Caspar W. Weinberger, assailing Moscow, charged that “even now” the Soviet Union “may be preparing” to violate existing treaties by deploying a nationwide defense against nuclear missiles. His remarks, in a speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, were part of an effort by the Administration to draw attention to Soviet work on antimissile defenses and to win support for the President’s research program for antimissile weapons. Mr. Weinberger said the program was essential as a hedge against such Soviet action. The Defense Secretary said Soviet development of moveable missiles to intercept enemy missiles and investments in laser research present “the ominous possiblity of a deliberate, rapid, unilateral Soviet deployment of strategic defenses.” Critics of the Administration say the Pentagon has inflated the Soviet threat in an effort to win support for President’s program.
In a separate bid for support of the President’s Strategic Defense Initiative, Fred C. Ikle, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, took aim at European critics of the program. Some European leaders have said that if a program such as the space-based defense makes nuclear missiles obsolete, Western Europe will then face a vastly superior Soviet army on its borders without the threat of nuclear escalation to deter them. Under the present strategy, called “flexible response,” the NATO allies have said they would use nuclear weapons if necessary to repel a Soviet attack. “In the long run, the force of this guarantee depends on its support by the American people,” Mr. Ikle wrote in the magazine Foreign Affairs. But he said recent opinion polls showed nearly 80 percent of the respondents in the United States and Western Europe oppose the use of nuclear weapons in the face of an overwhelming attack by Soviet non-nuclear forces.
The White House announced today that President Reagan planned to lay a wreath next month at a cemetery for German soldiers who fought Americans and other Allied troops in World War II. Larry Speakes, the White House spokesman, said the visit by Mr. Reagan to the Bitburg German military cemetery was in line with the theme of reconciliation Mr. Reagan plans to seek during his European trip from April 30 to May 10. A part of the trip coincides with the 40th anniversary of the German surrender to the Allies. Mr. Reagan has already drawn criticism from Jewish groups for his decision not to visit the Dachau concentration camp in Germany. The disclosure today of the cemetery visit stirred a new burst of critical remarks.
Enver Hoxha, the head of the Albanian Communist Party, who led Europe’s most secretive and poorest country through four decades of strict Stalinism, died today. He was 76 years old. President Ramiz Alia, Mr. Hoxha’s heir-apparent, is expected to emerge as the successor. Mr. Hoxha led his mountainous Balkan nation through ideological breaches with Moscow, in 1961, and with Peking, in 1976.
The Swedish Navy fired antisubmarine grenades today at a suspected foreign submarine near the entrance to Karlshamn Harbor on Sweden’s southeast coast, according to the national news agency TT. It said three minesweepers and four patrol boats were searching the area. The shooting incident took place about 18 miles from the Karlskrona archipelago, where an intense submarine hunt took place last March and April after alien submarines were spotted in ever trapped. A Soviet submarine ran aground in October 1981 in the area where today’s shooting reportedly took place.
Spain’s constitutional court today rejected a law that the Socialist-dominated Parliament enacted 17 months ago permitting abortion in limited circumstances. The law had not been put into effect, awaiting a court ruling. Justice Minister Fernando Ledesma argued later that the section dealing with “ethical abortion” could “be considered to be in effect” because the 12- member court’s ruling did not specifically mention rape. The law would have permitted abortion in case of danger to the mother’s life, if the fetus was malformed or when pregnancy resulted from rape. The penalty for a person who performs an abortion and for a woman who obtains one is six years in prison. Conservative political parties appealed to the court after the law was enacted by Parliament in October 1983.
President Reagan calls the Prime Minister of Spain Felipe Gonzalez Marquez.
An unexpected Israeli pullback in Lebanon occurred when Israeli forces withdrew from a Shiite-populated area where the troops have come under repeated attack. The withdrawal, from around the town of Nabatiye, places Israel’s northern frontier settlements within range of guerrilla Katyusha rockets for the first time since Israel invaded Lebanon in June 1982. Beginning this morning, Israeli troops, tanks and armored personnel carriers – with helicopters hovering overhead – withdrew from the area in southern Lebanon known as the Nabatiye triangle, made up of six main Shiite villages and the market town of Nabatiye. Nabatiye residents, who have been living under Israeli occupation since the 1982 invasion, were reported to have celebrated the withdrawal by dancing in the streets and smashing Hebrew signs left by the Israeli force.
A delegation of U.S. congressmen met in Amman, Jordan, with Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization. The seven-man delegation, led by Rep. David Obey (D-Wisconsin), declined to comment after the two-hour meeting at the Jordanian government guest house. Arafat also had no comment on the meeting. Official U.S. policy prohibits Administration officials from having talks with PLO representatives until the group recognizes Israel’s right to exist, but the policy does not apply to congressmen. Earlier, Arafat and the congressmen held separate meetings with Jordan’s King Hussein.
Dissident Libyan military officers tried twice recently to assassinate Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, who responded by executing dozens of officers, according to intelligence reports reaching the Reagan Administration. The Washington Post quoted the reports as saying the first attempt by conservative Libyan officers occurred in early March at a presidential villa outside Tripoli. In the second attempt, plotters assaulted a convoy in which they thought Qaddafi was traveling, the paper reported.
The Indian Government announced today that it had agreed to three major demands from Sikh opposition groups, including a judicial investigation of widespread killings of hundreds of Sikhs in the aftermath of the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. The announcement was welcomed in the Punjab by the Government’s chief political opponent there, Harchand Singh Longowal, who urged New Delhi to concede other Sikh demands and move toward a negotiated settlement of the Punjab situation. Mr. Longowal, the president of the chief Sikh party, the Akali Dal, was freed with seven other party leaders last month after nine months in detention. “The Government is late in accepting these demands,” Mr. Longowal told the Press Trust of India, the news agency, at Ludhiana. “Though late, it is a good step.”
The Reagan Administration contradicted China’s assertion that Peking has received assurances that visiting U.S. Navy ships would not be carrying nuclear arms. “We have given no assurances to the Chinese, as reported in the press, that the proposed U.S. ship visit to China would be by non-nuclear-armed vessels,” State Department spokesman Edward P. Djerejian said. He reiterated Washington’s policy that it will neither confirm nor deny the presence of nuclear weapons aboard U.S. warships.
Rafael Caro Quintero, reputed Mexican drug kingpin and prime suspect in the kidnap-murder of a U.S. narcotics agent, was ordered to stand trial on drug charges in Mexico. A federal judge in Mexico City said that Caro Quintero, 29, was charged with “crimes against health”-which can include narcotics offenses-criminal conspiracy and weapons smuggling. Mexican officials have said he also may be charged in the death of U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent Enrique S. Camarena, who was abducted February 7 in Guadalajara and found slain March 5 on a ranch 60 miles outside the city.
Two United States Congressmen trailing an entourage of aides, reporters, television cameramen and Sandinista guides descended on a tiny refugee camp outside this remote village today. They were in the vanguard of more than a dozen American lawmakers who will visit here during the Easter recess. As the Reagan Administration presses its request for continued aid to anti-Sandinista insurgents, the Managua Government is countering with an intense lobbying campaign of its own. This camp is home to about 200 subsistence farmers who were evacuated from their homes by Sandinista troops six weeks ago. After a three-hour ride from Managua, during which the caravan took a wrong turn that cost nearly an hour, the Americans arrived to chat with residents.
President Reagan’s recently announced proposal to deal with Nicaragua has received only limited support from the four-nation regional negotiating group, officials of the group and Central American Governments said today. As Mexico, Panama, Venezuela and Colombia resumed talks with five Central American Governments today, it became clear that officials saw some improvement in the American position in Mr. Reagan’s talk of dialogue with the Sandinistas and, to some extent, in his call for a cease-fire between the Sandinistas and the United States- backed guerrillas. But much of the rest of his plan was seen as unacceptable. A statement from the Panamanian Foreign Ministry said that President Nicolas Ardito Barletta had met with President Reagan’s special envoy to Central America, Harry W. Schlaudeman, today and had told him that there were “positive elements” in the plan, including a call for cessation of hostilities and the use of “dialogue instead of confrontation” with the Sandinistas. But he also said the negotiating group held to “the principles of international law, among which that of nonintervention in the internal affairs of each country is basic.”
Braziliian President-elect Tancredo Neves suffered a worsening abdominal infection tonight and underwent his seventh operation in less than a month, a Government spokesman said. The spokesman said the 75-year-old Mr. Neves had experienced “sharp changes in breathing, temperature and pulse,” making the surgery necessary. Earlier in the day the spokesman said Mr. Neves had rallied, but a medical bulletin in the late afternoon said his condition “inspired concern.” Mr. Neves was to have taken office March 15 as Brazil’s first civilian president in 21 years. But an intestinal ailment required emergency surgery and he could not be sworn in. His Vice President, Jose Sarney, has been running the country.
The Chilean military junta approved a treaty today that settles its century-old sovereignty dispute with Argentina over the Beagle Channel. The treaty, which has been approved by the Argentine Parliament, confirms Chilean sovereignty over three islands at the mouth of the Beagle Channel at the southern tip of South America, but awards to Argentina large areas of sea that had been claimed by Chile.
Sudan’s new military leaders won a promise from professional unions to give the military up to a year to restore civilian government, a spokesman for the unions and political parties said. Sudan’s new military regime has agreed to form an interim Cabinet for a one-year transition period, after which power will be transferred to a civilian government, civilian negotiators said. The 15-man Military Council headed by General Abdul-Rahman Suwar Dahab will hold supreme power during the transition period, and the interim government will administer its laws. Dahab has said the interim Cabinet will include some civilians. The Military Council said that Khartoum’s international airport will reopen today. The facility was closed last weekend when the military ousted President Jaafar Numeiri.
Rioting broke out in black townships in the eastern part of South Africa’s Cape province, and two more deaths were reported in continuing racial violence near Uitenhage. In one incident, youths set fire to a delivery truck 45 miles north of Uitenhage, killing the driver; in another, the charred body of a black man was found near the city. Police last month shot and killed 19 black marchers in Uitenhage, and a continuing judicial inquiry heard testimony from a man wounded in the March 21 shootings. He said he played dead while police officers discussed whether to “finish off” the wounded lying nearby.
The official commission of inquiry into the shooting deaths of 19 people in a black township in South Africa last month heard conflicting testimony from senior police officers today, with one of them accusing the other of lying. The conflict arose over one of the inquiry’s key elements: the issuing to the police of lethal ammunition only — heavy-gauge shotgun cartridges and automatic rifles — rather than conventional riot control equipment such as tear gas and birdshot. Testifying today, the Uitenhage police chief, Maj. Gert Kuhn, said the order not to use the conventional riot control equipment came from the District Commissioner of Police, Lieut. Col. Frederick Pretorius. Colonel Pretorius testified Tuesday that he had given precisely the opposite order. “I dispute that,” Major Kuhn said when Colonel Pretorius’s earlier testimony was presented to him by a lawyer representing bereaved black families. On further questioning by the lawyer, he agreed that what the colonel had said in court was “a blatant lie.” Called back to the stand today, Colonel Pretorius said of Major Kuhn’s testimony: “Maybe he misunderstood.”
President Reagan today announced a major reorganization of the White House that, while affirming Donald T. Regan’s primacy as White House chief of staff, also grants powerful roles to two key advisers from Mr. Reagan’s first term. Under the arrangement, Mr. Regan, James A. Baker 3d and Edwin Meese 3d will supervise virtually all aspects of domestic and economic policy through two new councils. The move would eliminate seven current Cabinet councils, each headed by a different Secretary. In its place, policy matters involving those officials and other White House aides will flow through the new councils to Mr. Regan.
President Reagan goes horseback riding and does chores around the Ranch.
Comparable worth pay was opposed by the United States Commission on Civil Rights by a vote of 5 to 2 with 1 abstention. The commission urged Congress and Government agencies to reject the doctrine that men and women should receive the same pay for performing different jobs of comparable worth.
A new gain from the lunar landings by American astronauts was reported by astronomers. They said that by bouncing light from a newly developed laser off reflectors the astronauts left on the Moon they have taken new measurements of the constantly changing distance between Earth and Moon that they believe are accurate to within an inch.
Liftoff for the NASA space shuttle Discovery was set for 8:04 AM tomorrow, subject to the weather and a smooth countdown in the final hours. Space agency engineers contained a leak that threatened the operations of a key drug-processing experiment.
The recanting of a rape charge failed to free a convict in Markham, Illinois. Judge Richard L. Samuels of Cook County Circuit Court sent the man, Gary Dotson, back to prison for a rape that his accuser, Cathleen Crowell Webb, now says never occurred. Judge Samuels told a packed courtroom in the Circuit Court branch of this Chicago suburb, “Regretfully, I must deny the petition.” He cited Illinois court precedents in cases involving recanted testimony.
Illinois Governor James R. Thompson fired his public health director, Thomas Kirkpatrick, for vacationing in Mexico during a salmonella outbreak linked to three deaths and the illness of 3,000 persons in five states. Thompson’s news secretary, David Gilbert, said agency employees had sent memos to the governor’s office saying that Kirkpatrick had been conducting daily meetings on the crisis when, in fact, he had been in Mexico. The milk-borne disease has caused the Chicago area’s largest grocery chain to close its dairy operation for an inspection.
A railroad engineer from Illinois, the victim of a near-fatal heart attack in October, will become the next recipient of a permanent artificial heart, Humana Inc. announced in Louisville, Kentucky. The surgery is scheduled for 7 AM Sunday for Jack C. Burcham of Le Roy, Illinois, a 62-year-old paratrooper veteran of World War II. Dr. William C. DeVries will lead Humana’s surgical team in its third implant since November 25.
On the eve of the scheduled start of an espionage trial for a couple from the Soviet Union accused of conspiring with an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the judge has decided to postpone the case until next Tuesday. The couple, Svetlana and Nikolay Ogorodnikov, were in court Wednesday for a conference about the handling of classified documents when Federal District Judge David Kenyon decided to postpone the trial. Outside court, prosecutors and defense attorneys said the delay was needed because the classified document issue had not been fully resolved. The Ogorodnikovs are charged with conspiring with Richard W. Miller, an FBI agent, to pass classified documents to the Soviet Union. Mr. Miller has also been accused of unlawful conspiracy to commit espionage.
Claus von Bülow’s ex-mistress has left the country and apparently will not testify at his second trial for attempted murder in Providence, Rhode Island. But prosecutors said they will try to introduce her original testimony, in which she told of pressuring Von Bülow to leave his heiress wife. Jurors in the original trial said the testimony of Alexandra Isles, a socialite and former soap opera actress, was an important factor in their decision to convict Von Bülow of twice trying to kill Martha (Sunny) von Bülow with insulin injections. She remains in a coma. Von Bülow’s conviction was overturned last year.
Agriculture officials in Florida set 2,100 traps and took samples today from trees attractive to Mediterranean fruit flies as they tried to prevent an infestation of the crop-ruining pest from spreading. A 110-square-mile section of northeastern Dade County was placed under a 90-day quarantine Wednesday after two male fruit flies were discovered trapped in a calamodin tree near Miami. No fruit or vegetables may leave the area and certain trees must be stripped of fruit and treated with a pesticide before being shipped. Linda Perry of the Florida Department of Agriculture’s Division of Plant Industry in Gainesville said the quarantine was not likely to have much effect because there were no major commercial growers in the area. But she said lime and mango groves could be damaged if the fly spread south.
A Defense Department audit has found that the Army incurred tens of millions of dollars in “excessive” costs when it did not buy parts for missile components directly from the manufacturer. The audit highlights two factors often cited as problems in military contracting: Pentagon officials’ reliance on contracts with a single supplier because that is faster than seeking competitive bids, and incomplete use of cost information from Pentagon auditors in contract negotiations. The auditors specifically found that officials at the Army Missile Commmand at the Redstone Arsenal in Alabama had bought optical sights for the wire-guided TOW missile system on a noncompetitive basis despite frequent Defense Department directives that they seek multiple bids.
The U.S. Army will soon have, for the first time, more people in its reserve units than on active duty, Pentagon manpower chief Lawrence J. Korb reported. The change, scheduled to take place in fiscal 1988, stems in large part from the Army’s decision to freeze its active-duty strength at 781,000 for the rest of this decade to concentrate its resources on the weapons ordered under President Reagan’s rearmament program.
Three days of protests against Central Intelligence Agency recruiting efforts at the University of Colorado at Boulder ended late yesterday when the recruiters left. The poet Allen Ginsberg was among 164 protesters arrested yesterday, bringing to 478 the total number of arrests since Tuesday. “As a result of the publicity” over the protests, said Pauline Coker, a university spokesman, the C.I.A. recruiters had so many inquiries for interviews that they had to turn away people. The protesters contended the C.I.A. was guilty of illegal actions in Central America. At the University of Wisconsin in Madison on Wednesday, the police sprayed chemical Mace on 100 protesters who tried to push through a police line to reach a C.I.A. interview site. At Yale, six students arrested March 4 on charges of disrupting C.I.A. recruiting on the campus were put on probation Wednesday.
A lack of coverage of blacks was cited by three speakers at the annual gathering of the nation’s newspaper editors. Julian Bond, a former state senator in Georgia, said that “for the first time in 25 years, there is an Administration hostile to aspirations of racial equality.”
A new book about homosexual nuns has gained national attention. The book, “Lesbian Nuns: Breaking Silence,” contains accounts of how 51 women, 42 of them former nuns and 9 still bound by their vows, came to grips with lesbianism.
Severe reactions to Fansidar, an anti-malaria drug, including six deaths, has prompted Federal health officials to withdraw a recommendation that some travelers to malaria-prone areas take the drug, the officials said today. The Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta reported that 20 cases of severe skin reactions, six of them fatal, have been reported among the more than 100,000 American travelers using Fansidar since it became available three years ago.
The developing breast tissue of teen-age girls is particularly sensitive to the cancer-causing effects of X-rays and should be protected during commonly held screening programs for spinal curvature, the Food and Drug Administration said. Research completed in Canada and published last year indicated that developing breast tissue is more sensitive to the carcinogenic effects of X-rays than mature breast tissue, the agency said.
The wife of a retired Navy man, who was told by a doctor at the Naval Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, that she was just “paranoid” about a recurring lump in her breast, has won a $1-million decision against the federal government for a misdiagnosis of what has become a life-threatening cancer. In what he called a “tragic case” of negligence, U.S. District Judge James R. Miller ruled in Baltimore that doctors who conducted a biopsy on Judith Burke, 36, of Manassas, Virginia, erred in evaluating tests done in April, 1981. Doctors then diagnosed the lump in Burke’s left breast as benign. A year and a half later, after the lump had doubled in size, doctors ordered another biopsy and found cancer in the breast and nearby lymph nodes. Doctors reviewed the original report and found that the cancer had been evident then.
An enzyme has been redesigned to alter its function for the first time, according to researchers at the University of California at San Francisco. The achievement may eventually benefit the medical, food and chemical industries.
Heavy rains sent floodwaters coursing through nearly 400 southeastern Texas homes, and hundreds of persons were evacuated, Red Cross officials reported. Floodwaters poured into about 300 homes in Sinton, 10 miles north of Corpus Christi, while 75 to 80 homes were deluged in Odem. Sinton had 9.17 inches of rain in 24 hours, and Odem had 5.55 inches. Up to five feet of water was reported on some Sinton roads.
Major League Baseball:
Gorman Thomas, recovering from rotator cuff surgery, smashes 3 home runs and drives in 6 in Seattle’s 14–6 rout of visiting Oakland. The Mariners set a one-game club record with 7 home runs. The A’s Dave Kingman has a homer and gets robbed of another when his deep drive in left bounces off a loud speaker and is caught.
The Baltimore Orioles’ Cal Ripken, nursing a sprained left ankle suffered while covering second base on a pickoff play in yesterday’s game against the Rangers, is ordered by the doctor not to play in today’s game against the Midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy. The Orioles’ shortstop’s streak of consecutive games, which would have ended if not for the team’s exhibition contest in Annapolis, is in its infancy at 444 games.
New York Yankees 4, Boston Red Sox 6
Minnesota Twins 3, California Angels 4
Pittsburgh Pirates 1, Chicago Cubs 4
Cleveland Indians 10, Detroit Tigers 11
Los Angeles Dodgers 4, Houston Astros 3
Toronto Blue Jays 4, Kansas City Royals 3
Chicago White Sox 1, Milwaukee Brewers 8
St. Louis Cardinals 1, New York Mets 2
Atlanta Braves 6, Philadelphia Phillies 3
Oakland Athletics 6, Seattle Mariners 14
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1263.69 (+3.75)
Died:
Enver Hoxha, 76, Albanian post-war communist leader and dictator of Albania (1944-85).
History Diaries 