said in a statement in Washington that the major and his partner, a sergeant, had been fired on without warning and that the officer’s death was tantamount to “murder.” Soviet liaison men conduct similar missions in West Germany. Both sides have long accepted what amounts to sanctioned espionage in the two Germanys.
Western diplomats said Major Nicholson’s killing was the most serious incident in the 38-year history of the liaison missions. A year ago, a soldier attached to the French mission was killed near Halle when his car was rammed head-on by a heavy-duty East German military truck. American officers attached to the secret mission, and their British and French counterparts, often report unpleasant confrontations with Soviet and East German units, including car rammings and short detentions. In Washington, Larry Speakes, the White House spokesman, called the shooting “unwarranted and unjustified.” In Bonn, American diplomats said the United States Mission in West Berlin had lodged what one called “a strong protest” with the Soviet Embassy in East Berlin. Several American officials familiar with the case said Major Nicholson was not in a restricted area when he was shot.
In Washington, however, a Soviet diplomat, Vladimir M. Kulagin, issued a statement saying the American officer had been caught “red-handed” photographing Soviet military equipment in a restricted area near Schwerin. The Soviet diplomat said the American, wearing a camouflage uniform, failed to heed the warning shot and was killed while trying to flee. Mr. Kulagin said the American’s driver was apprehended in their vehicle nearby. According to another American, the Russians kept Major Nicholson’s body for a day, turning it over at 4:30 P.M. today to the white stucco American Mission in Potsdam. This afternoon an American military ambulance brought the body across the Glienicke bridge to nearby West Berlin.
President Reagan said today that the issue of American concern about Soviet violations of past arms agreements was “a subject that would very definitely come up in a summit meeting” with Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, possibly this fall. Commenting that Soviet leaders have sometimes attended the opening of the United Nations General Assembly in September, the President said that September was agreeable to him but that the timing of a meeting “depends on Mr. Gorbachev.” “If that is convenient for him,” Mr. Reagan said, “I certainly wouldn’t see any reason why that wouldn’t be for us.” A report from Moscow last Friday quoted Finland’s Prime Minister, Kalevi Sorsa, as saying, after a meeting with Mr. Gorbachev, that prospects for a September meeting looked promising. However, in talks here today with Vice President Bush, Secretary of State George P. Shultz and other high officials, Mr. Sorsa brought no specific word of an agreement by Mr. Gorbachev to a meeting or word on its timing, American officials said.
A drive on Soviet corruption, sloth and inefficiency has been stepped up by Mikhail S. Gorbachev in the two weeks since he took power as the Soviet leader. He seems intent on confirming his advance image as a young man on the move, eager to press on with the campaign begun by his mentor, Yuri V. Andropov.
A Shultz-Walters conflict has arisen, raising doubts about whether the newly appointed chief American delegate to the United Nations will accept the post, according to Administration officials. The dispute arose over Secretary of State George P. Shultz’s opposition to efforts to make the incoming envoy, Lieutenant General Vernon A. Waters, a member of the White House National Security Council. Although Larry Speakes, the White House spokesman, said President Reagan valued General Walters’s “expertise and in-depth knowledge of foreign policy,” Administration officials made it plain that Mr. Reagan agreed with Mr. Shultz’s opposition to making him a member of the White House National Security Council. The departing United Nations delegate, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, is on the council.
Two more Westerners disappeared in Lebanon, bringing to eight the number of Westerners who have been abducted there in 12 days. A British journalist working for a United Nations agency was kidnapped by unidentified gunmen just outside Beirut, and a French official working in the northern port city of Tripoli was reported missing and feared kidnapped.
The United States and Israel agreed to cooperate more closely in the search for Josef Mengele, the Auschwitz doctor who is the most wanted Nazi war criminal still at large, the Israel Justice Ministry announced. Neal Sher, head of the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations, was quoted as saying that the U.S. Marshals Service, a unit used to track down escaped criminals, is among American agencies being used in the effort to capture the man believed responsible for the deaths of 400,000 people in the concentration camp’s gas chambers. Mengele fled to South America at the end of World War II.
Israel will allow the U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty to broadcast to Eastern Europe from a transmitter in Israel, officials of the two countries said. The two agencies will have access to a Voice of America transmitter that will be built in Israel in an effort to overcome Soviet jamming, the officials said. Israel radio is also expected to have access to the transmitter for its own Russian-language broadcasts to Soviet Jews.
Iraq used lethal chemical arms in repelling Iran’s latest offensive along the southern sector, Reagan Administration officials said. Iran flew purported victims of the latest attacks to Austria and West Germany, where some doctors were quoted as having said that the wounded men showed signs of having been under attack by mustard gas. Iraq was publicly condemned by the United States in March 1984 for using poison gas against Iran. But since then, there had not been any new reports until Iran accused Iraq last week of having resumed use of poison gas.
The main Sikh religious council called today for a mass struggle for restoration of civil liberties and withdrawal of the Indian Army from Punjab state, the main home of the country’s Sikh minority. It said statewide agitation would begin April 13, the harvest festival of Baisakhi. In New Delhi, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s Government introduced a motion in Parliament seeking extension of direct federal rule in Punjab for six more months. It also introduced a bill to toughen a preventive detention law. “The Government has unleashed untold repression in Punjab since the army attack on the Golden Temple last June,” the Sikh council said in a resolution. “The time has come to restore the lost honor of the Sikhs.”
The Indian Government expressed “serious concern” today over the defection to the United States of a Soviet diplomat based here and urged Washington to give full details of the case. Khursheed Alam Khan, the Minister of State for External Affairs, told Parliament that investigations were continuing into “how an official of the Soviet Embassy left India clandestinely.” Mr. Khan said the American Embassy here confirmed Sunday that the diplomat, Igor Gezha, “had sought and been granted political asylum by the U. S. Government at a point outside India.” The defection, along with the assassination by an unknown gunman of another Soviet Embassy official last Thursday, has caused considerable embarrassment to the Indian Government. One reason cited is that extensive police searches and investigations turned up nothing in either case.
South Korea signaled its willingness today to return a Chinese naval boat and crew that had drifted into its waters, but officials in Seoul appeared to be insisting first on a statement of contrition from Peking. The Seoul Government indicated its desire to end the incident speedily by announcing this morning that all 13 surviving members of the torpedo boat’s crew, now in South Korean custody, had said they wished to return home. Officials in Seoul reinforced this statement by offering a detailed account of a shooting rampage aboard the vessel that, they said, had resulted from personal grudges and not from political reasons. Six Chinese crew members were killed and two were wounded on the boat last Friday in a shootout that foreign diplomats in Seoul initially thought might have been a mutiny by would-be defectors.
A West German was sentenced in Toronto to 15 months in jail for publishing anti-Jewish propaganda in a booklet claiming that accounts of the Nazi Holocaust are a hoax. Ernst Zundel, 46, who had been free on bail since being convicted February 28 of violating Canada’s so-called hate law, was also placed on three years’ probation and prohibited from publishing anything during that time about the Holocaust. Zundel, who has lived in Canada since 1958, claimed in his booklet that accounts of the Nazi attempt to exterminate Europe’s Jews were really a Zionist conspiracy designed to extract reparations from Germany.
Retail beer stores in the Canadian province of Ontario reopened, ending a month-long shutdown caused by a labor dispute. Brewers’ Warehousing Co. Ltd., which operates the stores, and the province’s three biggest breweries — Molson, Labatt and Carling — ended a lockout of nearly 4,000 workers after the 11th of 12 union locals ratified a three-year contract. The lockout continues at a Labatt’s plant in London, where the local rejected the contract. The members will vote on it again today.
Nicaragua urged the InterAmerican Development Bank to reject a U.S. bid to block a Nicaraguan farm loan, charging that U.S. “financial blackmail” would undermine the bank’s neutrality. In a speech to the bank’s annual conference in Vienna, Joaquin Cuadra Chamorro, president of Nicaragua’s Central Bank, asked that the $58.4-million loan for private farmers be put to a vote by the group’s executive directorate “without delay.” However, no formal decision on the loan is expected in Vienna. Secretary of State George P. Shultz has warned that U.S. contributions to the bank might be withheld unless the loan is deferred.
Leftist guerrillas in El Salvador have carried out a series of political assassinations and several attacks on municipal buildings as El Salvador prepares for national legislative and local elections next Sunday. The rebels have taken responsibility for six political killings in recent weeks and are strongly suspected of shooting six other rightist political figures in the last two months, including several members of the extreme conservative National Republican Alliance. Rebel units have also burned 11 mayor’s offices and 7 telephone company buildings in the period before the elections.
Leaders of Namibia’s moderate political parties called for an interim government in the disputed territory and said that South African President Pieter W. Botha has promised to respond to their proposals next month. A six-man delegation met with Botha in Cape Town, urging interim rule to replace the South African-appointed administrator general, in anticipation of full independence for the territory. The delegation did not include the black nationalist South-West Africa People’s Organization, which has waged a long military struggle to end South African rule.
A leading cleric who is a prominent foe of white minority rule in South Africa was turned back at gunpoint by the police today when he sought to enter the township here where at least 19 black people were shot by the police last week. A policeman wielding a shotgun gave the cleric, the Rev. Allan Boesak, president of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, a count of 10 to pull back 200 yards from the entrance of the township, called Langa. Last Thursday, it was the scene of the worst single mass shootings by the police since the Sharpeville massacre 25 years earlier. A second prominent cleric, the Rev. Beyers Naude, General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches, said he was also turned back by heavily armed police at nearby Kwanobuhle Township.
Debate on the MX missile began in the House, as President Reagan pressed members of Congress to send a clear message to Soviet arms negotiators in Geneva. Vote counters on both sides said the outcome was likely to be very close when the House votes Tuesday. But the lobbying efforts of Max M. Kampelman, the chief negotiator at the Geneva arms talks with the Soviet Union, seemed to be tipping the balance in favor of the Administration. Mr. Kampelman, who flew back from Europe over the weekend, met with small groups of lawmakers in the day on Capitol Hill and then joined the President in addressing a larger gathering at the White House late this afternoon.
In the back rooms of Capitol Hill supporters and opponents of the weapon wrestled for the few remaining uncommitted votes. Silvio O. Conte, an opponent of the MX, might have lost an agricultural service office for his Congressional district. But Representative Stephen L. Neal, an MX backer, got the White House to withdraw from a Republican campaign against House Democrats. And Representative Harold Rogers, another MX supporter, got the Reagan Administration to take note of his tobacco problem. These were the kinds of political pressures and rewards facing members of the House of Representatives as it began debate today on the Administration’s request for 21 new MX missiles. With both sides wrestling for the few remaining uncommitted votes, vote counters said the outcome was likely to be very close when the full House votes on Tuesday.
Over objections from the White House, a military spending measure that would substantially cut President Reagan’s proposals is being written by the Senate Armed Services Committee. Under a timetable proposed by the committee’s Republican staff, the panel would complete work next week on three versions of a bill authorizing military programs for the fiscal year 1986. The three versions, according to Congressional sources, include one that would freeze military spending at current levels, with an allowance for inflation, and others that would provide for additional spending increases of 3 percent and 4 percent.
Former Interior Secretary James G. Watt’s controversial 1983 decision to allow strip mining in national parks was improperly adopted and cannot be enforced, a federal judge said in Washington. U.S. District Judge Thomas Flannery said the Interior Department erred in ordering the rule into effect without allowing time for public comment. He sent the matter back to the department, now headed by Secretary Donald P. Hodel, with instructions that proper procedure be followed if the strip-mining proposal is pursued.
The Environmental Protection Agency ordered new rules to give refiners more flexibility in meeting limitations on lead content in gasoline. The rules will not affect overall levels of lead usage, which are being reduced under a policy change announced earlier this month, the agency said. Meanwhile, compliance with anti-pollution laws has not caused a significant decline in industrial productivity in the United States, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said in a study.
Whether gerrymandering violates the Constitution will be decided by the Supreme Court. The Court accepted an appeal by the state of Indiana, where a Republican- sponsored redrawing of districts for the state’s General Assembly was declared unconstitutional by a special three-judge Federal District Court. The district court ruled in a suit brought by the state’s Democratic organization. It found that while the redistricting plan met the constitutional requirement of one person, one vote, it violated the right of a distinct political group, Democrats, to equal protection of the laws.
A grand jury agreed to give Bernhard H. Goetz until today to testify about why he shot four teen-agers on a subway, and his lawyer said he will try to counter an “overzealous presentation” from the prosecutor. “Mr. Goetz will indicate to the grand jury that he was a victim and acted to protect himself from a clear and present danger to his person,” said defense lawyer Barry Slotnick. Goetz, 37, a self-employed electronics engineer, is charged with shooting the four on a subway train on December 22. Goetz said the teen-agers were trying to rob him.
Opening arguments were heard this afternoon in a lawsuit stemming from the fatal shootings six years ago in Greensboro of five anti-Klan demonstrators. Those injured in the shooting and the families of the dead filed the suit in 1980 after six Ku Klux Klansmen and American Nazis were acquitted of state charges that they murdered the demonstrators, members of the Communist Workers Party. The suit named 61 defendants included Klansmen and Nazis, the Greensboro police, the City of Greensboro and several agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. The plaintiffs are seeking a total of $48 million in damages.
The Federal Aviation Administration said it will seek to reduce flight delays this summer — starting April 28 with Daylight Saving Time — by using new air traffic procedures that allow more precise control of aircraft flow and by persuading airlines not to bunch flights during peak travel periods. Many of the new traffic flow procedures already have been put into effect, while others, including new flow patterns for some air traffic flying in and out of the New York City area, will be imposed beginning next month, FAA officials said. FAA Administrator Donald Engen told the airlines about the plans earlier this month.
Some of the leaders of the Transport Workers Union recommended yesterday that the 5,800 striking workers accept the tentative agreement reached last Saturday with Pan American World Airways, saying rejection could lead to the loss of many jobs. Ratification was urged in a letter mailed to the rank and file yesterday by William Lindner, the president of the union, John J. Kerrigan, the director of the Air Transport division, and Mike Bakalo and George Roberts, both international vice presidents. The membership is to vote on the tentative accord today and tomorrow. But other leaders have said the overwhelming sentiment in Local 504 in Queens, with 4,000 Pan Am Workers, was to recommend rejection.
Two external, electric blood pumps kept a 60-year-old patient alive for five days while the man’s stopped heart healed itself and resumed beating, a surgeon reported. Dr. George Magovern, director of surgery of Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh, said unlike previous uses of double pumps, his technique allowed the patient to continue using his own lungs. “We’re not trying to break any world-shaking … scientific news,” Magovern said at a news conference. But he added his team was “extending and modifying” a technique used by many surgeons.
Teachers returned to work in Michigan City, Indiana, for the first time in more than a month, ending a strike that disrupted high school classes and left 17 schools staffed by substitute teachers. Teachers walked out February 17 after negotiators for their union and the school board failed to reach agreement on a new contract.
Tight security surrounding the Arkansas State’s teacher testing program may have failed, enabling a copy of the test to be stolen and sold for up to $1,000 a copy, investigators said today. Col. Tommy Goodwin, director of the Arkansas State Police, said the incident would be investigated. The Arkansas Legislature approved the testing program in 1983 to accompany a series of school reforms.
$23 million of expense claims made against government contracts from 1979 to 1982 will be dropped by the General Dynamics Corporation, it announced. The sum is about one-third of its charges that are challenged by Federal auditors.
A survey of toxic chemicals being emitted into the nation’s air has found far higher levels of hazardous materials and at many more locations than was suspected, according to a Congressional survey. The systematic survey of 80 major chemical companies found thousands of tons of cancer agents and other very hazardous materials being released from hundreds of factories.
A judge ruled today that an Illinois newspaper and one of its former writers libeled a county official in an editorial that accused the official of lying. Associate Judge Roger Scrivner ordered Richard Hargraves and Capital Cities Communications Inc., the owner of The Belleville News-Democrat, to pay $450,000 in damages to the St. Clair County board chairman, Jerry Costello, and $600,000 in punitive damages. Mr. Hargraves was jailed last summer for refusing to disclose his sources. An editorial by Mr. Hargraves, printed on December 31, 1980, accused Mr. Costello of lying and breaking a campaign promise to oppose new taxes unless voters first approved them. Mr. Costello contended he had lobbied against the tax increase. The newspaper and Mr. Hargraves, who now works for The St. Louis Globe- Democrat, plan to appeal the case.
Safeguards for wilderness areas against development will be pressed by the new Interior Secretary, Donald P. Hodel, an aide said. As a result, the department has decided to withdraw a rule it made final only last month that would have eased conditions under which mineral rights could be exercised in the areas.
George London died at his home in Armonk, New York, at the age of 64. The distinguished singing career of the American bass-baritone was cut short by illness in 1967.
An Illinois judge rules that state and city laws which effectively ban night baseball at Chicago’s Wrigley Field are constitutional. After being forced to give up a home game during the 1984 National League Championship Series, and threatened with playing future post-season games at another stadium entirely in order to accommodate network television’s prime-time schedules, the Cubs had sued to overturn the laws.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1259.94 (-7.51)
[Ed: Holy Hell she was pretty.]
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