President Reagan sought to detail his position on a deployment of a strategic defense system. He said he preferred to negotiate an arrangement by which both Washington and Moscow would replace offensive nuclear weapons with defensive systems in a coordinated, phased process.If the Russians refused to take part in such a shift, he added, the United States should reserve the right to deploy its missile defense alone. Earlier in the day, in remarks to reporters, Mr. Reagan said he would never allow Moscow to exercise a veto over American deployment of a shield against incoming enemy missiles. “Hell, no,” he responded when reporters asked if he would give the Russians such a veto.
But in his interview, Mr. Reagan made clear his preference for a negotiated joint deployment once the technology was developed for his Strategic Defense Initiative, popularly known as “Star Wars.” He said there was “no way” he would stop the development of such a system, which he suggested was important to world peace. In the past Mr. Reagan has made it plain that it is not he but future Presidents who will have to face the issue of deploying a strategic defense, and he has stated his determination to preserve that option for his successors.
The defections and recantings of three Soviet citizens recently may constitute a “deliberate ploy” by Moscow to disrupt the forthcoming Geneva meeting between President Reagan and Mikhail S. Gorbachev, according to Mr. Reagan. Mr. Reagan said Vitaly Yurchenko, a K.G.B. officer who had been described by officials as a prized defector, had proven to be of little value. The assessment contradicted assertions by officials and by members of Congress who had been briefed about Mr. Yurchenko by the Central Intelligence Agency. “The information that he provided was not anything new or sensational,” Mr. Reagan told a group of news agency reporters. “It was pretty much information already known to the C.I.A.” In voicing suspicion that recent incidents might have been staged, Mr. Reagan also mentioned the case of a Soviet soldier who sought refuge in the United States Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, and that of a seaman aboard the Soviet cargo ship Marshal Konev in the Mississippi River. Both made apparent moves to defect, then reversed themselves.
There is only the slimmest possibility that the November 19-20 United States-Soviet summit meeting will produce more than a thorough discussion of each side’s views, according to American officials. They also said there was a chance there could be some accords on modest issues. Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Robert C. McFarlane, the national security adviser, returned to Washington this afternoon to report to Mr. Reagan about their two days in Moscow. They said the discussions in Moscow ended with the United States and the Soviet Union still far apart on arms-control issues and regional disputes.
Seeking to delay a sailor’s return to the Soviet Union two weeks after he first jumped ship in the Mississippi, Senator Jesse Helms has decided to subpoena him to appear before a Senate committee.
Poland’s General Wojciech Jaruzelski stepped down today as head of government, stepped up as head of state and stood where he was as head of the Communist Party. The shift of duties, accomplished in a two-hour opening of the newly elected Polish Parliament, did not involve any diminution of power amassed by the general since he took control in 1981, imposing martial law in December of that year to end both the upheavals and the hopes of the Solidarity period. Indeed, according to some of General Jaruzelski’s supporters, turning over the Prime Minister’s post to Zbigniew Messner, an economist, was a signal to Poles and foreign governments that the period of turbulence was over and that a more normal division of duties was now possible. Several party sources said that in theory it was the party secretary’s job to supervise and guide the Prime Minister and that the jobs should be held by two people.
Italian Prime Minister Bettino Craxi’s reassembled government won a vote of confidence in the lower house of Parliament after he defended the Palestine Liberation Organization’s armed struggle against Israel. “To dispute the recourse to arms by a movement that seeks to liberate its country would mean to challenge the course of history,” Craxi said. His ruling coalition collapsed over the release of a guerrilla leader suspected of masterminding the Achille Lauro takeover. Craxi must win a similar confidence test in the upper house, expected Friday.
Queen Elizabeth II opened the new session of the British Parliament today with a speech, prepared by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, that emphasized the Government’s determination to get tough on law and order, encourage private enterprise and overhaul the welfare system. The Queen’s speech, made from the throne of the House of Lords to members of both houses of Parliament, outlined the Government’s plans for legislation and foreign relations in the coming year. These include the privatization of British Gas, the biggest denationalization effort so far, and the sale of the British Airports Authority, which operates Heathrow, Gatwick and five other airports.
The Nazi war criminal Alois Brunner, a top aide to Adolf Eichmann, said in an interview published today that he evaded capture by the Allies because of an identity mixup and that another SS member, Anton Brunner, was hanged for his crimes. Mr. Brunner, accused of deporting 80,000 Jews to death camps, said he eventually fled to Egypt from West Germany, renting a room from Jews who were “quite nice people, really.” He has lived in Syria since 1961. Mr. Brunner, widely considered the most wanted Nazi alive, was interviewed by two reporters from the West German magazine Bunte at his home in Damascus last month. The magazine published the second installment of the interview today. Bonn asked Syria last year to extradite Mr. Brunner, but Damascus has not replied to the request. A French military court sentenced him to death in 1954.
A Jewish leader appealed publicly to John Cardinal O’Connor to press the Vatican for diplomatic recognition of Israel. The appeal was made by Edgar M. Bronfman, president of the World Jewish Congress.
Prime Minister Shimon Peres told Parliament in Jerusalem today that the Government would act speedily and unhesitatingly against Jewish settlers in the West Bank who called for civil disobedience to oppose any return of territory to the Arabs for peace. The Prime Minister said he instructed the Attorney General’s office and the police to investigate suspected cases of incitement.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat, in a show of togetherness after recent friction between them, took a break from talks to watch a ceremonial display of strength by the Egyptian air force northeast of Cairo. The Egyptian Foreign Ministry described the Mubarak-Arafat talks as “very constructive and fruitful,” but Arafat uncharacteristically walked past reporters without a word after his meeting with Mubarak.
Egypt has ordered five Americans and a Frenchman, who have been held on suspicion of belonging to a sexually oriented religious cult, to leave the country, prosecutors announced. They said the deportation order was based on “political considerations,” apparently referring to pressure from the U.S. and French embassies. The six are the last of 15 people investigated by Egypt for alleged ties to the U.S.based Children of God cult, whose unorthodox sexual and religious beliefs run counter to Egyptian law.
Syrian-sponsored negotiations between Lebanon’s warring factions, an effort to end 10 years of civil strife, appear to have run into serious difficulties that are raising fears of renewed fighting. Changes asked by the Christian militia and strong objections from veteran politicians have held up the signing of a draft agreement. They have also dimmed hopes for an early settlement of the Lebanese conflict, which so far has claimed the lives of more than 100,000 people and left 40 percent of the country’s three and a half million people homeless. A newspaper that speaks for the Christian militia known as the Lebanese Forces, which worked out the draft accord with rival Moslem groups at meetings in Damascus, said the agreement was now being held in abeyance. The daily Al Amal said in its lead article that it was important now to prevent the collapse of a truce that has prevailed since the talks began five weeks ago.
Leaders of six Persian Gulf states ended a three-day summit meeting in Oman by agreeing to revive contacts with both Iraq and Iran in a new effort to end their five-year-old war. According to some observers, the six nationsSaudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates-edged cautiously away from open support for Iraq toward a more neutralist position. In the war, meanwhile, Iraqi warplanes bombed a steel plant and a military boat-building complex in southern Iran. The Iranian regime reported at least 28 people dead and vowed to retaliate.
A passenger bus careened off a highway in India and plunged into a gorge nearly a mile deep in the Himalayas, killing at least 82 people and injuring more than 40, police said. The state-owned bus, carrying a total of 127 people, many of them on the roof, crashed near a village about 180 miles north of New Delhi. The bus driver was among those killed.
Land mines believed planted by Tamil guerrillas killed seven police officers and four soldiers in two explosions today, an army spokesman said. The police officers were in the front vehicle of a three-jeep convoy when an explosion occurred this morning in Siththaar, near the northeastern port city of Trincomalee. The soldiers were on a routine patrol when a second blast occurred in Vakarai, 20 miles north of the eastern state capital of Batticaloa. Four other soldiers who were wounded were flown to Colombo for treatment. Government intelligence sources said the Tamil guerrillas, who are seeking an independent state for their ethnic group in northern Sri Lanka, are preparing a huge offensive in the northeastern district of Trincomalee despite a previously arranged cease-fire. The Government lodged a complaint over the explosions with a presidential committee that is monitoring the cease-fire.
A shootout occurred in Bogota, Colombia as about 25 leftist M-19 guerrillas forced their way into the Palace of Justice. Three hours later, Government troops stormed the building, seizing the three lower floors and freeing more than 100 hostages. The guerrillas were believed to be holding a dozen judges and an undetermined number of other Government employees. Officials said that four policemen and soldiers had been killed and a dozen wounded. The number of guerrilla casualties was in doubt. After a standoff, the building caught fire and was reported to have been badly damaged. The troops went back into the smoke-filled building early the next morning and rescued 10 more hostages. An army captain said two judges, the chief justice of the Supreme Court and a woman federal judge, were still in the hands of about 10 guerrillas.
Chilean riot police stormed a university campus in Santiago and arrested more than 400 people in the second day of protests against the regime of President Augusto Pinochet, an army general who came to power in a 1973 coup. Two people were shot to death and eight were wounded as street clashes continued into the night. The police said that one of the dead, Emilia Ulloa, 21 years old, had been shot and fatally wounded by gunmen firing from a pickup truck while she took part in an anti-Government demonstration in the Pudahuel zone. Erwin Iturra, also 21, was killed in Villa Francia, a slum district. Police placed the total of arrests in two days at more than 600. Most of those arrested on the campus were reported to be students, and officers said they will be released after their identities are checked.
A South African riot patrol shot and killed two blacks in a mob stoning police vehicles near Cape Town. A witness said the clash occurred at a funeral for a riot victim when police seized the flag of the banned African National Congress. However, police reported that the two were killed in Guguletu and said they had no record of a funeral in the area. The deaths were the first confirmed riot deaths in a week, police said.
The space shuttle Challenger landed safely at Edwards Air Force Base after a weeklong scientific mission that was chartered and controlled by West Germany. After testing a new nose wheel steering system, the spacecraft glided to a stop on a dry lakebed runway at 9:44 A.M. Although skies were clear blue, dust kicked up by the desert winds had reduced visibility to only 10 miles. Nevertheless, an estimated 9,000 people had a good view of the Challenger as it returned with eight astronauts, the largest shuttle crew ever to fly. It was the ninth flight for Challenger and the 22d flight of the shuttle program. It was to be Challenger’s last successful mission. The shuttle will be lost in January after a mid-air explosion.
President Reagan hosts a luncheon for the Ronald Reagan Library Foundation Steering Committee.
Major Social Security wrongdoing has occurred, according to the General Accounting Office. The agency charged that the award of the system’s largest consulting contract was flawed by serious irregularities and potential conflicts of interest on the part of several officials, including the then Commissioner of Social Security, John A. Svahn. Mr. Svahn is now President Reagan’s assistant for policy development.
The espionage trial of Richard W. Miller, a former agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, ended in a mistrial today after the jurors said they were hopelessly deadlocked. The mistrial was declared by Federal District Judge David V. Kenyon after the jury had deliberated for 14 days. Mr. Miller, 48 years old, was the first bureau agent in history to be charged with espionage. The charge grew out of his activities with a Russian emigre couple who the government contended were agents of the K.G.B., the Soviet intelligence service. Until shortly before his arrest on Oct. 2, 1984, he had been a counterespionage specialist in the bureau’s Los Angeles office.
Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., joining a growing constitutional debate, accused Attorney General Edwin Meese 3d today of advocating “extreme and unacceptable” views of the Constitution in an effort “to rewrite in his own image our most basic law.” Mr. Biden, the senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Mr. Meese’s attacks on Supreme Court precedents were part of a campaign by “his friends of the Radical Right” to pack the courts with people who would “judicially enact an agenda that they could not get through the United States Congress.” In a speech this evening at Georgetown University Law Center, the Senator from Delaware staked out his position in what he called “the controversy that has erupted recently over the proper role of the Supreme Court in interpreting the Constitution,” which was started by a speech Mr. Meese gave in July.
Cuban-Americans in Miami moved toward political power for the first time. Two men who were born in Cuba, Raul Masvidal and Xavier Suarez, were the top two vote-getters in the Miami mayoral election Tuesday and will face each other in a runoff election next Tuesday.
Voters approved many bond issues in the elections Tuesday. They authorized the construction of public projects as diverse as a $1.4 billion water reservoir system in Texas and a $5.5 million renovation of the state capitol in Rhode Island.
President Reagan is ready to appoint a new Secretary of Health and Human Services to succeed Margaret M. Heckler. White House officials said the leading contender was Otis R. Bowen, a 67-year-old former Indiana Governor.
The death toll in floods in the Middle Atlantic states rose to 35 and about 20 other people were still missing after three days of heavy rain.
The four Philadelphia leaders during the May 13 confrontation with a radical group came together on the last day of hearings and again contradicted one another about what they knew and what they told one another during the episode, which started a fire that killed 11 people and destroyed a neighborhood. Sitting side by side, with their lawyers and aides behind them, the four men once again disagreed about what they knew and what they told one another before and at the time of the confrontation, which ended when the police dropped a bomb on the roof of the group’s house. In an ensuing fire, 11 people in the house were killed and 61 row homes were destroyed. “However fragmented, or uncoordinated, or contradictory or appalling,” Mayor W. Wilson Goode said in summarizing the testimony, “no other city administration has exposed its inner workings to the extent that I have ordered this one to.”
An exploratory well in Ranger, Texas, blows out, spilling 150,000 bbl (24,000 m3) of crude oil.
Assailants on a motorcycle shot and wounded a U.S. Army major in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in an ambush claimed by a Puerto Rican independence group. Authorities said Major Michael Snyder, 37, was shot in the chest and pelvis and was in stable condition after surgery at the Veterans’ Hospital. Three hours after the attack, a man identifying himself as a representative of the Organization of Volunteers for the Puerto Rican Revolution called United Press International in San Juan and claimed responsibility for the attack. The FBI has described the Volunteers as “one of the most dangerous terrorist organizations in Puerto Rico.”
Charges against one of nine reputed organized crime leaders on trial in Kansas City for allegedly skimming more than $2 million from Las Vegas casinos were dismissed. Prosecutors and defense attorneys refused to comment on why Carl Angelo DeLuna, 58, is no longer a defendant. Eight other reputed mob figures are accused of skimming gambling profits and dividing the money among mobsters in Las Vegas, Chicago, Milwaukee, Kansas City and Cleveland.
A Midway Airlines jetliner returned to the Detroit Metro Airport 12 minutes after takeoff when violent vibrations terrified passengers and prompted a stewardess to make the “sign of the cross,” a passenger said today. “The whole plane was shaking and a couple of ladies screamed,” said the passenger, who described the incident on the condition that he not be identified.
The Reagan Administration must release $11.5 million in refugee assistance to state and county agencies, a Federal district judge has ruled in a dispute between the legislative and executive branches. The judge, Robert P. Aguilar, issued a permanent injunction Tuesday requiring the Government to “take all steps necessary” to insure that the money be released under the Refugee Targeted Assistance Program.
A federal grand jury in Salt Lake City indicted Mark Hofmann, a suspect in two fatal booby-trap bombings, on a charge of illegal possession of a machine gun. The charge was not related to the Oct. 15 bombings, which killed one of Hofmann’s business associates and the wife of a former associate, U.S. Attorney Brent Ward said. Hofmann pleaded not guilty to possessing an unregistered Uzi machine gun. He faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Lawyers for 11 sanctuary movement members argued in federal court in Tucson that charges against their clients should be dismissed because the indictments were flawed. All are accused of conspiring to smuggle, transport, harbor or otherwise aid Central Americans seeking to enter this country illegally. Their attorneys contended that, among other flaws, the conspiracy count covers both felony and misdemeanor charges, which is not allowed under law. If the motions are rejected by the judge, the trial is expected to begin next week.
San Franciscans take their scenery seriously, and they proved it again Monday night. After fretting for almost 26 years that an unfinished waterfront freeway was disfiguring the city’s shoreline, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved a plan to tear it down. “Building the freeway was a mistake, and we hope San Francisco will be one of the cities that can admit a mistake,” said Ruth Gravanis, a member of the Embarcadero Citizens Committee, one of several organizations that has long sought to raze the Embarcadero Freeway. In a vote of 8 to 2, the Supervisors gave tentative approval to plans for a sweeping redevelopment of a large section of waterfront. Besides demolishing the elevated freeway, at a cost of $10 million, the plan envisions replacing it with a wide, tree-lined boulevard at ground level, plus two light-rail trolley lines and other new road facilities.
[Ed: The freeway would remain standing until the 1989 Earthquake damaged it, leading to its demolition.]
An annual University of Michigan survey of America’s high school seniors showed an increase in cocaine use in the class of ’85, and overall drug use among the students did not decline for the first time in five years. Seniors showed statistically significant increases in use of cocaine, PCP and opiates other than heroin and decreased interest in amphetamines, methaqualone and LSD. The increased use of cocaine was particularly significant, with 17.3% of seniors reporting they used it at least once.
As many as one-fourth of young American women periodically go on food binges, a Gallup survey found. The poll of women ages 19 to 39 found that to compensate for these binges, almost half the women suffering from this eating disorder resort to extreme measures such as fasting, strenuous exercise, taking purgatives or self-induced vomiting. The survey also found that about 2 million young women have suffered from the symptoms of anorexia or bulimia.
British actress Joan Collins (52) weds fourth husband Swedish former pop singer Peter Holm (38) at the Little White Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas, Nevada; they divorce in 1987.
Spencer W. Kimball died at his home in Salt Lake City at the age of 90. Mr. Kimball had been the paramount leader of the Mormon church since 1973.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1403.44 (+6.77)
Born:
Jake O’Connell, NFL tight end (Kansas City Chiefs), in Naples, Florida.
Devin Moore, NFL kick returner and running back (Indianapolis Colts), in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Sun Yue, Chinese NBA shooting guard (Los Angeles Lakers), in Hebei, People’s Republic of China.
Died:
Joel Crothers, 44, American actor (“The Edge of Night”), of a heart attack.
Sanjeev Kumar [Harihar Jariwala], 47, Indian Bollywood actor (“Angoor”, “Dastak”, “Koshish”), of a heart attack.
History Diaries 