President Reagan, proposing “a fresh start” in United States-Soviet relations, called on Moscow today to help resolve conflicts in five countries as a major step toward easing tensions with Washington. Addressing a packed General Assembly chamber in a session marking the 40th anniversary of the United Nations, Mr. Reagan linked progress in East-West relations to the resolution of fighting in Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia, Ethiopia and Nicaragua. “All of these conflicts,” he said, “are the consequence of an ideology imposed from without, dividing nations and creating regimes that are, almost from the day they take power, at war with their own people. “And in each case, Marxism-Leninism’s war with the people becomes war with their neighbors,” he said.
President Reagan met with leaders of five of the leading industrial democracies today in advance of his meeting next month with Mikhail S. Gorbachev. “They expressed full support for President Reagan in his talks in Geneva,” said Secretary of State George P. Shultz of the working luncheon at the United States Mission, which came after Mr. Reagan had addressed the United Nations General Assembly. Mr. Shultz added that the allied leaders had expressed appreciation to the President for seeking the consultations. The Secretary said the allies had backed Mr. Reagan’s decision to adhere to a strict interpretation of the 1972 antiballistic missile treaty, even though a Government review had concluded that the treaty permitted development of the new defensive technologies as part of the United States’ space-based defense program.
President Reagan meets with Prime Minister of Italy Bettino Craxi to discuss the recent hijacking of an Italian cruise ship. Craxi, the caretaker Prime Minister of Italy, says he does not blame the Reagan Administration for the collapse of his Government in the aftermath of the hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro. In an interview after he arrived in New York City on Wednesday night, Mr. Craxi said relations between the two countries were not permanently damaged because of actions taken by the United States after the hijacking ended. In addition, he said the United States should realize that the recent Israeli bombing of the Palestine Liberation Organization headquarters in Tunisia was a “political bombing,” with even more serious consequences than the Achille Lauro affair and should have been recognized as such by the United States. “The Government crisis was the fruit of the garden of Italian political life, and not the fault of the Americans,” Mr. Craxi said. He called the tension between the two Governments last week that led to the collapse of his five-party coalition Government “a little incident, a little incomprehensible turn of events that has been set right.”
With a meeting between President Reagan and Mikhail S. Gorbachev only four weeks away, senior Administration officials say they have become concerned about disunity in their ranks on arms control. The officials, who are involved in preparations for the summit meeting, speak of divisions on almost every issue: how to characterize the Soviet arms proposals, how to interpret existing treaty obligations, how much public emphasis to give to purported Soviet violations and, finally, the all-important question of what the American goals should be in the summit meeting. They also lament what they call serious failings in White House coordination of public statements. “That makes us look even more divided than we are,” an official said.
Iceland’s female president, Vigdis Finnbogadottir, joined tens of thousands of women employees and housewives who walked off the job in Reykjavik, in a mass 24-hour protest against male privilege on the island, skirting the Arctic Circle. Women make up more than half of Iceland’s population of 240,000 and 80% of them go to work. They generally earn 40% less than men, although they are entitled to equal pay for the same job. They own only 10% of the island’s property and are virtually excluded from top jobs.
The Palestinian issue marred the United Nations’ 40th anniversary as member nations failed to agree on a universal declaration of purpose. The issue has been the major sticking point in United Nations activities for 38 of its 40 years.
King Hussein of Jordan and President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt met in Amman today for four hours to discuss the latest initiatives for peace negotiations in the Middle East. The King said in an interview here Wednesday that he found some positive aspects in “the spirit” of a peace proposal by Prime Minister Shimon Peres of Israel. The proposals were advanced in a United Nations speech Monday. At the same time the King did not indicate a change in any of Jordan’s basic positions on prospective talks toward a peace settlement.
The U.S. sent a top official to Jordan this week on a mission to encourage Israel and Jordan toward Middle East peace talks, the State Department said. The senior official is Richard W. Murphy, an Assistant Secretary of State. Disunity on arms control issues is plaguing the Reagan Administration, according to senior Administration officials. The officials, who are directing involved in preparing for the Geneva meeting between President Reagan and Mikhail S. Gorbachev, only four weeks away, said there were internal divisions on nearly every key issue.
The Senate approved a bill today that would prohibit the sale of advanced arms to Jordan before March 1. There was one dissenting vote. The bill provides, however, that the Reagan Administration’s proposed sale of up to $1.9 billion in jet fighters and other air defense systems could go forward before then if Jordan begins “direct and meaningful peace negotiations” with Israel.
Lebanese Muslim militiamen searched West Beirut and Sidon for three kidnaped Soviet diplomats threatened with death but found no trace of them, militia sources said. Police said the militiamen rounded up more than 70 people, most of them thought to be Palestinians, for interrogation. The three Soviet diplomats, and a fourth man who was killed earlier, were the first Soviet Bloc kidnap victims in Lebanon. The search apparently was mobilized in response to pressure from the Soviet Union and Syria, its main ally in the Middle East.
Washington is giving top priority to its efforts to gain the release of six Americans still held hostage in Lebanon, Robert B. Oakley, director of the State Department’s campaign against terrorism, said. Oakley commented before a Senate caucus on anti-terrorism in response to a complaint by a relative of one of the hostages. Sue Franceschini, sister of Father Lawrence Jenco, said that not enough is being done to free the hostages.
Pakistan’s military authorities detained at least four leading opposition politicians and banned others from Karachi, where a major opposition meeting had been planned to discuss an attempt by the armed forces to legitimize their eight years in power. Opposition sources said that political foes of President Zia ul-Haq had hoped to meet today and Saturday to discuss a bill that writes into the constitution most of Zia’s martial-law orders. The bill has been passed by the lower house and is pending in the upper house.
China denied that it has offered nuclear help to Iran and South Africa, and it stressed that its nuclear contacts with Pakistan are for peaceful purposes. A Foreign Ministry statement, responding to charges by Senator Alan Cranston (D-California) and others, said, “Our cooperation in the field of nuclear energy with other countries, such as France, (West) Germany, the United States, Brazil, Pakistan and Japan, whether ongoing or under discussion, serves and will serve only peaceful purposes instead of any non-peaceful purposes.”
French commandos seized a sailboat belonging to the antinuclear and environmentalist group Greenpeace as the vessel approached France’s nuclear test site in the South Pacific shortly before a planned explosion. All seven of the Greenpeace protesters aboard were arrested peacefully and the vessel, the 36-foot ketch Vega, was taken under tow. It was not immediately known what charges, if any, had been placed against the Vega’s crew members.
Salvadoran rebels freed the daughter of President Jose Napoleon Duarte unharmed in a complex exchange. The woman, Ines Guadalupe Duarte, had been held hostage for 44 days. She was released in a small town outside the capital to a delegation of diplomats from France, Mexico and West Germany and the country’s archbishop. The rebels also freed at least 23 abducted mayors of small towns, and the Government freed 22 political prisoners and provided safe passage to 96 disabled guerrillas.
Nicaraguan and Ethiopian officials denounced President Reagan’s speech at the United Nations and took issue with his statements on the number of Soviet-backed troops in their countries. He was also criticized for not mentioning South Africa and the global economic crisis.
About 12,000 Guatemalans are homeless and in urgent need of help after an earthquake that struck their country October 11, the United Nations’ disaster relief agency announced. The agency said the quake, with its epicenter in the northern town of Uspantan, was of a much larger magnitude than first reported and measured 7.0 on the Richter scale. Previous reports put its force at 4.2. The agency said it is launching an international appeal for emergency aid at the request of Guatemala.
A bomb exploded early today at the weekend home of an Argentine official closely identified with the government’s decision this week to jail 12 people suspected of taking part in right-wing violence. The police said the explosion at the suburban farm of Antonio Troccoli, the Interior Minister, damaged the facade of the house and shattered windows. No one was injured, but the incident and new bombing threats at public schools indicated that the government had so far failed to halt the surge in violence that began nearly a month ago.
Ethiopia accused France’s leading medical aid agency, Medecins Sans Frontieres, of undermining famine relief efforts with negative publicity and invited it to leave. Wollo province. A spokesman for the French agency had said that if it were not allowed to open a feeding center for 5,000 malnourished children in Wollo, it would withdraw from Ethiopia. Meanwhile, Kurt Jansson, the retiring head of the U.N. relief operation. said an estimated 1 million people died of starvation in Ethiopia in the last year.
President P. W. Botha announced today that he was lifting a state of emergency decree in 6 of the 36 magisterial districts where it has been in effect since the Government proclaimed it three months ago. The announcement came as hundreds of black and mixed-race protesters clashed with policemen in the busy commercial center of Cape Town. The state of emergency, imposed on July 21 after months of unrest in black townships around the nation, is to be lifted on Friday in one district west of Johannesburg and in five areas around the city of Port Elizabeth. The Cape Town area, where violence has raged for two months, was not included in the July emergency proclamation.
South Africa ruled out any embargo on its sales of strategic metals to the West in retaliation for sanctions against Pretoria over apartheid. Finance Minister Barend du Plessis, clarifying remarks by President Pieter W. Botha, said Botha had mentioned the effects on Western industry of a cutoff of South African chrome exports “to illustrate his firmly held opinion that boycotts and sanctions of any kind are fundamentally foolish. It was definitely not a threat….”
The House of Representatives today approved a package of spending cuts that would reduce the Federal budget deficit by about $60 billion over three years. The package, approved by a vote of 228 to 199, includes major cuts in rural and public housing, reductions in veterans’ programs, including a means test for some medical care, cuts in student loans and a one-year freeze in pay for civilian Federal workers. The Senate bogged down today on its own deficit-reducing package and final work was put off because of a dispute over attaching a measure to curb textile imports. The Reagan Administration has threatened to veto both the House and Senate proposals. Agriculture Secretary John R. Block said today that President Reagan was also likely to veto separate farm legislation, to be debated in the Senate in the next few days, because of “runaway budget exposure.”
A plan would threaten the Pentagon with drastic, automatic reductions in military manpower and equipment, according to an analysis prepared by the staff of the House Armed Services Committee. A Pentagon official said the analysis of the Senate-approved budget-balancing measure was reasonable.
The Senate, in a protectionist mood, ignored threats of a Presidential veto and warnings of economic disaster and strongly signaled its approval of a severe limit on textile and footwear imports. In a frantic day of parliamentary maneuvering, the bill survived a key test vote of 54 to 42, but Senate leaders set it aside before a final vote could be taken. To head off a filibuster by the trade bill’s opponents, the sponsors are trying to attach it as an amendment to a catch-all bill that carries out deficit reduction measures mandated by Congress’s budget resolution for 1986.
The Reagan Administration warned it would make free trade agreements with individual countries if plans fall through for a round of international talks to expand world trade. “International business is too important for the economic well-being of billions of people to permit the intransigence of three or four nations to impede the progress of 100 others, many of which are poor,” said Clayton K. Yeutter, the U.S. trade representative. His remarks were in a speech to the Economic Club of Chicago.
Senator Howard M. Metzenbaum (D-Ohio) threatened to filibuster any proposed new federal restrictions on abortions, putting several appropriations bills in danger. “I’ve had it,” Metzenbaum told the Senate. “No more amendments that go beyond the present law on abortion.” Metzenbaum said he was prepared to “spend a long time… to filibuster” to prevent Senate passage of new abortion restrictions. Noting all the problems facing Congress, Metzenbaum said it seemed “all we have time for is to debate abortion. If that’s what you want, fine with me. No more abortion language.”
Two senators, saying they want to curb the growing influence of the “rich and powerful” on Congress, unveiled legislation to establish limited public financing of Senate campaigns. Charles McC. Mathias Jr. (R-Maryland) and Paul Simon (D-Illinois) told a news conference their colleagues privately share their view that the escalating cost of seeking office holds politicians captive to political action committees. “There’s no question it has an impact on the conduct of legislators and the results of the legislation,” Simon said. “Our present system of financing campaigns is keyed to respond to the wishes of the rich and powerful.”
The Senate, facing a November 1 deadline, approved by voice vote a compromise that would partially alter a Supreme Court decision requiring cash for overtime worked by state and local employees. The House is expected to pass it next week. The Supreme Court ruled in February of this year in the case of Garcia vs. San Antonio (Texas) Metropolitan Transit Authority, that state and local employees must be paid cash for overtime instead of compensatory time off. The compromise provides that states and local jurisdictions can give time off instead of cash but at 1 ½ times the regular rate for no more than 480 hours of compensatory time. Any overtime above 480 would have to be paid in cash.
Richard Ramirez, the suspect in the “night stalker” case, pleaded not guilty today to charges of killing 14 people in California over the last 13 months. Mr. Ramirez, a 25-year-old drifter from El Paso, Texas, who is being held without bail, entered his plea in Los Angeles Municipal Court after Judge Alva R. Soper reluctantly allowed him to change attorneys again. Since his arrest August 31, he has been represented by five attorneys. The defendant, wearing manacles and leg irons as he was led into the crowded courtroom by sheriff’s deputies, bowed his head as his new attorneys entered his plea of not guilty.
A helicopter crashed into an offshore oil platform today, killing the pilot and one passenger and critically burning the seven other passengers, the Coast Guard said. The bodies were found in the wreckage of the Pumpkin Air Inc. helicopter after the three-member crew of the Samedan Oil Company platform and the crew of a supply boat rescued seven passengers, said Petty Officer Stacey Jaudon. The platform is about 100 miles south of Jennings, Louisiana. The names of the dead men were not known, the petty officer said.
For a while today it appeared that rescue workers had succeeded in getting a lost, 45-ton humpback whale to change course and swim toward the safety of the sea. But the whale, lost in a remote Sacramento River inlet for almost a week, refused to cross under a low bridge. Officials said they would resume their efforts on Friday. Earlier, 26 rescue workers in a half-dozen small motorboats were able to drive the whale toward the Pacific Ocean by banging partially submerged pipes. They borrowed the noise-making scare tactic from Japanese who use it to assemble dolphins in shallow water for slaughter. The whale is about 60 miles inland.
Older civil rights leaders in the United States are seeking ways to combat South Africa’s policy of racial separation. They are pressing businesses and young people to protest apartheid.
Places that spur “dangerous” sex would be closed under a proposed New York State health regulation, Governor Cuomo said. The proposed regulation would affect bathhouses frequented by homosexuals, the group most likely to contract the AIDS virus.
Plans for a children’s television program to originate simultaneously from Minneapolis and the Soviet Union on December 2 were announced by Minnesota Governor Rudy Perpich. The project, Minnesota-Moscow Children’s Space Bridge, will be dedicated to the spirit of Samantha Smith, the Maine schoolgirl who became an international goodwill emissary when she visited the Soviet Union in 1983. Smith, 13, was killed in a plane crash in August. The 90-minute program will originate simultaneously from the Children’s Theater in Minneapolis and from Gosteleradio’s Ostankino Concert Hall in Moscow.
The 438-student school system of Port Orford, Oregon, went broke and was closed until voters approve a property-tax levy, a measure that has been rejected three times. Since state law prohibits schools to operate under a deficit, the earliest the Port Orford-Langlois schools could reopen is after the November 5 election. If the measure fails next month, schools will be closed until the next authorized election date, which is in early December, officials said. The $993,562 levy that was rejected October 11 represents about half of the operating budget.
1985 World Series, Game Five:
Entering this game, the Royals were 3–0 in must-win games in playoff elimination games. They improved their record to 4–0 with a decisive victory over the Cardinals, again by the score of 6–1. The Royals struck first on Frank White’s groundout with runners on second and third in the top of the first off of Bob Forsch, but the Cardinals tied it off of Danny Jackson in the bottom half on back-to-back two-out doubles by Tom Herr and Jack Clark. However, they would not score after that. The Royals broke the game open in the second when Buddy Biancalana singled to score Jim Sundberg, who doubled with one out. After Lonnie Smith walked, Willie Wilson tripled home both runs to make it 4–1. The Royals added to their lead in the eighth off of Jeff Lahti on shortstop Ozzie Smith’s throwing error on Danny Jackson’s ground ball, then in the ninth on Pat Sheridan’s RBI double. Jackson was the winning pitcher, following the same formula and pitching rotation as the Royals did in the ALCS where Jackson also won Game 5. Jackson threw an immaculate inning in the 7th, becoming the only pitcher to do so during a postseason game to date. Jackson scattered five hits, allowing only one run in a complete game.
Kansas City Royals 6, St. Louis Cardinals 1
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1362.34 (-4.82)
Born:
Tim Pocock, Australian actor (“X-Men Origins: Wolverine”) and pianist, in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
Died:
Lásló Jósef Bíró, 86, Hungarian inventor (ballpoint pen).
Richie Evans, 44, American auto racer (9 x NASCAR Modified Champion 1973, 1978-1985), in an accident during practice.
History Diaries 