A conventional force reduction plan is set, according to Reagan Administration officials. They said the NATO allies would propose a compromise to the Soviet bloc today in an effort to gain a breakthrough in the 12-year- old negotiations in Vienna. As a first step, the plan calls for the removal of 5,000 American troops from Western Europe, and 11,500 Soviet troops from Eastern Europe. However, the plan also provides for strict verification, including not only checkpoints to monitor the departure of troops, but about 30 on-site inspections a year to make sure that no additional troops have been sent in. The Soviet bloc has rejected such visits in the past.
Officials of NATO said today that the Atlantic alliance had now reached a high degree of consensus on the need to renew efforts to build up its conventional forces. The officials, speaking a day after a one-day gathering here of 15 NATO defense ministers, said the focus on conventional forces, which has been the subject of major alliance initiatives, has had the effect of improving the political climate between the European nations and the United States, which in the past has been dissatisfied with its partners’ contributions to nonnuclear defenses. A year ago, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s defense ministers agreed to build up the alliance’s conventional forces and to try to save money on arms purchases by cooperating more closely on large-scale production. “I think that the political climate is good,” Sir John Graham, the British permanent representive to NATO, said in an interview today.
Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger said the United States is making rapid progress in its “Star Wars” research program and has achieved several technical breakthroughs. “We are way ahead of where we thought we could be two or three years ago,” Weinberger said in an interview with Armed Forces Television in West Germany. Weinberger, who stopped in West Germany after a NATO meeting, said one breakthrough has been the successful use of lasers in bad weather.
The French and Polish leaders met, generating protests in virtually all French political circles except the Communist Party. Mr. Mitterrand’s Prime Minister, Laurent Fabius, told members of the French National Assembly that the meeting had “troubled” him deeply. The 80-minute meeting was the first in a Western capital between the Polish leader General Jaruzelski and a Western head of state since Poland cracked down on the Solidarity trade union and declared martial law in December 1981. In an interview in Le Matin, President Mitterrand, who left after the meeting for a three-day visit to the French Antilles, characterized the meeting as an opportunity to raise questions about religious and union freedom in Poland. He said he had decided to take the risk that the meeting might be misinterpreted. “There is no other way to govern, and to govern well,” he said.
A Polish priest was bound and beaten a second time this year, according to his mother, Teresa Zaleski. She said that the Rev. Tadeusz Zaleski, who was assaulted earlier this year because of his support for Solidarity, was attacked by three people who then ransacked his home. She said she had spoken to her son in the hospital and he was expected to return home later today. An Interior Ministry spokesman, Andrzej Sadlinski, said that he knew of the case and that a thorough investigation was under way. In April the police investigated allegations by the priest that a masked man had assaulted and burned him. According to sources close to the case, the attacker stunned Father Zaleski with aerosol gas and proceeded to burn a “V” into the chest of the priest using a lit cigarette. Solidarity supporters raise their fingers in a “V” sign during anti-Government demonstrations.
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said today that she regretted the wording of a Cabinet minister’s declaration Tuesday that the British-Irish pact on Northern Ireland means there will “never be a united Ireland.” But she said she, too, expected Northern Ireland to remain under British rule. Britain’s Northern Ireland Secretary, Tom King, Britain’s highest representative in Ulster, told business executives in Brussels Tuesday that Ireland, in signing the agreement, “has in fact accepted that for all practical purposes and into perpetuity, there will never be a united Ireland.”
The West German Government will provide a new grant, of $40 million, to the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a special envoy, Walther Leisler Kiep, announced today. The fund, which was established in 1972 by a West German gift as a memorial to the postwar Marshall Plan, is intended to support research, conferences and travel aimed at promoting better understanding between Western Europe and the United States. Payments of the initial grant of $58 million, to be disbursed in 15 annual installments, are to end next year.
Pursued by Italian photographers, Yelena G. Bonner drove to this medieval Italian city today for the eye examination that brought her to Italy. After a three-and-a-half-hour examination, Dr. Renato Frezzotti, an ophthalmologist who has operated on Miss Bonner twice before, said that he found her glaucoma and her eyesight “stabilized” and not requiring any immediate treatment, but that he had recommended an eventual operation for a cataract on her left eye. Dr. Frezzotti said that if she agreed to the operation, which he termed “routine,” it would not be performed until after doctors in Boston determined whether she needs heart surgery. Dr. Frezzotti said it had not been decided whether Miss Bonner would return to him if she chose to have the cataract operation. He said the procedure was one that could be performed “in any country that has decent health services.”
An international conference on child abuse opened in Bern, Switzerland, with a call for action to help victims of beatings, sweatshop labor, forced prostitution or psychologically damaging native practices. About 150 experts from 30 countries are attending the three-day meeting, called by the World Health Organization and the Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences.
Some 50 Turks jailed in West Germany will be returned to Turkey to complete their sentences, the Justice Ministry said today. The ministry said the transfers were the first stage of a prisoner exchange agreement between the two countries, Two West Germans serving prison terms in Turkey are to be transferred to West German prisons. The exchange is to take effect provided the prisoners give their consent. The ministry said about 500 of 1,200 Turks given long prison terms in West Germany had applied to take part and four more West Germans also hoped to return to their country.
Bishops are in sharp disagreement over the form and substance of the final documents to be issued at the Synod in Rome. The debate has become a test of supremacy between two competing views of the church among the 161 bishops. Synod sessions are closed, but the shape of the dispute has become known through official news conferences and in interviews with those close to the proceedings. The pivotal question being debated is whether the Roman Catholic bishops should issue a statement of specific proposals to complement a pastoral message.
Some U.S. anti-hijacking units may be deployed overseas. Administration officials said they were considering such action because of their failure to get specialists to the scene quickly enough to aid in last month’s hijacking of an Egyptian airliner and in the takeover of the Achille Lauro cruise liner in October. The United States is considering permanently basing an advance military team in Europe to speed the deployment of counterterrorist units such as the Army’s Delta Force, which has had difficulty getting to the Mediterranean region in time for effective action against hijacked airliners, the Washington Post reported. Specialists on the European team would swing into action while a larger assault force was flying toward the trouble spot. They would set up communications, gather intelligence and coordinate governmental efforts during a terrorist incident, U.S. officials said.
A Maltese Government spokesman said today that Malta did not intend to comply with an Egyptian request that it extradite a man thought to be the sole surviving hijacker of an Egyptian airliner. The spokesman, Paul Mifsud, noted that there was no extradition treaty between Malta and Egypt and that the killings aboard the plane had occurred on Maltese soil. In Cairo, Foreign Minister Ahmed Esmat Abdel-Meguid said Egypt was seeking delivery of the captive even in the absence of an extradition pact.
A visiting State Department official said in Tel Aviv today that King Hussein of Jordan wanted to include Syria in the Middle East process. The official, Richard W. Murphy, an Assistant Secretary of State, said, “Jordan feels very strongly that Syria has to be included.” He spoke with reporters in Jerusalem after meeting with Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir. According to Israeli sources, Mr. Shamir told Mr. Murphy that President Hafez al-Assad of Syria has in fact been trying to deter King Hussein from the peace process.
Farouk Kaddoumi, an official of the Palestine Liberation Organization, said today that there was no evidence that the hijackers of an Italian cruise ship were responsible for the death of Leon Klinghoffer, an American tourist. “Perhaps it might be his wife who pushed him over into the sea to have the insurance,” Mr. Kaddoumi said at a luncheon held by the League of Arab States to commemorate an International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar and the president of the General Assembly, Jaime de Pinies, were among the luncheon guests. Neither commented publicly on the remark. Referring to Mr. Klinghoffer, Mr. Kaddoumi said, “One was killed and the campaign is spread over the world that the Palestinians are terrorist.” According to witnesses aboard the ship, Mr. Klinghoffer was shot by the hijackers and pushed overboard in his wheelchair. His body was later found with two gunshot wounds. A number of United Nations officials expressed embarrassment and shock at Mr. Kaddoumi’s remarks. One Arab delegate explained Mr. Kaddoumi’s remarks as “an impulsive reaction” to a $1.5 billion law suit filed by Mr. Klinghoffer’s family against the P.L.O.
[Ed: Why do I despise the Palestinian leaders? Oh, I don’t know. Probably because they are and always have been assholes…]
Lebanon decided today to file a complaint with the United Nations Security Council over a raid by Israeli troops in the south on Tuesday. A Christian radio station, Voice of Lebanon, said Israelis carried out another raid in the same area today, killing three Palestinian guerrillas before returning to the Israeli buffer zone in southern Lebanon. There was no immediate Israeli confirmation. A Lebanese spokesman said the delegate at the United Nations had been instructed to submit the complaint and to reserve the right to request a Security Council session. The move followed talks between President Amin Gemayel and Prime Minister Rashid Karami, who is also Foreign Minister, the spokesman said. On Tuesday, 200 Israeli soldiers crossed the buffer zone and struck at a Palestinian base in Rasheiya al Wadi, on the slopes of Mount Hermon.
Three Iranians who support an anti-Khomeini organization showed reporters at the United Nations the effects of torture they said was inflicted on them in Iranian jails. Their appearance at a news conference, under the auspices of the Mujahedeen, was timed to coincide with discussion of human rights violations in Iran and a number of other countries by a General Assembly committee. Mojgan Homayounfar, 24, who appeared in a wheelchair, removed and displayed an artificial left leg that she said replaced a limb hacked off with a machete by an Iranian Revolutionary Guardsman.
A cloud of acrid but non-toxic gas leaked from a fertilizer factory in New Delhi, causing thousands of people to panic the day after the first anniversary of the Bhopal gas disaster. More than 340 people were treated in several hospitals for eye and throat irritation. Nine were reported in serious condition, although the leak was not life-threatening. Indian officials said the leak occurred when corrosion in the metal supports caused a 40-ton storage tank to collapse at the Shriram Foods and Fertilizers Industries complex.
Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos said he welcomes the decision by Corazon Aquino, widow of assassinated opposition leader Benigno S. Aquino Jr., to challenge him for the presidency in the February 7 election. Marcos said her decision is evidence that the election will be clean and fair. Aquino offered the vice president’s spot on her ticket to Salvador Laurel, himself a presidential candidate. But he refused, raising the prospect of a split that would help Marcos.
President Ferdinand E. Marcos said today he would retain General Fabian C. Ver for some time as armed forces Chief of Staff, and the General told reporters, “I am not retiring.” In a radio interview, President Marcos called General Ver, who was acquitted Monday on a murder charge in the assassination of the opposition leader, Benigno S. Aquino Jr., “one of pillars of the armed forces.”
An American lawyers’ group accused the Philippine military of a wide-ranging and steadily worsening pattern of human rights abuses including murder, torture and intimidation. In a report released in Washington, the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights said the Manila government’s failure to prosecute human rights violators shows a “lack of political will” that ultimately rests with President Ferdinand E. Marcos.
The Contadora Group nations today struggled to keep alive their three-year-old peace effort among signs of a deepening rift between Nicaragua and three other Central American nations. One well-placed Latin American official said the foreign ministers of the four mediating nations — Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela and Panama -were very pessimistic about their chances of moving forward. Adding to their gloom, Nicaragua’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Nora Astorga, unexpectedly boycotted a breakfast meeting here this morning with ministers from the Contadora Group and other Central American nations.
Mozambican guerrillas said today that they killed at least 124 Mozambican and Zimbabwean soldiers and occupied two district capitals in four attacks near Beira on Monday. In a statement, the rebels said they seized the district capitals of Sena and Dombe, overran a garrison at Tica and “completely isolated” the army’s logistical center at Vila Machado. There was no independent confirmation of the actions. The rebel group, the Mozambican National Resistance, which has got support from South Africa, made no mention of casualties on its side. It has fought President Samora M. Machel’s forces for eight years.
Prime Minister Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe reached agreement Tuesday with Soviet leaders on two accords aimed at improving relations, the official press agency tass said today. Tass said Mr. Mugabe, in his first official visit to Moscow, and Nikolai I. Ryzhkov, the Soviet Prime Minister, signed an agreement to increase economic and technological cooperation and a protocol to expand political ties.
After a mass funeral rally in Mamelodi, a black township near Pretoria, Winnie Mandela, the activist wife of the jailed anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela, told her followers on Tuesday that “the solution of this country’s problems lies in black hands.” She went on to say that a black victory over apartheid was imminent. Across the tracks, in white Pretoria, President P. W. Botha announced the lifting of South Africa’s state-of-emergency decree in 8 out of the 38 districts where it was in effect, saying that “the revolutionary climate is fast losing momentum.” His message seemed to be that Mrs. Mandela’s promises were false.
The South African Government said today that it would propose next year that blacks be allowed to own land in urban areas for the first time in 72 years, but the change would not end restrictions on where they can live. The proposal would apply only to the approximately one-sixth of the nation’s 24 million blacks who already have the right to buy transferable 99-year leases on property.
President Reagan urged the House to pass the tax-revision bill and send it to the Senate, but Republican leaders in the House said they would work for the bill’s defeat. Mr. Reagan called the committee’s bill “substantial progress from current law” but said many elements need to be improved. The President did not wholeheartedly embrace the sweeping bill approved Tuesday by the House Ways and Means Committee, but he said House passage was the only way to keep the tax issue alive in Congress. Democratic supporters of the committee’s bill said the House would probably pass the measure if the President reinforced his statement with an all-out effort to round up votes for it. Asked whether the President would do that, a White House spokesman said, “The President will do what he thinks is necessary to keep the process going.”
The House narrowly approved a catchall appropriations bill that would cover most Government spending for the rest of fiscal year 1986, ending September 30. The Administration has threatened a veto of the bill, contending it would spend too much. The Administration also threatened a veto of the farm bill.
President Reagan announces to the public the resignation of Assistant for National Security Affairs Robert McFarlane and the appointment of his successor, and current Deputy, Admiral John Poindexter. The new national security adviser who will replace Robert C. McFarlane at the White House will be Vice Admiral John M. Poindexter, previously the deputy advisor. Admiral Poindexter was described by White House officials as smart, hard working and low-key. Mr. Reagan, flanked by both men in the White House press briefing room, announced Mr. McFarlane’s departure at the same time that he named Admiral Poindexter to be the replacement.
President Reagan travels to Fallston, Maryland to meet with local high school students and discuss the recent Geneva summit.
The Cabinet recommended a revamping of antitrust laws, suggesting that the level of imports should become a statutory factor in determining whether a merger is lawful.
Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger has backed away from his initial resistance and endorsed major provisions of a bill to strengthen the Joint Chiefs of Staff system, Senator Barry Goldwater (R-Arizona) said. Goldwater released a letter from Weinberger in which the defense chief laid out his position. Weinberger’s endorsement of the major provisions in the legislation followed a strong House vote in favor of changes and a move in the Senate to revise the JCS system.
Political leaders from 15 Southern states unanimously approved a plan to coordinate presidential primaries and caucuses to give the area more clout in picking nominees for President in 1988. The Southern Legislative Conference, meeting in Stateline, Nev., and made up of leaders of 15 state Legislatures, voted to hold presidential primaries, caucuses and delegate-selecting conventions in the second week of March in 1988. Although the action is not binding, legislators from all 15 states said that they would seek necessary changes in election laws and that in every state they had bipartisan support of key political leaders.
The Navy “extended indefinitely” a deadline for bids to build four nuclear-powered attack submarines in an effort to keep General Dynamics in the competition, saying it wanted to avoid awarding the contracts to a single bidder, the Newport News Shipbuilding concern. The Navy suspended General Dynamics from receiving any new Government contracts Tuesday, the day after the corporation and four executives were indicted on fraud charges. Amid uncertainty and confusion, senior officials at the Defense Department suggested today that the suspension would be lifted before production of vital arms was affected.
James M. Beggs took a leave of absence from his post as chief of the national space agency to defend himself against charges of trying to defraud the Army while serving as a General Dynamics executive.
An ex-Navy analyst was sentenced to two years in prison for stealing Government documents and giving secret American satellite photographs of a Soviet carrier to a British journal. Lawyers for the defendant, Samuel Loring Morison, said he would appeal the prison sentence.
Convicted spy John Walker, who admitted selling military secrets to the Soviet Union and promised to testify against a former Navy friend, reportedly has been talking to a federal grand jury in San Francisco. Walker was seen being led in handcuffs to an area of the federal building where a grand jury is said to be hearing evidence about possible espionage activity in Northern California. Prosecution and defense lawyers declined comment.
A dozen federal office buildings received phony bomb threats, leading to the evacuation of the Supreme Court and two other Washington buildings, officials said. Police reported at least 13 bomb threats around the city between 11:30 AM and 12:30 PM Police said no explosives were found. In the first threat received through the Capitol switchboard, a male caller identified himself as a member of the People’s Liberation Army and said a bomb would go off in the Capitol at noon.
A Polish sailor applied for political asylum in the United States three days after he deserted his ship Sunday while it was unloading steel in Cleveland. Leszek Kapsa, 27, speaking through an interpreter, said he wanted to stay in the United States because of its “freedom, first of all, freedom.” Kapsa, a cook, had been a member of Solidarity, the outlawed union in Poland, said an American friend, the Rev. Marian M. Kencik.
More than 70 members of Congress, citing the U.S. image as “a refuge for the oppressed,” urged the Reagan Administration to grant political asylum to 33 Afghans detained by immigration authorities in New York. The 33 have arrived at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport at various times since April, 1984, and are being held while they appeal rulings ordering them back to the countries from which their flights originated. Most came from Pakistan.
A Philadelphia police inspector has resigned from a special commission studying police corruption after learning that his name had surfaced in a Federal investigation of graft, according to the acting police commissioner. Inspector James McFadden left the commission Monday, three days after his appointment, acting Commissioner Robert Armstrong said Tuesday. Mr. McFadden, a 23-year veteran of the force, insisted that he was not involved in corruption but resigned to avoid embarrassing Mr. Armstrong, according to sources quoted in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer.
A ban on all cigarette advertising is urged by the American Medical Association’s board of trustees. Delegates to a meeting in Washington next week are expected to call for such a ban. Federal law has barred cigarette advertising from radio and television since 1971.
An experimental cancer therapy that turns white blood cells into roving tumor killers has shown evidence in a small number of tests on humans of destroying or significantly shrinking tumors even after the cancer has spread throughout the body, researchers at the National Cancer Institute report. But they cautioned that the treatment had potentially dangerous side effects and was extremely expensive.
Without discussion, Turlock High School District trustees in California followed the lead of elementary board members and adopted a policy barring students with AIDS. The two Stanislaus County districts will ban any child afflicted with acquired immune deficiency syndrome from school, but provide for home education. The policy was proposed by schools Supt. Denton Palmer because he believes it will protect AIDS patients and fellow students. It gained support from the high school student council before adoption by trustees. No district students have been diagnosed with AIDS.
Irwin Memorial Blood Bank in San Francisco has a critical shortage of blood, due in part to unnecessary fear that donors could contract AIDS. Donations are down 20%, resulting in the worst shortage in five years, spokesman Vince Yalon said. He blamed at least part of the decline on “the misguided fear that you can contract AIDS from donating blood.”
The Dallas City Council unanimously approved an ordinance that restricts smoking in most restaurants, grocery stores and banks. The measure sets fines of up to $200 but relies primarily on voluntary compliance. The ordinance makes smoking illegal in such retail establishments with 500 or more square feet of floor space unless authorized by a sign, as well as public buildings owned by the city. The ordinance, which takes effect February 6, will make Dallas among dozens of cities with similar restrictions.
Bathhouses must monitor sexual activities on their premises and expel any men engaging in oral or anal sex under rules voted Tuesday by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. The measure was designed to combat AIDS, which cripples the body’s immune system. Health professionals say it is spread by contact with virus-contaminated semen or blood. Homosexuals were divided today on the new restrictions, with one homosexual-rights activist calling the monitoring of bathhouses “sex police.” “My concern about the sex police is that it represents a force that’s bound to lead to some harm,” the activist, Morris Kight said today. “Who would this person be? Would it be a doctor, a nurse, a nurse practitioner, an epidemiologist, a health educator, a moralist, a puritan or what?”
Unionized workers at J.P. Stevens say their contract has brought them new dignity, expanded benefits and instituted a grievance procedure with access to binding arbitration. But the great predicted increase in unionizing in the South has not occurred since the Stevens contract was signed in 1980.
Bitter cold temperatures in the teens spread across the East, forcing thousands of homeless people to seek haven in shelters in New York and other big cities as far south as Atlanta. Shelters in New York, Atlanta, Washington, Chicago and Minneapolis were near capacity. A record number of homeless jammed New York City shelters for the third straight night. A mass of arctic air over the mid-Atlantic coast brought the below-normal temperatures to most of the East. Early morning lows dipped to the freezing mark as far south as McComb, Mississippi, and Crestview, Florida.
Slobodan Živojinović of Yugoslavia upsets No. 2 seed John McEnroe 2-6, 6-3, 1-6, 6-4, 6-0 in the Australian Open quarter finals; leaves McEnroe without a major singles title for the first time since 1978.
Stock prices shot upward. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 25.34 points, to a record 1,484.40. Trading soared to 153.2 million shares, the heaviest since November 12. Traders and market analysts said no single event was responsible for the buying binge. The general factors are signs of an improving economy, lower interest rates and a better outlook for corporate profits. Technology stocks were up sharply.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1484.40 (+25.34)
Born:
Carlos Gómez, Dominican MLB outfielder (All Star 2013, 2014; New York Mets, Milwaukee Brewers, Houston Astros, Texas Rangers, Tampa Bay Rays), in Santiago, Dominican Republic.
Andrew Brackman, MLB pitcher (New York Yankees), in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Died:
Frederick Boland, 81, Irish diplomat (President of the UN General Assembly).
History Diaries 