Leonid Brezhnev said that he hoped the end of the wars in Indochina would lead to a further relaxation of tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States. He made the bid for accommodation in his first public comments on the Communist victory in South Vietnam as he praised the “patriots of Vietnam” for having waged a successful “struggle against foreign interventionists and their henchmen.”
Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger will meet Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko in Europe in about 10 days to resolve a temporary deadlock in nuclear arms talks, informed sources said. The exact date and place of the meeting will be announced Monday, the sources said. Kissinger also is expected to visit West Germany during a week-long trip that will end with the Central Treaty Organization meeting in Ankara on May 22 and 23.
Dissident Russian physicist Andrei D. Sakharov and his wife, Yelena, began a three-day hunger strike in their Moscow apartment to protest official refusal to let Mrs. Sakharov go to Italy for eye treatment. Sakharov said his wife would soon go blind if she cannot get to a clinic in Sienna for treatment that he said was unavailable in the Soviet Union. The refusal to grant his wife a travel visa, he said, was revenge for the scientist’s persistent civil rights campaign.
The conference on the law of the sea in Geneva has drawn up a draft charter for the oceans providing for an international authority to exploit the ocean floor in joint ventures with countries or companies, a 200-mile economic zone in which coastal states will have control of all marine resources, and a 12‐mile territorial offshore limit of full sovereignty. The draft, which reflects conflicting positions of the 140 delegations and has not yet been agreed upon, was submitted to participants today and will be published tomorrow at the conclusion of the conference’s eight‐week session.
The Israeli government radio disclosed Austrian Chancellor Bruno Kreisky has been trying to arrange a historic meeting between members of the ruling Israeli Labor Party and the Egyptian Socialist Party. A Labor Party source in Jerusalem said the meeting, which would be the first between Arab and Israeli political parties, may take place soon in Vienna.
Lebanon is facing a political crisis after the resignation of six Cabinet ministers yesterday. There is speculation here that Premier Rashid al‐Solh will resign tomorrow. Premier Solh said he would meet with President Suleiman Franjieh tomorrow to discuss the resignations. Parliamentary sources were quoted by a number of newspapers as saying that the resignation of the entire Cabinet had become inevitable. Five of the six ministers who resigned represented the country’s two most influential, predominantly Christian, groups — the Phalangist party, led by Pierre Gemayel, and the National Liberal party of former President Camille Chamoun. The sixth minister, Majid Arslan, is an ally of Mr. Chamoun. This has left only 11 ministers in the Cabinet.
The Moroccan newspaper El Mouharrir reported that General Francisco Franco, 82, would step down as leader of Spain before July 1 as part of a deal that would take the country into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The paper, citing a reliable source in Madrid. said an agreement had been reached among members of Franco’s family and the army and financial leaders to get the “caudillo” to turn power over to Prince Juan Carlos.
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi abruptly withdrew a controversial bill today after a storm of charges that she was attempting to impose a “dictatorship” in India. The measure, spurred by Mrs. Gandhi, would enable the government to detain certain prisoners in “disturbed areas” for two years, without trials or without appeals to advisory boards. In giving up the attempt to introduce the measure, the government’s Minister of Home Affairs, K. Brahmananda Reddy, told an uproarious session of the lower house of Parliament that the bill would be introduced in the next session of Parliament in the autumn. The bill was described yesterday by opposition parties on the right and left as “draconian, fascist, authoritarian, unconstitutional and illegal.
The victorious Cambodian Communists are carrying out a peasant revolution that has thrown the entire country into upheaval. It is estimated that three to four million people, most of them on foot, have been forced out of the cities and sent on a mammoth and grueling exodus into areas deep in the countryside, where, the Communists say, they will have to become peasants and till the soil. No one has been excluded. The old, young, sick and wounded have been forced on the road. For the moment, money means nothing and cannot be spent. Barter has replaced it.
All shops have either been looted by Communist soldiers for such things as watches and transistor radios, or their goods have been taken away in an organized manner to be stored as communal property. Even the roads that radiate out of the capital and that carried the nation’s commerce have been virtually abandoned, and the population living along the roads, as well as that in all cities and towns that remained under the control of the American‐backed Government, has been pushed into the interior. Apparently the areas into which the evacuees are being herded are at least 65 miles from Phnom Penh.
In sum the new rulers — before their overwhelming victory they were known as the Khmer Rouge — appear to be remaking Cambodian society in the peasant image, casting aside everything that belonged to the old system, which was generally dominated by the cities and towns and by the elite and merchants who lived there.
Foreigners and foreign aid are not wanted—at least not for now. It is even unclear how much influence the Chinese and North Vietnamese will have, despite their considerable aid to the Cambodian insurgents against the Government of Marshal Lon Nol. The new authorities seem determined to do things themselves in their own way. Despite the propaganda terminology and other trappings, such as Mao caps and. Ho Chi Minh rubber‐tire sandals, which remind one of Peking and Hanoi, the Communists seem fiercely independent and very Cambodian.
The last known foreigners remaining in Cambodia, about 550 occupants of the French Embassy in Phnom Penh, crossed the border into Thailand three weeks after Cambodia’s fall to Communist guerillas. Transported by a convoy of cars and trucks, and escorted by soldiers of the Khmer Rouge, the group that walked over into Aranyaprathet consisted of 230 French citizens and about 300 Khmer Muslims, but no Cambodian holders of French passports.
For the 800 foreigners who spent two weeks in the French Embassy in Phnom Penh after the Communists took over, the time seemed like a chaotically compressed generation of life. A baby was born, another died. A dozen marriages were performed — all marriages of convenience to enable Cambodians to get French passports so that they could escape the country and its peasant revolution. There were days of deep sorrow. Friends were torn apart and families were broken up as Cambodian husbands were separated from their European wives and vice versa. Sobbing could he heard in every corner of the compound.
President Ford gave fresh assurances today to officials from South Korea and Singapore that the United States would maintain its presence in Asia. Chung II Kwon, the speaker of the South Korean National Assembly, and Hahm Pyong Choon, the South Korean Ambassador to Washington, paid a 10‐minute “courtesy call” on Mr. Ford at the White House. They said later that they had warned that an American withdrawal from South Korea would lead “within six months” to a military attack by North Korea. Mr. Hahm told reporters that the President had pledged that his Administration would stand by treaty commitments to defend South Korea and that he had no intention of removing the 38,000 American troops stationed there.
Mr. Ford met this afternoon with Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore and, according to Ron Nessen, the White House press secretary, restated “the American determination to stand by allies and friends.” Tonight responding to a toast by Prime Minister Lee at a White House state dinner, the President said that the Vietnam war had been “an unmitigated disaster,” but asserted the United States’ world role could be bolstered if the Administration and, Congress could “speak in one voice” on foreign policy.”
China will establish official relations with the European Common Market and give “positive consideration” to a trade agreement. European Economic Community Commissioner Sir Christopher Soames said in Peking. “We have now taken the first step toward a closer and more fruitful relationship which I hope and believe will prove to be of considerable significance both to the People’s Republic of China and to the European community.” he said.
Japan’s land transport system was virtually paralyzed as overnight negotiations failed to produce agreement to call off a two-day-old strike. Transport workers and other trade unionists are demanding higher pay as a climax to their joint spring campaign. The two powerful unions of the state-owned Japanese National Railways continued their strike, keeping the nationwide rail network out of action. Private railroads and bus companies and metropolitan subway and bus services were also affected.
Senator George McGovern said today he proposed to Premier Fidel Castro — and Mr. Castro liked the idea — that baseball and basketball be used to help break down the hostility between Cuba and the United States.
The White House today welcomed the conciliatory remarks made by Premier Fidel Castro last night but said that any dramatic shift in relations would have to await a formal lifting of diplomatic and trade curbs against Cuba by the Organization of American States. The annual General Assembly of the organization opened here today, but Cuba was not on the agenda. Latin‐American and United States officials said that enthusiasm for ending the embargo had seemed to wane recently and that any formal action might take several months at the least.
Five persons have been imprisoned on charges of spreading rumors as the Government of President Jomo Kenyatta apparently stepped up a counterattack against its critics and enemies. Political emotions in this East African country were stirred to a high pitch by the murder on March 2 of Josiah M. Kariuki, a popular politician and a vocal critic of the way Kenya has been governed and run. For the first time in more than 11 years of independence there has been widespread, if usually veiled, criticism of Mr. Kenyatta. Pamphlets and leaflets, considered scurrilous, have been circulating, as have word‐of‐mouth accusations, occasionally causing fights in bars and other public places.
President Ford’s emergency aid request for Indochina refugees was cleared for House action next week by one committee and cut to $405 million by another congressional panel. The House foreign operations subcommittee trimmed the President’s $507 million aid request for up to 150.000 refugees to $405 million, generally basing its action on figures showing the actual number of refugees involved now totals about 114,000. Later the House Judiciary Committee approved an authorization for emergency refugee programs, 30 to 4. and Chairman Peter W. Rodino Jr. (D-New Jersey) said he hoped to put it to a House vote next Wednesday. The authorization bill contains no money figures. The separate $405 million appropriation is expected to follow the authorization bill to a House vote quickly.
Caspar W. Weinberger, secretary of health, education and welfare, issued stringent new rules to protect poor Medicaid patients from undue pressure to join prepaid health plans. Some of the most publicized alleged abuses have occurred in Weinberger’s own state of California, where door-to-door salesmen were accused of using false and misleading practices to sign up patients for health maintenance organizations. The final HEW regulations prohibit prepaid health plans from engaging in marketing practices that would mislead, misinform, confuse or defraud Medicaid patients or state agencies.
The Senate excluded the federal licensing of radio and television stations from the provisions of a pending bill which would create a consumer advocacy agency. At the same time it set the stage for a vote Tuesday on cutting off debate and bringing the controversial measure to a final vote. Supporters of the bill expect it to pass but predict the real test will come on a vote to override an almost certain veto from President Ford. The voted-down amendment would have included the Federal Communications Commission in the coverage of the bill.
Jack Chestnut, a 42-year-old Minneapolis lawyer who managed Senator Hubert Humphrey’s 1970 senatorial campaign, was found guilty in Federal District Court in Manhattan of arranging for and accepting an illegal corporate campaign contribution. He faces a maximum of two years’ imprisonment and a fine of $10,000.
John B. Hill, convicted of murder in the beating death of a guard during the 1971 Attica, New York, prison revolt, was sentenced to 20 years to life imprisonment. A codefendant, Charles J. Pernasilice. 22, convicted of attempted second-degree assault on the same guard, was sentenced to an indeterminate term of up to three years. The judge said evidence showed that Hill, 23, clubbed Quinn while he lay unconscious on the floor. The defense has claimed that a police assault that put down the rebellion and killed 39 prisoners and hostages on the final day should result in prosecution of some policemen.
The Justice Department advised a House Commerce subcommittee that a “controlled liquidation” or auction sale of the Penn Central and six other bankrupt railroads in the Northeast was the “preferred way” for restoring a competitive rail transportation system in the region. The subcommittee is holding hearings on a preliminary plan for the reorganization of the bankrupt systems into a new federally supported Consolidated Rail Corporation, known as Conrail.
The Food and Drug Administration announced that owners of 500,000 sterilizers for soft contact lenses are being warned about potential electric shock hazards. The agency said, however, it had received no notice of injuries attributed to use of the Soflens Aseptor-Patient units. The manufacturer, Baush & Lomb, Inc., Soflens Division, of Rochester, New York, mailed letters to 10,430 eye care professionals on April 4. Users are being given a new set of safety, care and operating instructions and a “safety caution” sticker to apply to the unit.
One of the U.S. Air Force’s new multi-million-dollar F-16 fighters ran into trouble and made an emergency landing at the General Dynamics Corp.’s airfield in Ft. Worth, Texas, the Air Force said. The landing was on grass alongside the runway and there were no injuries, no fire and plane damage was called moderate on first inspection. It was the first such incident reported since the Air Force chose the F-16 last January as its new supersonic fighter. The Air Force said test pilot Neal Anderson decided to make a wheels-up landing when the right main landing gear failed to extend and the plane did not have enough fuel for additional emergency efforts to get the gear down.
Tornadoes, high winds and torrential rains swept the Gulf Coast states. Two persons were killed and one injured in Louisiana. In Walker, Louisiana, near Baton Rouge, a farmer was killed by a toppling tree and a driver was killed when his car was blown from the road. The National Weather Service said 10 tornadoes were seen in Louisiana and Mississippi. The winds smashed mobile homes, uprooted trees and knocked down power lines in Baton Rouge. Elsewhere, rains diminished on the Northern Plains, easing a flood threat to Minot, North Dakota, and in Omaha a cleanup campaign rolled into full gear with hundreds of volunteers joining municipal and state salvage crews.
Federal Energy Administration officials are notifying nine midwestern utility companies they will be ordered to burn coal rather than natural gas or oil. The FEA plans to hold a public hearing on the fuel conversion program, scheduled to begin May 20 in Kansas City. Most of the utilities affected are already burning coal part time at their facilities, an FEA spokesman said.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said today that it would postpone for at least three years a final decision on whether plutonium, the raw material of the atomic bomb, should be used to help power America’s nuclear reactors.
Oil and gas shale deposits more than 23 times the size of those already discovered in the western United States lie under the midwestern and eastern part of the nation. a researcher told the House government operations subcommittee. John P. Humphrey. Dow Chemical Co. research manager, said the shale reserves represent more than 60 times the country’s crude oil reserves of 40 billion barrels. He said about 2.5 trillion barrels of oil are estimated to be under the state of Michigan alone. Another witness told the committee that about 285 trillion cubic feet of gas shale lies under Ohio. West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and New York.
Pacific Gas & Electric Company estimated that more than $200 million will be saved during the summer months because of an above average snowpack in the High Sierra. The large amount of snow — 102% of normal — will enable the utility to use runoff water to produce electricity and reduce its dependence on the more expensive oil, according to Paul Gerard, a PG&E spokesman. The result will be lesser rates for consumers, he said. PG&E predicts it will use 16.6 million barrels of oil this year compared to an earlier estimate of 30 million barrels, Gerard said.
Avery Brundage, past president of the International Olympic Committee, died at his home at Garmisch-Partenkirchen, West Germany, at the age of 87. He was powerful and controversial in international sports and was credited with preserving Olympic ideals and nurturing the Olympic Games through skillful compromise.
The former U.S. Navy Essex-class aircraft carrier USS Yorktown (CV-10) is turned over to the Patriots Point Development Authority of South Carolina for preservation as a museum ship.
Major League Baseball:
The Braves held on to edge the Giants, 3–2. Dusty Baker drove in two runs with a sacrifice fly and a single as the Braves snapped a fourgame losing streak. Ron Reed (3‐3) blanked the Giants until the ninth; but the San Francisco rally came up one run short.
Randy Jones, who won 8 games and lost 22 last season as a rookie for the San Diego Padres, pitched a fourhit shutout last night in beating the power‐laden Cincinnati Reds, 3–0, in the Reds park, Riverfront Stadium. The victory was the fourth of the season and second shutout for Jones against two losses. The left‐hander faced only 28 batters and was helped by double plays following three of the four Cincinnati hits.
Bill Robinson double and homered to lead the Pittsburgh Pirates to a 4–2 win over the Mets in New York. Pitcher Bruce Kison had an RBI single for the Pirates and got the win.
Garry Maddox and Greg Luzinski had three hits and three runs batted‐in each, in backing the six‐hit pitching of Jim Lonborg, and the Phillies thumped the Cardinals, 6–2. Maddox, playing in his second game since his trade from the Giants, doubled in the first, tripled in the third and doubled in the ninth. Luzinski doubled in the first, singled in the third and singled in the seventh, raising his run‐batted‐in total to 20, high on the club.
The Tigers beat the Brewers, 6–4. Dan Meyer broke a 4‐4 tie when he opened the sixth with his second home run of the season and Detroit scored another run in the inning to pull to within one game of Milwaukee, the Eastern Division leader.
The Rangers downed the Royals, 5–3. Willie Davis, who tied the game with a two‐run homer in the seventh, singled home the deciding run in the ninth. Steve Hargan (3‐1) held the Royals to four hits in pitching the distance to give the Rangers their first triumph over the Royals in six games this season.
The Angels’ Nolan Ryan struck out ten and allowed just four hits in shutting out the Oakland A’s, 5–0. It was the 70th game of Ryan’s career with ten or more strike outs. Mickey Rivers had three hits and three RBIs for the Angels.
San Francisco Giants 2, Atlanta Braves 3
San Diego Padres 3, Cincinnati Reds 0
Milwaukee Brewers 4, Detroit Tigers 6
Texas Rangers 5, Kansas City Royals 3
Pittsburgh Pirates 4, New York Mets 2
California Angels 5, Oakland Athletics 0
Philadelphia Phillies 6, St. Louis Cardinals 2
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 840.50 (+4.06, +0.49%)
Born:
Enrique Iglesias, Spanish singer born in Madrid, Spain.
Died:
Avery Brundage, 87, American philanthropist who led the International Olympic Committee from 1952 to 1972
Philip Dorn, 73, American actor.
History Diaries 