Secretary of State George P. Shultz has summoned the Soviet Ambassador, Anatoly F. Dobrynin, for a meeting Saturday to discuss the shooting of an American military liaison officer in East Germany, Administration sources said tonight. Mr. Shultz plans to seek further explanation of the events of last Sunday, when Maj. Arthur D. Nicholson Jr. was shot to death by a Soviet sentry in East Germany, the sources said. “We feel that we’re owed a bettter explanation and some indication that there won’t be a reoccurrence,” one Administration source said.
President Reagan nominated Robert Blackwill, a career Foreign Service officer, today as the American representative at negotiations in Vienna on reducing nonnuclear forces in Central Europe. If confirmed by the Senate, Mr. Blackwill will succeed Maynard Glitman, who is negotiating at the American-Soviet talks in Geneva on medium-range missile forces.
General Wojciech Jaruzelski, the Polish leader, threatened a crackdown today on dissidents and supporters of the banned Solidarity union if they continue to oppose the country’s Communist system. In an address to a Communist Party conference, General Jaruzelski said his government had not taken any drastic measures against the critics. “But if our patience and good will continues to be underestimated,” he added, “we will not hesitate to take tough measures prescribed by the law.” The warning to Solidarity supporters and other critics of the government came as relations between the government and the Roman Catholic Church were strained and underground Solidarity leaders called for demonstrations on Monday to protest food price increases.
A new President of Greece was elected in a special session of Parliament. He is Christos Sartzetakis, a 56- year-old Supreme Court Justice who was the candidate of the governing Socialist Party. Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou, leaving for Brussels to attend a Common Market meeting, issued a statement praising the election of Christos Sartzetakis as a “great victory for democracy.” He narrowly won, however, with the exact minimum of votes in the third round of balloting. The opposition attacked the election, asserting that it was invalid.
Western European leaders of the Common Market began crucial negotiations here Friday night with Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou of Greece, who has threatened to veto the entry of Spain and Portugal into the market next year. After late-night talks with Mr. Papandreou, the leaders said early today that he stuck by his vow to block the two countries unless the other market members gave Greece nearly $2 billion in special agricultural aid. Greece has said it needs the money to offset the effects on its economy of increased competition from Spanish and Portuguese products when those nations join the market, formally called the European Economic Community. The European leaders gathered in Brussels on Friday afternoon, just hours after their foreign ministers worked out terms to make Spain and Portugal the 11th and 12th members of the trading group. It was thought that the ministers’ accord had brought an end to several years of negotiations over the entry of the two nations.
The news that Spain had come to terms on joining the Common Market was joyously greeted at almost all levels of Spanish society today. The agreement, reached early today in Brussels, though still to be signed and ratified, was seen as a historic watershed integrating Spain into Western Europe and consolidating Spanish democracy. Despite what are sure to be some economically painful transition costs, business, labor and political leaders of all stripes joined together, often in toasts with Spanish wine, to celebrate what they called the end of nearly 400 years of isolation behind the Pyrenees. And the Prime Minister, Felipe Gonzalez, in briefing leaders of all the parliamentary groups today, pointedly noted that it was fine Spanish wine they were drinking. After 23 years of efforts and 8 years of arduous negotiations in this latest attempt to join the European Economic Community, wine production was one of the last hurdles overcome.
About 20 people were wounded tonight when a bomb exploded in a central Paris theater showing Jewish films, the police said. Witnesses at the Rivoli Beaubourg cinema said six people were seriously hurt by the bomb, which had been hidden under a row of seats. Mayor Jacques Chirac, who rushed to the scene from his nearby residence, was quoted on television as calling the blast “a blind, racist attack.” Mr. Chirac, the leader of the neo-Gaullist opposition, said it was more necessary than ever to fight terrorism.
Ten days of clashes between Christian and Muslim forces around Sidon in southern Lebanon widened today to involve Palestinians in two refugee camps in that area. The latest fighting broke out between Christian militiamen in the village of Mieh Mieh and Palestinians in a neighboring camp of the same name, local radio stations reported.
Japan must buy more U.S. goods or face retaliatory protection legislation, a senior White House official said. According to the official, President Reagan plans to tell Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone that he will be unable to prevent Congress from enacting protectionist legislation if Japan does not open its markets to American products. The official said Mr. Reagan will tell Mr. Nakasone that Congress will retaliate against Japan’s import curbs at a private meeting during the Bonn economic summit meeting in May. The official said Mr. Reagan decided on such an approach after a White House meeting today in which he was told that the Congress was becoming “exasperated” and that “something had to give.”
Two Canadian C-130 Hercules transport planes collided in midair over the northern outskirts of Edmonton this evening and 10 crew members were presumed dead, a military spokesman said today. Col. Peter DeTracey, commander of Canadian Forces Base Namao, told reporters that there were no known survivors of the crash.
The threat of Nicaragua’s army to other Central American countries has become a central issue in the debate over renewed United States financing for the rebels fighting to topple the Government. The Administration says the army is far larger than the others in Central America and is poised to attack its neighbors. But Democrats in Congress and some Administration officials say they believe the White House has overstated its case. At the same time, however, even many of the Administration’s critics agree with two of President Reagan’s other major concerns about Nicaragua: that many Sandinista leaders are Marxist-Leninists and that they have aided El Salvador’s leftist guerrillas. Mr. Reagan has accused the Nicaraguans of building “a war machine” that “dwarfs the forces of all their neighbors combined.”
El Salvador’s President Jose Napoleon Duarte said today that he would resume peace talks with leftist rebels regardless of the outcome of elections on Sunday. After two rounds in October and November, the peace talks were indefinitely suspended even though the guerrillas issued statements that they were eager to continue. Mr. Duarte said at a news conference today that he was ready to “open the door to dialogue.” Mr. Duarte’s statement came as guerrilla activity increased. The armed forces went on maximum alert and an order was issued Thursday night canceling all leaves until after the elections, in which 262 mayors and a 60-seat assembly are to be selected.
A growing political crisis took a new turn today, with the Honduran Congress moving to defy President Roberto Suazo Cordova. On Thursday night, the Congress voted to dismiss five Supreme Court justices who had been accused of bending electoral laws to favor the President’s faction of the governing Liberal Party. Today, the Congress openly defied Dr. Suazo Cordova and swore in a new Supreme Court president and four justices.
The Sudan dispersed rioters in Khartoum, the capital, who had protested steep price increases for food and other staples. Thousands of people were taken by truck out of the city. More than 2,000 others reportedly were detained as part of a plan to rid Khartoum of large numbers of unemployed Sudanese suspected of joining the riots.The disturbances followed steep price increases for bread and other staples and gasoline. The austerity measures were put into effect after President Gaafar al-Nimeiry came under pressure from the United States and other foreign creditors.
Fourteen Ghanaian children were killed Thursday when they fell down a 300-foot unused well in a school playground, the Ghana News Agency reported today.
South Africa outlawed meetings by a major nonparliamentary opposition group and 28 other organizations as its faced a crisis of unrest in its black townships. The bans, which affect the troubled Eastern Cape region and areas near Johannesburg, represent virtually a blanket prohibition on gatherings where the authorities are likely to be criticized. The key group affected by the government order is the United Democratic Front. South African commentators said the order was almost certain to enhance the group’s status and credibility among opponents of white minority rule, seeming to validate its claim to be a champion of the voteless majority against the authorities. The front says it has a following of 1.5 million people from 600 church, community, student and union groups.The ban is to remain in effect for three months.
Behind the Reagan Administration’s hard-won victory on the MX missile this week was mounting evidence of trouble for the Pentagon’s military program. By framing the MX vote as a test of national resolve at the outset of arms control talks in Geneva, the Administration held at bay a number of forces that threaten not only the future production of the MX but other weapons as well. These forces include the pressures of the budget, partisan politics and skepticism about the Defense Department’s military aims. Even as the House voted Thursday to release $1.5 billion for 21 more MX missiles, those forces were moving back with renewed strength.
A line from the movie “Star Wars” was quoted by President Reagan in a speech at the National Space Club in Washington to rebut critics of his proposed space-based antimissile defense. He also renewed his call for research on the proposal, and said that the antimissile plan was a “moral option” that did not violate any treaty with the Soviet Union and could improve the chances for an arms control agreement in Geneva. Mr. Reagan said in a speech to the National Space Club, “but it isn’t about war, it’s about peace. It isn’t about retaliation, it’s about prevention. It isn’t about fear, it’s about hope, and in that struggle, if you will pardon my stealing a film line, the force is with us.”
President Reagan attends the National Space Club luncheon at the Shoreham Hotel.
President Reagan travels to Camp David for the weekend.
A rape charge against a Chicago man who is in prison was recanted by a New Hampshire woman whose testimony against him six years ago resulted in a sentence of up to 50 years. Cathleen Crowell, who is 24 years old, and a former resident of the Chicago area, completely exonerated the man, Gary Dotson, 28, in an affidavit, saying she decided to tell the truth because of her religion. “I am now a Christian, fully understanding of the evil I have committed and that I must undo it to the extent possible,” the woman said in an affidavit submitted Tuesday to the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office. In the affidavit, the woman identified herself by her maiden name, Cathleen Crowell, and said she used to live in the Chicago suburb of Homewood. In July 1977, Miss Crowell, then 16 years old, told the police she had been raped. She picked a photo of Gary Dotson of suburban Country Club Hills from a file of police mug shots and said he was the attacker. Mr. Dotson was convicted in 1979 and sentenced to up to 50 years for kidnapping and rape.
The police may have moved too quickly in arresting a nurse suspected in the mercy killing of an elderly patient, a prosecutor said today. The nurse, Jane Bolding, 27 years old, of Washington, was charged with first-degree murder last Wednesday in the death last September of Elinor Dickerson, 70, who died of cardiac arrest in the intensive care unit at Prince George’s General Hospital. The police said the nurse admitted giving the woman a potassium injection that caused her heart to stop. But the prosecutor, State’s Attorney Arthur Marshall Jr., said the confession alone was not enough to win an indictment and that there was still no medical evidence to prove there was foul play in Miss Dickerson’s death.
James D. Briley, who has been sentenced to die April 18 for two murders, was married Thursday in a ceremony at his cell in Richmond, Virginia. Mr. Briley, 28 years old, married Evangeline Grant Redding, 44, a former radio talk show host in Greenville, North Carolina, who published a book on the problems of black women in 1977. Mr. Briley was given two death sentences for the 1979 shooting deaths of Judy Barton, 23, and her 5-year-old son, Harvey, in Richmond in 1979. Mr. Briley’s brother Linwood was executed October 12 for the murder of a Richmond disk jockey. Another brother, Anthony, is serving a life term for his part in a 1979 series of crimes by the Brileys in the Richmond area. The United States Supreme Court refused Monday to consider James Briley’s case.
New York Mayor Ed Koch yesterday announced plans to expand services for New York City residents suffering from AIDS, and denounced those who have said his administration had not done enough for victims of the illness. He said the city had spent more than $31 million in the last year through three agencies to provide health care and other services to victims of AIDS, or acquired immmune deficiency syndrome. The disease destroys the immune system, leaving the body vulnerable to other diseases, and is most common among male homosexuals and abusers of injectable drugs.
Archibald Cox, the former Watergate special prosecutor, has refused a request from a judicial ethics panel to investigate the Rhode Island Chief Justice’s associations with reputed organized crime figures, the panel chairman, Judge Joseph F. Rodgers Jr. of Superior Court, said today. The State Commission on Judicial Tenure and Discipline decided to hire a special prosecutor after reviewing the associations of Chief Justice Joseph A. Bevilacqua of Rhode Island Supreme Court. Mr. Bevilacqua, 66 years old, has refused comment since a Providence Journal article in December outlined his friendships with alleged organized crime figures. In that article Justice Bevilacqua was quoted as acknowledging the relationships but denying any impropriety.
Sandra Good, a member of the Charles Manson group who served 10 years for mailing death threats to businessmen, refused to leave prison today because she would be prohibited from associating with Mr. Manson or his other followers, officials said. Miss Good refused to accept a release that set “a condition that she not associate with any members or former members of the Manson family,” said Gwynne Sizer, warden at the Federal Correctional Institution for Women. Miss Good also objected to placement in a halfway house in Camden, New Jersey, the officials said. The Manson group lived in southern California. Mr. Manson and four other members of the group are serving life sentences in California for the 1969 murders of the actress Sharon Tate and eight other people.
In this blue-collar town the Agriculture Department is conducting a high-technology experiment designed to cut costs and combat fraud in the $12 billion-a-year Federal food stamp program. By replacing the conventional paper food coupons with a computerized system that uses plastic credit cards, the agency says it can better prevent loss, theft, forgery and black-market trafficking in coupons. The 18-month pilot program, which started in October 1984, has yielded no conclusive results, agency officials say. But if the system proves successful enough to expand nationwide, it could save the Government “several hundred million dollars” a year in administrative fees, coupon printing and distribution costs and could reduce losses from fraud, according to Robert E. Leard, Administrator of the Food and Nutrition Service. That branch of the Agriculture Department oversees the food stamp program.
Acid rain, a pollution problem usually associated with the forests and lakes of the Northeast and Canada, is emerging as a serious environmental and political issue in the Rocky Mountain states as well. Research is producing mounting evidence that airborne pollutants from the region’s numerous smelters are contributing to increasing acidity in high mountain lakes and streams in the Rockies, are cutting visibility in some national parks and are perhaps adding to health and respiratory problems of people living downwind of the factories. “We now see that acid rain is a national issue, hitting both East and West,” Gus Speth, president of the World Resources Institute, said in a summary of current research into acid rain in the West that was released Thursday in Washington. Acid rain, which also takes the form of snow, fog or dry particles, stems from sulfur dioxide pollution that chemically combines with moisture and oxygen in the atmosphere. In the East, most sulfur dioxide pollution comes from coal-burning electric generating plants. In the West it most often comes from copper smelters such as those in New Mexico, Arizona and Mexico.
The Environmental Protection Agency today proposed adding 26 sites to its “national priority list” of waste dumps eligible to receive money for long-term cleanup under the toxic waste law. The proposals include two sites in New Jersey; five sites in Pennsylvania; two each in New Hampshire, Delaware, Virginia, Florida, Michigan and Missouri, and one each in Maine, Rhode Island, North Carolina, Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa and Texas. The additions bring to 812 the number of sites on or proposed for the priority list. William N. Hedeman Jr., director of the toxic waste cleanup program, said the list would probably grow to about 2,000 sites by 1988. He said the agency disagreed with a conclusion recently published by Office of Technology Assessment, a research arm of Congress, that 10,000 sites might have to be placed on the priority list.
26 more toxic waste sites were proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency for its “national priority list” of sites eligible to receive money for long-term cleanup under the toxic waste law. The 26 sites are in 15 states, and would bring to 812 the number on the priority list.
Wayne Gretzky breaks his own NHL season record with 126th assist.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1266.78 (+6.07)
Born:
Ryan Kalil, NFL center (Pro Bowl, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2013, 2015; Carolina Panthers, New York Jets), in Corona, Carolna.
Alan Ball, NFL cornerback and safety (Dallas Cowboys, Houston Texans, Jacksonville Jaguars, Chicago Bears), in Detroit, Michigan.
Maxim Lapierre, Canadian NHL centre (Montreal Canadiens, Anaheim Ducks, Vancouver Canucks, St. Louis Blues, Pittsburgh Penguins), in Saint-Leonard, Quebec, Canada.
Petr Vrána, Czech NHL centre (New Jersey Devils), in Sternberk, Czechoslovakia.
Died:
Gerhard Stöck, 73, German athlete (Olympic gold medal, javelin, bronze medal, shot put, 1936).
Jeanine Deckers, 51, Belgian singer-songwriter, and Dominican nun known as ‘The Singing Nun’ (“Dominique”), cities financial difficulties, and commits suicide with barbiturate overdose.
Luther Terry, 73, 9th Surgeon General of the United States.
History Diaries 