President Reagan has proposed that the United States and the Soviet Union abandon plans for the deployment of mobile, land-based nuclear missiles under a new arms-control proposal offered in Geneva, Congressional and Administration officials said today. Mr. Reagan’s proposal would require that the Russians scrap plans for their mobile SS-24 and SS-25 missiles. In return the United States would abandon its development of the “Midgetman” mobile missile. The President’s proposal is part of a new arms control package Mr. Reagan announced Thursday in response to a Soviet plan that calls for a 50 percent cut in nuclear arsenals. Senior Administration officials briefed Congressional leaders on the proposal today.
American and Soviet negotiators today extended their arms-control talks until next Thursday so that the Soviet Union can study a new American proposal that was formally presented here today. Viktor P. Karpov, chief of the Soviet delegation, told reporters outside the Soviet Mission this morning before the session that the Soviet Union had agreed to an American request to extend this round of Geneva talks. He said the purpose was to allow President Reagan’s latest proposal, which envisions what Mr. Reagan called deep cuts in nuclear arsenals, to be presented by American negotiators and explored by the Soviet team.
The press agency Tass today dismissed President Reagan’s new arms proposals as “old proposals that have been slightly modified and presented in a new wrapping.” The agency’s military analysts, Vladimir Bogachyov and Vladimir Chernyshov, said the new offer continued Washington’s “old aim of gaining one-sided advantages at the negotiating table.” The Soviet reply, coming from the military analysts at the agency, was seen by Westerners as a low-level response.
After almost six years of demonstrations, debate and vacillation in the Netherlands, Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers announced tonight that his country would join four North Atlantic Treaty Organization nations in accepting new American medium-range missiles. Many Dutch consider the deployment the most momentous and tormenting national security decision in their postwar history. Mr. Lubbers quickly counterbalanced his Government’s decision to deploy 48 ground-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles in 1988 with the announcement that two types of nuclear-capable aircraft would no longer be assigned to such missions. Mr. Lubbers, who presides over an occasionally mercurial center-right coalition, said at a hushed news conference that he might consider accepting a hastily offered invitation to visit Moscow, but not to discuss “bilateral” questions and only as a firm ally of the United States. The Prime Minister thus turned back the last in a series of 11th-hour letters and public blandishments from Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, intended to dissuade the Netherlands from joining Britain, West Germany, Italy and Belgium in deploying American cruise and Pershing 2 missiles.
After six hours of bitter debate over the leadership of President Spyros Kyprianou, Parliament voted unanimously today to dissolve itself and hold elections December 8. Mr. Kyprianou, whose term expires in 1988, will not be directly affected by the election. But it could change the strength of his Diko Party, which held nine seats in the old Parliament. The elections are likely to stir up a year-old political wrangle over Mr. Kyprianou’s handling of efforts to reunite Cyprus. The two main opposition parties, the right-wing Rally and Communist Akel, which held a combined 23 seats in the 35-member house, pressed for new elections as a test of support for Mr. Kyprianou, whom they want to resign.
Yelena A. Bonner sent a telegram to friends saying she would leave the Soviet Union at the end of November and was preparing her husband, Andrei D. Sakharov, the Soviet physicist and dissident, “to spend the winter alone.” It was the first direct communication from Miss Bonner since reports earlier this week that she would be allowed to leave the Soviet Union for medical treatment.
President Reagan receives word of a Soviet soldier who has defected to the American Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. The State Department said today that a Soviet soldier walked into the United States Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Thursday and was still there, “being looked after by our embassy staff.” Department officials said the 19-year-old soldier, who was not further identified, had not asked to defect to the United States.
Drug use among Soviet troops in Afghanistan is widespread, and some sell gasoline, ammunition and stolen guns to support their habits, according to Soviet defectors living with Afghan rebels. Several rebel commanders say they have captured Russians while the soldiers were in a drugged state or trying to buy hashish or heroin from village merchants.
A fuel truck exploded today in a village in the southern Indian state of Karnataka, killing 25 people and injuring 70 others who had rushed to collect leaking gasoline in cans, the Press Trust of India reported. The driver of the truck had stopped in the village of Tadola, about 800 miles south of New Delhi, after detecting a leak in his cargo tank, the news agency said.
Ten Tamil separatist guerrillas were killed today in a battle with troops in Mannar District, the Defense Ministry said. A spokesman said the battle broke out when troops encountered the guerrillas, who were traveling in a van. He said: “The terrorists, each carrying an automatic rifle, fired at the soldiers, who fired back, killing them. There were no casualties among the security men.” The battle brought the death toll in incidents involving guerrillas in the last two days to 22, including two children. Clashes continued in Northern and Eastern Provinces despite a cease-fire agreement between troops and guerrillas fighting for a separate Tamil state.
Ferdinand E. Marcos’s resignation as President of the Philippines was called for by the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The Senator, Dave Durenberger, Republican of Minnesota, said President Marcos was incapable of bringing about reform. He issued a committee staff report on the worsening economic, military and political situation in the Philippines. The committee report made public today cited the growing momentum of the New People’s Army, the military arm of the Philippine Communist Party, and predicted that the Philippines had less than three years to make fundamental changes before civil unrest and the Communist insurgency bring down the government. Despite American pressure for reforms, the report concluded, a change of course by Mr. Marcos “is very unlikely, and there is serious doubt whether the Marcos regime still has the administrative and political capability to initiate reforms even if it were so inclined.”
After two rounds of discussions this week, Nicaragua and the United States have failed to reach agreement on the resumption of talks, and each side blamed the other today. The State Department said Nicaragua had rejected a proposal under which the United States would agree to resume talks on normalizing relations provided Nicaragua first agreed to church-mediated talks with the exiled anti-Sandinista leadership, known as the United Nicaraguan Opposition. The issue was discussed in meetings Tuesday and Thursday between the Nicaraguan Ambassador, Carlos Tunnermann Bernhein, and a United States special envoy, Harry W. Schlaudeman.
The Reagan Administration said today, in a policy statement of support for rebels fighting the Soviet-backed Government in Angola, that the United States “should sympathize with and support such resistence.” It said it intended to work with Congress in coming weeks on how best to do this. The statement came after several weeks of discussion in the Administration over how to respond to growing demands in Congress for open financing of aid to the rebels, as well as a parallel move by Administration officials to put together a covert military aid program for the insurgents. No decisions have been made on how to proceed, a senior Administration official said, and the statement clearly left open the possibility of further efforts for a negotiated settlement in southern Africa that might remove the need for American aid to the rebels.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson said today that only the imposition of stiff economic sanctions by Britain and the United States could end apartheid in South Africa without widespread violence. “Economic force has the power to bring change in South Africa,” Mr. Jackson said. “The United States and Britain have the power in their hands to bring a just settlement in South Africa.” Britain and the United States are the two largest investors in South Africa and are its leading trading partners. Mr. Jackson said apartheid “cannot survive without British and American trade and investment.”
The South African Government plans to ban radio, television and photo coverage of unrest in 38 districts under an emergency decree in an attempt to cut down on violence, it was reported today. The regulations, which are expected to be carried in the Government Gazette on Saturday, would ban television, still photography and coverage with sound equipment of unrest in areas covered by the emergency decree declared 60 days ago by President P. W. Botha. Publication would make the regulations effective immediately. Under the emergency decree, the Government has wide powers to censor news coverage, but has not done so. Under the new regulations, journalists would be allowed to enter the emergency areas to conduct interviews or cover peaceful events, but would be required to leave if unrest begins. They would be allowed to cover unrest in any area not under the decree, which covers Johannesburg, Cape Town, and major black and mixed-race townships near them and in eastern Cape Province.
A proposal to balance the budget by 1990 put forth by House Democrats was approved virtually along party lines, raising stakes in an impasse with the Senate, which has passed a significantly different plan. To gain time to break the deadlock, the House sent the Senate a $17 billion, five-day increase in the Government’s debt ceiling and adjourned. But the Senate passed a different short-term extension of the debt ceiling after the Republican leadership discovered what aides called a loophole in the House version that could allow the Treasury to keep borrowing to the end of next month; such a “loophole” would relieve the pressure for immediate action. The Senate then adjourned early today.
The White House today said that results of a postoperative examination of President Reagan were “normal.” Mr. Reagan was examined at the Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland for the second time since he underwent major surgery on July 13 in which a cancerous polyp was removed from his colon. After a similar checkup in September, the President said his doctors found that he had made a “100 percent recovery.” In a brief statement today, the White House said: “The President underwent a routine postoperative examination at Bethesda Naval Hospital this afternoon. The results of all the tests were normal.”
President Reagan meets with Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger.
The Secretary of Defense rebuked Secretary of the Navy John F. Lehman Jr. for criticizing the plea bargain with John A. Walker Jr. in a rare public criticism of a senior official. The Defense Secretary, Caspar W. Weinberger said the Navy Secretary now endorses the agreement in which Mr. Walker received a life sentence and his son, who was also accused of Soviet espionage, received a a 25-year prison term.
Administration officials said today that in an effort to free the nomination of Winston Lord as Ambassador to China they would comply with Senator Jesse A. Helms’s request for a statement barring the granting of United States funds to nations that coerce abortion and sterilization. It was uncertain, however, if such a statement would bring Mr. Lord’s nomination to the Senate floor for a vote. The appointment of Mr. Lord, a former head of the Council on Foreign Relations who was also a senior aide to Henry A. Kissinger when he was Secretary of State, has been bottled up by Mr. Helms since it gained the approval of the Foreign Relations Committee five weeks ago.
The police bungled in designing and using a bomb that they dropped onto a radical group’s house in a confrontation May 13, an expert on explosives testified today. The expert, James R. Phelan, who has 16 years of experience with explosives, said the bomb was more powerful than police have acknowledged. Mr. Phelan, a retired agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and a former member of the New York City Police Department’s bomb squad, testified in the 16th day of hearings by a commission investigating the confrontation and its aftermath. The bomb “was the wrong thing to be employed,” said Mr. Phelan, who added that the police repeatedly misused explosives in the daylong siege. He said they damaged more property than necessary and endangered their own lives.
The economy generated enough jobs in October to match another sharp rise in the number of people seeking them, thus the national unemployment rate was unchanged at 7 percent, the Labor Department reported. The report was another sign that the economy is not expanding as fast as the Administration has been predicting, but analysts found several upbeat elements.
Jurors were unable to agree on a unanimous verdict in Richard W. Miller’s trial in Los Angeles on any of the seven charges against Mr. Miller, the only agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation ever tried for espionage. But the judge said he would instruct the jurors again, and tell them to return Monday to try again. Mr. Miller is charged with passing classified documents to the Soviet Union in exchange for promises of $65,000 in cash and gold.
A man who is under investigation by the authorities in bombings in Utah that killed two people has been charged with a federal firearms violation unrelated to the blasts, officials say. The man, Mark Hofmann, has been under scrutiny since he was injured by a bomb the day after the killings. He was released Thursday from a hospital and attended his arraignment today wearing a bathrobe and sitting in a wheelchair. Mr. Hofmann had been charged Thursday with possessing an illegal weapon, a Uzi machine gun. A plea of not guilty was entered for him, said his lawyer, Ronald Yengich, and a preliminary hearing was set for Wednesday. The felony charge carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Mr. Hofmann, 30 years old, has not been charged in the bombings, which the police believe may be related to dealings in Mormon documents. The United States Attorney, Brent Ward said the weapon charge was not related to the bombing investigation.
A loud, warbling fire and smoke alarm sounded six times today aboard the space shuttle Challenger, sending the astronauts scrambling to find the cause, but they quickly reported everything was normal aboard the spacecraft 200 miles above the Earth. “We did fire checks on both sides of the house and with no apparent anomalies,” said the mission commander, Henry V. Hartsfield Jr. “We’re not sure what’s going on.”
A Federal magistrate dismissed charges of unlawful flight against Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh today, but she denied bond to the Indian guru and upheld charges of harboring a fugitive against three of his the six followers. Mr. Rajneesh, who had been charged with trying to leave the country to avoid prosecution, is awaiting trial on Federal immigration charges, including charges related to fraudulent marriages of Americans to foreigners. “The Bhagwan, by his conduct, has evidenced a dispostion or predisposition for flight,” the magistrate, Barbara DeLaney, said at the end of a two-day hearing.
A judge in Federal District Court in San Francisco today halted a new drug and alcohol testing program for 200,000 railroad workers nationwide, saying there was a “reasonable probability” that the tests violated workers’ rights of privacy. Judge Charles Legge issued a temporary restraining order sought by labor unions to bar railroads from continuing the Federal Railroad Administration program, which went into effect at midnight Thursday. The program requires testing after major accidents and authorizes testing on a supervisor’s “reasonable suspicion.” It is the first of its kind in a federally regulated transportation industry.
Despite pleas to resign, Chief Justice Joseph A. Bevilacqua of the Rhode Island Supreme Court returned to the bench today after a four-month leave of absence because of his friendships with people linked to organized crime. “I’m going to continue the work I did in the past,” Chief Justice Bevilacqua said as he entered the Providence County Courthouse. “And that’s all I have to say.” Chief Justice Bevilacqua agreed June 21 to accept the unpaid leave and public censure. In return, the state’s judicial ethics panel halted an investigation of his associations. The four other Justices on the court have agreed to hear arguments November 25 to determine what steps the General Assembly could take to oust the 66-year-old Chief Justice, who has said his acknowledged friendships with several convicted felons did not affect his judicial work.
The comedian Phil Silvers died at his Los Angeles home. He was Master Sgt. Ernie Bilko in the 1950’s television series “The Phil Silvers Show.” He was 73 years old.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1390.25 (+15.94)
Born:
Paulo Orlando, Brazilian MLB outfielder (World Series champions-Royals, 2015; Kansas City Royals), in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Marcus Landry, NBA small forward (New York Knights, Boston Celtics), in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
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