The President said it’s morally right to visit a German war cemetery and said the purpose of his visit to Bitburg was to symbolize “the great reconciliation” between the United States and Germany. On the eve of his departure for a 10-day European trip, Mr. Reagan declared firmly that he would visit the cemetery where the dead include 49 Waffen SS soldiers, despite opposition from Congress, Jewish groups and veterans’ organizations. “The final word has been spoken as far as I am concerned,” he said. “I think it is morally right to do what I am doing and I am not going to change my mind about that.” In Bonn, the West German Government denied that its plans for Mr. Reagan’s visit would damage German-American relations.
Reagan made his comments to reporters from six non-Communist nations that will join the United States in an economic meeting in Bonn this week. White House officials fear the dispute over the cemetery visit may overshadow the meeting, which will bring together the leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Italy, Japan, the United States and West Germany.
President Reagan attends a luncheon meeting to discuss the upcoming Bonn Economic Summit.
West Germany rejected warnings that its plans for President Reagan’s state visit would profoundly damage relations with Washington and said that Mr. Reagan would lay a wreath at the war cemetery in Bitburg on Sunday as scheduled. Chancellor Helmut Kohl was reported by a well-placed official to have spoken today by telephone with President Reagan, but no details of their conversation were made available. The Chancellor met Sunday with representatives of West German Jewish groups who reportedly sought to find alternatives to the stop at the Bitburg cemtery where 49 Waffen SS soldiers are interred. Flowers were seen on some of the SS graves today.
Poland’s ruling Communist Party suggested that Solidarity leader Lech Walesa “go fishing” on May Day rather than attempt to participate in demonstrations planned on the workers’ holiday by supporters of the banned trade union Solidarity. The official press urged workers to ignore appeals by the Solidarity underground for the protests, against price rises and political arrests. Walesa has said he will try to infiltrate the official May Day parade in the Baltic port of Gdansk where he lives, but he made no personal appeal for demonstrations.
Three associates of Lech Walesa were reportedly arrested today after joining in calls for May Day protests against price increases and the detention of political prisoners. Solidarity sources in Gdansk said the three men, Konrad Maruszczyk, Piotr Konopka and Bogdan Olszewski, had been arrested at their Gdansk homes. No reason was given. “May Day has already started — it has begun with arrests,” Mr. Walesa said after the men were seized. Earlier, the Polish Communist Party newspaper, Trybuna Ludu, accused Mr. Walesa of “antisocialist demagogy” for urging Poles to show support for Solidarity by staging demonstrations on May 1, the workers’ holiday.
Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez said that negotiations should begin “as soon as possible” on reducing the number of American servicemen in Spain. Gonzalez said his Socialist government wants to cut the number of the 12,600 U.S. troops at four U.S. bases in Spain “to the level allowed by Spain’s strategic interests and the interests of the (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) alliance to which it belongs.”
Israeli forces pulled out of Tyre, the last major Lebanese city under Israeli military occupation. The pullout completed the second phase of Israel’s three-stage withdrawal from Lebanon. As happened in previous pullouts by the Israelis, their departure from the predominantly Shiite Moslem area set off joyous celebrations, particularly in Shiite villages. Seven Shiite villages near the port had been raided by Israeli troops and armor during searches for guerrillas under Israel’s “Iron Fist” policy, which began after guerrilla raids against the withdrawing troops increased sharply. The guerrilla attacks were frequent, and the region from Tyre to Nabatiye came to be known as the “arc of resistance”
Within hours of the Israeli departure today, Shiite militiamen moved to block guerrillas of the Palestine Liberation Organization from returning to three Palestinian refugee camps near Tyre. The leader of the mainstream Shiite militia known as Amal said the action was intended to prevent a repetition of what happened in Sidon, the port north of Tyre, where Palestinian guerrillas joined Christians in battles against Muslims that began after the Israeli withdrawal. The Christians are in the minority in southern Lebanon, and the Shiites are the predominant religious group.
King Hussein of Jordan said today that efforts to convene a meeting between American officials and a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation were continuing, and that Jordan, the Palestine Liberation Organization and the United States were exploring suggestions for reviving the stalled peace process. “As far as I’m concerned, the door has not been totally closed,” King Hussein said. He also declined to rule out direct talks between Israel and a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation, provided they involve an international peace conference — a concept that the United States and Israel have opposed. “Direct talks will occur when we — Jordan and the P.L.O. and other parties to the conflict — are engaged in a peace process that is blessed by an international conference,” the King said.
More than a third of the Soviet military advisers in Syria have been withdrawn in the last six months, according to Western sources in Damascus. Those withdrawn include an air defense unit that manned Soviet-made SA-5 surface-to-air missile batteries and that was the only potential Soviet combat force in the region, the sources said. The pullouts bring the number of Soviet advisers down from 6,000 to 4,000 or below.
Two people were stabbed to death today in fighting between rival ethnic groups in India, and 35 people were hurt in a separate clash between policemen and protesters, the Press Trust of India said. The news agency said the two people who died were stabbed in rioting in Baroda, 230 miles north of Bombay in western India. The deaths brought to at least 73 the number of people killed since violence erupted over caste issues in mid-March. In Gandhinagar, the capital of Gujarat State, 70 miles northwest of Baroda, police officers with wooden clubs broke up a protest by Government workers against a promotion system that they contend favors Hindus and certain tribes. At least 35 people were hurt, the news agency said.
While encouraged by recent progress in rooting out drug-related corruption in Mexico, Mexican and United States officials are concerned over indications that it may reach to higher levels of the Mexican Government than first thought. Investigations, which began after a United States narcotics agent and his pilot were kidnapped and killed in February, have succeeded in capturing two men reputed to be major heads of the Mexican drug trade and several dozen accomplices, including past and present members of Mexican police forces. One police commander is charged with having taken a large bribe to permit the flight of one of the country’s leading drug dealers. United States officials here and in Washington, who only recently were harshly critical of their Mexican counterparts for what they viewed as a “lack of vigor” in pursuing drug traffickers, have been lavish in their praise of the recent Mexican actions.
Moscow pledged aid for Nicaragua at a Kremlin meeting between Mikhail S. Gorbachev and the Nicaraguan President, Daniel Ortega Saavedra. Reporting the meeting, the Soviet press agency Tass, as is customary, gave no indication of the amount or type of aid.
A rebel leader who surrendered to the Salvadoran army said that the governments of Cuba and Nicaragua give weapons and advice to guerrillas in El Salvador, according to a statement obtained by United Press International. The statement was made by Napoleon Romero, the highest-ranking guerrilla leader to surrender in the last two years, during a meeting with officials in San Salvador. Romero, who surrendered about a week ago, headed the rebels’ political-military front in San Salvador.
The police said a band of armed men, some of them wearing police uniforms, today seized and bombed the transmission station of an Argentine Government-owned radio station known for its liberal views. The group subdued the few technicians before setting off the explosives.
Sudan’s new military leader said his government will put on trial any officials who were involved in the airlift of Ethiopian Jews to Israel when the now-deposed President Jaafar Numeiri was in power. General Abdul-Rahman Suwar Dahab made the disclosure in an interview with the Jordan Times of Amman. Several thousand Ethiopian Jews were secretly moved from famine-stricken Ethiopia to Israel by way of Sudan, most of them in late 1984. Ethiopia condemned the transfer, and Numeiri denied that his country was involved. The new regime seeks better ties with Ethiopia.
The death toll in northern Nigeria’s most recent episode of religious violence rose to more than 100, the West African country’s news agency reported. Some suspected members of an extremist Muslim sect reportedly were burned alive. Residents of the town of Gombe helped police round up members of the fanatical Maitatsine sect. Soon thereafter, irate townspeople burned the suspects, according to the agency’s correspondent there.
South African police reported rioting in at least 15 black townships, with six people killed. Most of the townships affected were in eastern Cape province, where blacks have demonstrated against apartheid for weeks. Black union leaders, meanwhile, met with officials of the Anglo American Corp. to discuss the firings of thousands of gold miners for striking illegally. Over the weekend, the Vaal Reefs mine, west of Johannesburg, fired 14,500 workers after weeks of unrest over labor grievances.
The space shuttle Challenger rocketed into orbit with seven astronauts aboard on the STS-51-B mission to devote a week of scientific inquiry to the mysteries of inner man and outer space. It was the 7th flight of the Challenger. Late this afternoon, five hours after the 2,250-ton spaceplane blasted up through the Florida coastal haze, the astronauts successfully launched one satellite. But 15 minutes later they failed in their attempt to release a second one, a 150-pound Navy communications device. Its antennas apparently became stuck in its launching can. The can eventually was resealed, and the satellite will probably be returned to earth aboard the shuttle, although an attempt to deploy it Tuesday was not ruled out. The satellites were but a sideshow to the main purpose of the mission, that of routinely operating a scientific laboratory under the peculiar conditions of space and weightlessness. In the shuttle’s cargo bay was the centerpiece of the seven-day mission, the European-built Spacelab, the 23-foot-long orbital laboratory where 15 varieties of experiments will be performed.
Space agency officials were elated that the $8 billion shuttle program had been able to launch a second shuttle 17 days after a launching of the Discovery – half the time normally required. Discovery returned 10 days ago. The 17-day turnaround between flights was considered noteworthy because officials of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration had used such rapid turnaround times as selling points for selling to Congress, and the public, on increased funds for shuttle development. A second launch pad is under construction here and a third is being erected at Vandenburg Air Force Base in California. The latter would be used primarily for military missions.
Challenger will fly two more missions in 1985, before its star-crossed tenth launch in January, 1986.
President Reagan participates in a swearing-in ceremony for William Brock as Secretary of Labor.
Reflection on the Vietnam War, which ended 10 years ago today, has been widespread for more than a month. The voluminous outpouring indicates that many people are at least as interested in revising history as in understanding it.
A White House commission is recommending that the United States destroy its entire stock of aging chemical weapons and replace them with a new type of nerve gases, sources said. The commission’s report will be released later this week by the Senate Armed Services Committee when the panel begins hearings on the document, said sources who asked not to be identified. The United States has not built any chemical weapons since 1969, but President Reagan has called for a renewal of the program because he said it is needed to offset what the Administration contends is a growing Soviet threat.
Education Secretary William J. Bennett said that large families with incomes of more than $60,000 should do “family planning a little better or find other means” than federal aid to send children to college. Bennett, in a speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, defended the Reagan Administration’s proposal to prohibit federal loans to any student whose annual family income tops $60,000. The proposed ceiling on family income for federal college aid recipients is a centerpiece of the Administration’s embattled proposal to cut student assistance by 25%.
The Justice Department acknowledged that it no longer requires about 50 officials in policy-making or supervisory positions to file financial disclosure statements, which are used throughout the government to spot conflicts of interest. Department spokesman Mark Sheehan said that the agency made a unilateral decision last year to end the statements for these officials, and none were filed for 1984.
The U.S. Office of Government Ethics is launching a formal review of the activities of Robert A. Rowland, director of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, said David H. Martin, director of the office. Martin said that Rep. Augustus F. Hawkins (D-Los Angeles), chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, wants an examination of Rowland’s decision-making as OSHA chief to see if there has been a violation of the federal conflict-of-interest law, which the ethics office administers.
The government proposed new rules for Social Security disability examiners to follow in deciding whether a person’s medical condition has improved enough to warrant a benefits cutoff. The new rules bar cutoffs in most cases unless the government has “substantial evidence” that the person’s condition has improved and that he or she is capable of working again. Congress last fall ordered the more liberal rules after an uproar over disability cutoffs.
Efforts to end hiring quotas that were intended to help women, blacks and Hispanic people get jobs in local governments are being pressed by the Justice Department. An early target is the City of Indianapolis, where the department filed a motion to modify the affirmative-action program now used by the city’s police and fire departments. The Federal move is part of an effort by the Reagan Administration to bring affirmative action plans around the country into line with its interpretation of a 1984 Supreme Court decision upholding the seniority rights of a group of white firefighters who faced layoffs in Memphis.
The Navy plans to cut the time aircraft carriers, the most visible sign of American naval power, sail in foreign waters in an effort to reduce the strain on the large crews and to save money, according to Defense Department and Congressional officials. The officials said privately today that the Navy would leave some areas uncovered for short periods, would substitute refurbished battleships for carriers and would use new ships. The carrier USS Vinson joined the fleet in 1982, while the USS Theodore Roosevelt is scheduled to go to sea next year. Instead of spending six months abroad and nine months at home, the carriers would remain in home waters for 12 to 14 months, the officials said. Although a large part of that time would be spent training at sea, the ships would often be in port on weekends.
Atlantic Richfield moved boldly in response to changes sweeping the nation’s oil industry. The company, the nation’s sixth-largest oil company, will abandon the retail gasoline market east of the Mississippi, sell or dispose of 2,000 gas stations in 12 states and the District of Columbia and close its refinery in Philadelphia. While reducing its size, Arco will spend substantial sums to increase the price of its stock.
A Federal district judge today decided that the State Farm Insurance Comany discriminated against women in California, saying the company excluded them from potentially lucrative jobs as agents. Judge Thelton Henderson said only two of State Farm’s 1,454 agents in California were women in 1974, and only 65 of 1,847 agents, 3.5 percent, were women in 1981.. He said the company maintained a “male image” through advertising and “discouraged and deterred women from applying.” Guy Saperstein, a lawyer who filed a class action suit on behalf of three secretaries and office managers at State Farm, said the ruling would affect thousands of women in the state who had been rejected or deterred from applying since July 1974. Mr. Saperstein said he would ask Judge Henderson to set a hiring quota until 40 to 50 percent of the company’s agents were women.
Many wildlife refuges are threatened by water contaminated by farm chemicals and other substances, according to Interior Department documents. Updated reports prepared by managers of the 428 national wildlife refuges show that 121 of them face some degree of threat from contaminated water.
David A. Stockman, the Federal budget director, urged a Senate panel today to “solve the Amtrak waste problem” by shutting off the railroad’s Federal subsidy and letting it go into bankruptcy. Urging the lawmakers to “pull the plug” on Amtrak, the budget director declared the Government-sponsored national rail passenger system “irredeemable” and said the Administration was rallying its forces around elimination of the Amtrak subsidy as a demonstration of its resolve to reduce the Federal deficit. Offering the Administration’s toughest assault on Amtrak, Mr. Stockman said the Administration viewed Congressional action on the subsidy as “the litmus indicator” of members’ willingness to make significant cuts in the Federal deficit, projected at $200 billion this fiscal year. “There are few programs I can think of that rank lower than Amtrak in terms of the good they do, the purpose they serve and the national need they respond to,” Mr. Stockman told the Subcommittee on Surface Transportation of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.
Two men who allegedly helped the Nazis persecute Jews and other civilians during World War II have permanently left the United States rather than face legal action, the Justice Department announced. They are the seventh and eighth alleged Nazi war criminals permanently removed by the department’s Office of Special Investigations since it was established in 1978 to track down Nazis hiding in this country. The two men were identified as Juozas Kisielaitis, 64, of Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, a native of Lithuania who holds Canadian citizenship, and Paul Bluemel, 83, of Ocala, Florida, who left last week for West Germany.
An outburst of violent weather that claimed 10 lives again battered parts of Texas as rescuers pressed their search for a woman swept away in a flooded creek. Eight of the weekend storm victims drowned, and rising water continued to threaten much of North Texas. A flash flood warning was posted for Hunt County, northeast of Dallas, and flood watches were in effect for much of North Texas.
Bits of 30 gases threaten to warm the earth’s atmosphere even more rapidly over the next 50 years than carbon dioxide will, according to a study by a team of atmospheric scientists. Scientists are increasingly convinced that the rare trace gases, many of them industrial byproducts, are playing a leading role in the global “greenhouse effect.”
Nonmedical psychotherapy has become far more common than psychotherapy by psychiatrists. As a result, psychiatrists find themselves increasingly limited to the most severe mental disorders.
Tony Tubbs beats defending champion Greg Page by unanimous decision in 15 rounds at Memorial Auditorium, Buffalo for WBA heavyweight boxing title.
Major League Baseball:
In Billy Martin’s first game as New York manager, Larry Parrish belts 3 home runs to power the Rangers to a 7–5 win over the Yankees. It is Parrish’s 4th career 3-home run game but his first in the American League, making him only the 5th player to accomplish the feat in each league. The Yanks lose a homer in the 4th when, with two men on, Bobby Meacham hits a Frank Tanana ball that just reaches the stands. Running hard, Meacham collides with teammate Willie Randolph who was returning to first base to tag up. Meacham is given a two-run single.
Juan Samuel’s two-out infield single in the bottom of the 10th inning drove in Darren Daulton from third and gave the Philadelphia Phillies a 3-2 victory over the Montreal Expos tonight. The Expos’ six-game winning streak ended, and they fell into a virtual three-way tie for first with the Mets and Chicago Cubs in the National League East.
At the Kingdome, the Mariners edge the Brewers, 9–7, in 10 innings behind the heroics of catcher Donnie Scott. Scott hits a game-tying solo homer in the 9th, off Rollie Fingers, then follows with a walkoff 2-run homer in the 10th off Ray Searage. He’s the first catcher to accomplish the feat. He will total just 7 homers in his career.
George Brett and Willie Wilson collected three hits apiece as Kansas City held off Cleveland to win 3–2 in a rain-delayed game. Bud Black (2–1) took a 3–0 lead into the ninth inning. Dan Quisenberry came on to extinguish a late Indian rally and record his third save.
Boston Red Sox 6, California Angels 7
Cleveland Indians 2, Kansas City Royals 3
Toronto Blue Jays 2, Oakland Athletics 1
Montreal Expos 2, Philadelphia Phillies 3
Milwaukee Brewers 7, Seattle Mariners 9
New York Yankees 5, Texas Rangers 7
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1259.72 (-15.46)
Born:
Jean-François Jacques, Canadian NHL left wing (Edmonton Oilers, Anaheim Ducks), in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Chauncey Washington, NFL running back (Jacksonville Jaguars, Dallas Cowboys, St. Louis Rams), in Torrance, California.
Brandon Harrison, NFL safety (Houston Texans), in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Austin Bibens-Dirkx, MLB pitcher (Houston Texans), in Salem, Oregon.
Chad Huffman, MLB pinch hitter, outfielder, and first baseman (New York Yankees, St. Louis Cardinals), in Houston, Texas.
History Diaries 