Erich Honecker, the East German leader, will make an official visit to Italy later this month, his first ever to a North Atlantic Treaty Organization capital, the East German press agency reported today. Diplomats suggested that the trip would be the clearest indication since the change in Soviet leadership last month that East Germany has received approval from Moscow to revive its efforts toward stepped-up ties with NATO governments. The East German leader, 72 years old, will be returning a visit by Italy’s Prime Minister, Bettino Craxi, who went to East Berlin last summer amid a flurry of contacts between Mr. Honecker and Western European leaders.
Michel Rocard, whose surprise resignation as Agriculture Minister has thrown French politics into turmoil, said today that he left because new electoral plans threatened political stability. Writing in Le Monde, Mr. Rocard said he had always opposed proportional representation and could not accept President François Mitterrand’s decision to adopt it before parliamentary elections next year. “It is normal that a government be united, and since I cannot be united with this decision I have chosen to resign,” said Mr. Rocard, one of France’s most popular politicians and a longtime Mitterrand rival. He said plans to end more than 25 years of a majority system in favor of proportional representation by department threatened to weaken the presidency, fragment parties and make candidates less accountable to voters.
A high- level Iranian delegation met with Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko in Moscow, a week after a similar Iraqi mission visited the Soviet capital. The official press agency Tass quoted Mr. Gromyko as expressing the Soviet Union’s desire for the “speediest end to the conflict.” Iran’s delegation in Moscow was led by Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Kazempour Ardebili. Tass said “the Iranian delegation set forth the known stand of the Iranian Government on the terms of ending the war” — that is, Iraq’s surrender.
Former Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, chief architect of Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, said today that he intended to run for Prime Minister in 1988. “Not now, but in three-and-a-half years when there will be a new government, in those elections I will make a challenge,” Mr. Sharon, 57 years old, told the daily Chadashot.
President Reagan said today that he would nominate Thomas R. Pickering, the United States Ambassador in El Salvador, to become the new Ambassador to Israel.
Fear of being kidnapped or killed in Beirut has become more oppressive than ever among Westerners, Eastern bloc nationals and even Arabs, after a new wave of abductions of foreigners in the last month. Bodyguards are no longer sufficient. “Scouts” have been hired and are posted outside homes and offices to signal their employers when it is safe for them to go outdoors. A week ago, a British professor decided to rush his blond daughter, a student, out of West Beirut after a secretary at the French Embassy was kidnapped. The secretary’s abduction, three days before, deepened the apprehension among Westerners still in Beirut because it showed that foreign women were no longer immune from kidnapping. The apprehension did not ease after the French secretary, Danielle Perez, was freed. The wife of a French businessman, for instance, dyed her hair jet black so she would not look quite as foreign.
An explosion destroyed part of a major elevated highway in the northern section of the Iraqi capital today, according to witnesses. The blast, the eighth here since mid- March, occurred shortly after Iran announced that it had fired another long- range missile at Baghdad to retaliate for Iraqi missile and air strikes against Iranian towns on Thursday. Iraq announced later that its jet fighters raided the Iranian capital, Tehran, in retaliation for the highway explosion, which it described as a missile attack, The Associated Press reported from Baghdad. The blast caused the collapse of the left lanes of a section of a major elevated highway encircling north-central Baghdad. It destroyed several cars and apparently killed or injured several drivers.
Six Indian soldiers and policemen were killed today and six others wounded in an ambush by separatist guerrillas in the northeastern state of Tripura, the Press Trust of India said. It said 20 members of the Tripura National Volunteers fired from both sides of the road at a jeep in which the government forces were traveling in Saikar district in the north of the state. Three of the dead were members of the paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force, and the other three were from the state police, it said. Press Trust said the guerrillas then tried to seize weapons from those in the jeep but were forced to retreat by the survivors.
Until the last few days, Japan apparently thought that as a veteran of the world trade wars it had seen all the hardships that combative negotiations could bring. This may explain why many Japanese officials were not prepared for the virtually unanimous warnings from Congress of reprisals against Japanese products unless Tokyo started immediately chipping away at its ever-expanding trade surplus with the United States. Not everyone was caught off guard. Saburo Okita, a Government trade adviser, was quoted last month as saying after a trip to Washington that “the sentiment in the United States is like that before the outbreak of a war.”
Japan said it would end whaling after April 1988. Japan’s Foreign Minister, Shintaro Abe, said he would send a letter confirming this to the United States Secretary of Commerce, Malcolm Baldrige. The United States threatened last year to reduce Japan’s fishing quota by 50 percent within the United States 200-mile limit in the Northern Pacfic if the Japanese did not remove their objections to a moratorium on commercial whaling proposed by the International Whaling Commission. In the letter, Foreign Minister Shintaro Abe told Mr. Baldrige that the action today would become effective only if a United States appeals court rules to overturn a recent decision by a Federal judge that damaged Japan’s hopes to continue whaling for a few more years. Japan wanted first to see that the appellate ruling would be in its favor, Mr. Abe said. But no matter what the outcome in the courts, the practical effect of today’s announcement was that Japan’s long tradition of commercial whaling would come to an end no later than March 1988.
Nicaragua officially turned down President Reagan’s proposal for talks on the guerrilla war there. Mr. Reagan asked Congress Wednesday to renew aid for the Nicaraguan rebels; he said Thursday that the aid would be used for nonmilitary purposes if the Sandinista Government would agree to peace talks with the rebels by June 1. Secretary of State George P. Shultz said, “We will keep the offer on the table. We will hope that the Nicaraguan Government will think it over a little more carefully.” Sandinista Government Foreign Minister Miguel d’Escoto Brockman of Nicaragua said in Managua, “What President Reagan has said is: ‘You drop dead, or I will kill you.’ “
The Roman Catholic Primate of Nicaragua said today that the church hierarchy was ready to mediate the Nicaraguan conflict, but only if both sides accepted its services. The Primate, Archbishop Miguel Obando y Bravo, has been a forceful critic of the Nicaraguan Government, and he said today of the Sandinistas that “it seems they are not ready for a dialogue with elements that have taken up arms.”
President-elect Tancredo Neves of Brazil was said today to be in stable condition amid signs that there had been some reduction in an infection that led Thursday to his fifth abdominal operation in three weeks. A spokesman said the President- elect’s response to the latest surgery “permits optimism and hopes for a recovery.” Doctors said that Mr. Neves, 75 years old, had no fever, that a lung inflammation was being controlled and that his heart, intestines and kidneys were working satisfactorily. The reports of an improvement in Mr. Neves’s health came less than a day after family members and leading politicians seemed to be preparing the country for a worsening of his conditioning. Many Brazilians remained wary today, recalling that positive bulletins on Mr. Neves’s health have repeatedly been followed by setbacks.
The growing challenge in the Sudan to President Gaafar al-Nimeiry’s one-party rule has cut short his visit to the United States and altered his plans to visit Egypt and Pakistan this month. Mr. Nimeiry, who has been in the United States since last week, told United States officials he had decided to return home this weekend after a brief stop in Cairo to consult with officials about the situation in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital. A general strike in the Sudan began Wednesday.
Cholera has killed 1,000 people in Somalia, and as many as 300,000 others in the East African nation risk contracting the disease, the Red Cross said today. “Indications are that the number of new cases is increasing, but that the number of deaths is going down,” the League of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said. A news release quoted a league official, Lucianne Phillips, as saying some 1,000 people had died, including Ethiopian refugees who fled to Somalia from their drought-stricken homeland and Somali in or near the city of Hargeisa. The first cholera cases were reported March 27 at the Gannet refugee camp, near Hargeisa in northwestern Somalia. The Somali Health Ministry said Thursday that more than 700 people had died of cholera and that 2,618 cases of the disease had been reported at the Gannet camp.
A black man was shot to death by the police in a small black township near the southeast coast after a group of blacks began stoning police officers and firefighters who were responding to an incident of arson, a police spokesman said today. The incident late Thursday night followed by a few hours a government announcement of tougher measures to deal with what it called the “situation of unrest in black areas.” The incident in the township, the police spokesman said, was one of several disturbances to take place in the last 24 hours, most of them in the southern townships near Uitenhage, where 19 people were killed three weeks ago after the police fired on a black demonstration.
The student aid cut is not as sharp as originally proposed by the Reagan Administration. The biggest change in Federal aid for college students in the budget compromise accepted by President Reagan and Senate Republicans Thursday is a proposal to limit the amount of college costs the Government would recognize for the purpose of calculating student aid. The limit would be $8,000 a year, above the average tuition at public institutions but less than the tuition at many private colleges.
President Reagan said today that he thought the budget compromise reached by White House negotiators and Senate Republican leaders was “a very good plan” for reducing the deficit. But he was immediately attacked for his agreement to limit the cost-of-living increase for Social Security for three years. The compromise, reached Thursday after two weeks of negotiations, would reduce spending by $52 billion in the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 and nearly $300 billion over three years. It would cut the projected 1986 deficit to $175 billion from $227 billion.
President Reagan travels to the Reagan Ranch in California for the Easter Holiday.
The subpoenaed teamsters’ chief has been ordered to testify at the Presidential Commission on Organized Crime on allegations of bribes, kickbacks and other illegal payments to union officials. A federal judge rejected a request by the union leader, Jackie Presser, that his subpoena be quashed.
A 7.2 percent jobless rate in March was virtually unchanged from the previous six months, the Labor Department said, despite an unusually large rise in the number of employed people. Gains in the service industry, retail trade and construction helped create 430,000 new jobs in March, a stronger performance than most private analysts had expected.
Former Representative John W. Jenrette Jr., Democrat of South Carolina, entered a federal prison today to begin serving two years for bribery and conspiracy convictions resulting from a Federal investigation. Mr. Jenrette will be housed at the Atlanta Federal Prison Camp, a minimum-security facility outside the penitentiary walls. Mr. Jenrette, now 48 years old, was among seven members of Congress convicted of corruption charges stemming from the covert operation, code- named Abscam, in which the FBI secretly videotaped meetings between Mr. Jenrette and agents posing as representatives of a wealthy Arab sheik. Mr. Jenrette was convicted of taking a $50,000 bribe.
The prosecution today failed in an effort for an indefinite postponement of Claus von Bülow’s new trial on charges of attempted murder to allow more time to examine 25 potential defense witnesses. Judge Corinne P. Grande, after denying the motion, ordered jury selection to begin as scheduled Monday in Superior Court. The defense lawyers turned over the new names to the prosecution at 5:30 PM Thursday, three days after what both sides had agreed would be the last deadline for exchanging names of potential witnesses. Mr. von Bülow, a Danish-born financier, faces two charges of attempting to kill his wife, Martha, with insulin injections. She has been in a coma more than four years.
A Federal district judge has stopped the government from returning 26 Cubans to their homeland. The 19-page order was handed down Thursday by Judge Charles A. Moye Jr., who had heard arguments earlier in the week from the Cubans seeking to remain in the United States. The government acted to deport the 26 last month. “The government has made no credible showing that its ability to deport any petitioners would be diminished if the course of justice is allowed to proceed,” Judge Moye wrote. He halted the deportation of 11 of the Cubans until immigration officials decided whether to resume investigating the Cubans’ statements that they should receive asylum in the United States. He ruled against 14 others, saying the immigration board had properly denied their requests for asylum. He enjoined their deportation until their attorney could appeal the decision.
A judge today refused to dismiss any charges against seven former teachers at the McMartin Preschool, ruling that a new law affecting the statute of limitations in cases of molestation of children did not apply. The seven are charged with sexually molesting 41 pupils from 1978 to 1984. “Nowhere is there any indication that there is an intention to decrease the statute of limitation dates,” Judge Aviva K. Bobb said in Municipal Court. The defense had asked that several of 207 child molestation counts be dismissed, saying the statute of limitations had expired because of the law. The apparent error in the law, which took effect Jan. 1, stemmed from the Legislature’s effort last year to standardize sections of the penal code by shortening the statute on such crimes committed before 1982. The measure did not make it clear that the statute of limitations should be based on the maximum penalty when the offense occurred or when the bill took affect, said Ed Kerry, a legislative consultant. The maximum punishment is now eight years, with a six-year statute of limitations. The maximum punishment in 1979, 1980 and 1981 was seven years, which would mean a three-year statute of limitations.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said today that allegations of bias against Ivan Smith, an administrative law judge, were unwarranted, and that he would continue as the presiding judge in proceedings involving the restarting of one of the Three Mile Island nuclear reactors near Harrisburg, Pa. The commission, in a written explanation of its 5-to-0 vote affirming Judge Smith’s impartiality, said an antinuclear group and Pennsylvania officials had not proved their assertions that Judge Smith showed bias against them.
A federal district judge today accepted a settlement ending 11 years of litigation over the State of Pennsylvania’s Pennhurst Center for the mentally retarded and calling for closing the institution next year. Judge Raymond Broderick said the settlement, reached last year between the state and Pennhurst residents who sued, was “fair, reasonable and adequate.” The state is to close the institution in Chester County by July 1, 1986, move its 435 patients to other community facilities and spend about $43 million to provide care for the mentally retarded.
Fires fanned by gusting winds swept seven drought-plagued Southern states yesterday, destroying many homes and thousands of acres of woodlands. But evening thundershowers moving across the region brought some relief to the region and officials said rain might end the emergency today. National Guard troops and state prison inmates helped fight the fires in the windswept mountains of North Carolina, where at least 60 homes and other buildings were destroyed.
Whites resist progress by Blacks in Greensboro, North Carolina and elsewhere in the South, civil rights leaders say, despite the abolition of Jim Crow laws. The resistance can be violent, but more typically it is more subtle and institutionalized, reflecting what many say is the reluctance of whites to effect changes in voting systems, housing opportunities or hiring practices.
The Environmental Protection Agency announced today that it was fining a subsidiary of the nation’s largest disposal company for hazardous wastes $2.5 million for violating toxic waste laws at its dump in Vickery, Ohio. Under a negotiated settlement of a complaint filed by the agency, the company, Chemical Waste Management Inc., will also be required to stop accepting waste at the dump for 10 months while it cleans up two open lagoons containing 120 million gallons of waste.
The Navy said today that a tiny three-man submarine, the Sea Cliff, had made an ocean dive of 20,000 feet off the coast of Central America, completing the conversion of the former research vessel so that it can work in the depths of the ocean. Although Navy officials would not formally confirm it, the conversion project has apparently turned the Sea Cliff into the Navy’s deepest-diving submarine. The Sea Cliff is one of three deep-diving submarines, the Turtle class, constructed in the late 1960’s primarily for ocean research work.
Born:
Ian Stewart, MLB third baseman and second baseman (Colorado Rockies, Chicago Cubs, Los Angeles Angels), in Long Beach, California.
Lastings Milledge, MLB outfielder (New York Mets, Washington Nationals, Pittsburgh Pirates, Chhicago White Sox), in Bradenton, Florida.
Héctor Olivera, Cuban MLB third baseman and outfielder (Atlanta Braves), in Santiago de Cuba, Cuba.
Eric Foster, NFL defensive tackle (Indianapolis Colts), in Homestead, Florida.
Died:
Arthur Negus, 82, English antiques expert and broadcaster (“Antiques Roadshow”).
History Diaries 